This blog post details how to develop your personal experiences and awareness of urban issues into a compelling motivation statement for your academic plan, providing a persuasive writing strategy tailored to the field of urban engineering.
Motivation for Pursuing Urban Engineering (Reason for Choosing Major)
During summer vacation, I traveled to Barcelona, where my aunt lives. Barcelona is the birthplace of outstanding artists like Picasso, Miró, and Gaudí. It’s a city where culture and art truly breathe life, so much so that the entire city feels like a work of art. The beautiful coastline and pleasant Mediterranean climate further enhance the city’s beauty. Ranked third among the world’s happiest cities, Barcelona offers a high quality of life with its natural environment, culture, leisure, and abundant entertainment.
After visiting Barcelona, I pondered what makes a city happy. I realized that creating a beautiful city with a good environment, where people can enjoy pleasant living conditions, is the very foundation for building a joyful and happy city.
I felt regret about the reality in our country, where happiness levels lag behind Barcelona. These thoughts led me to develop an interest in the field of urban engineering. Creating livable cities and pleasant, vibrant environments seems truly fascinating. I applied with confidence, hoping to enroll at your university and become a creative urban planning expert.
Academic Plan and Goals
When I asked my uncle, who majored in urban engineering, about the field, he advised that since it’s an applied discipline, merely acquiring knowledge in related areas isn’t sufficient to achieve one’s goals. He emphasized the need to cultivate practical skills through ample hands-on experience to apply knowledge effectively in real-world contexts.
Therefore, I will strive to acquire foundational knowledge across various fields—including architecture, civil engineering, and humanities/social sciences—as all are necessary for rational urban planning and management. I will work to develop the ability to synthesize and apply this knowledge. I will also endeavor to cultivate a comprehensive perspective to understand the political and economic implications of urban issues and regional development, as well as various social phenomena.
Post-Doctoral Plans
Modern cities face challenges such as urban expansion due to population growth, the increasing complexity, specialization, and diversity of urban phenomena and social structures driven by industrial society development, and pollution issues like housing problems, traffic congestion, and water supply and sewage treatment. There is an urgent need to cultivate experts in these fields to solve such urban problems.
My dream is to become an urban engineering expert who responds to these societal demands. I aspire to contribute to creating happy, premium cities with high citizen satisfaction, such as Salt Lake City in the USA, Vancouver in Canada, Vienna in Austria, and Zurich in Switzerland.
Busan, where I was born and raised, is a city boasting world-class beaches. I wish to take on the task of developing our city into a premium city, fully leveraging its rich environmental and cultural heritage, along with its recreational offerings, to enhance the quality of life for its citizens.
Self-Introduction (Life Philosophy, Values)
People who know how to smile brightly bring happiness not only to themselves but also to others. In that sense, I consider myself a positive and charming person who spreads happiness.
Because I have faith and confidence in myself, I’ve learned to see the hope just ahead rather than the immediate difficulties when faced with challenges. My future-oriented approach to life has enabled me to become someone who doesn’t stagnate but continues to grow. I wish to utilize these qualities to contribute to raising the city’s happiness index. The world I envision is not one filled with conflict and strife between the materially affluent and those less fortunate. Rather, it is a city where the materially affluent possess the generosity of spirit to share what they have with those who lack, and where the less materially affluent, through the richness of their hearts, can warmly support those facing greater hardship and difficulty.
This world I dream of may never exist in my lifetime. But I believe it’s not entirely impossible if one person dreaming of a happy city becomes the starting point, and the happiness virus gradually spreads to more people. It is with this hope for a city rich in heart that I pursue my studies with conviction.
