By: Elissa Fielding
For nearly five months, from November 2024 to March 2025, I embarked on an educational journey by participating and competing in the Map the System (MTS) research competition at Johns Hopkins in partnership with Oxford University’s Skoll Center for Social Innovation. The premise for MTS was to choose a problem or topic related to one of the four focused areas: Social, Environmental, Economic, or Health. With our chosen problem, we were to approach it through systems thinking by analyzing the stakeholders involved and their dynamics with each other, what events and mental models surrounded the issue, and what possible solutions, if any, could be proposed.
Choosing My Topic: Beautification
Initially, I wanted to choose my MTS topic in space militarization and defense, as I had done so for my Master’s thesis, so this would be an extension. Yet, after reflecting for some time, I wanted my topic to be “different,” perhaps unconventional, and relatively wholesome. Interestingly enough, before the Thanksgiving holiday, I watched a documentary on Hulu on First Lady ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson called “The Lady Bird Diaries,” initially released in 2023.
Before watching the documentary, I did not know much about Lady Bird; after watching it, my whole world opened up. Part of the documentary showed Lady Bird’s journey spearheading the beautification movement, giving communities across the U.S. the notion of how important – not only environmentally beneficial but also advantageous to a community’s public health – keeping the visual appeal of one’s neighborhood is. In the background with Lady Bird’s push for beautification, the documentary also showcased the passing of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which regulated billboard signage visibility from main roads and highways no less than 1,000 feet; it’s been reduced to 600-650 feet since then.
Though in the 1960s, beautification was primarily done through collectivized grassroots efforts, I noticed a shift into the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, when it drastically became decentralized and individualized, thus varying beautification’s effectiveness from community to community, beautification non-profit to non-profit.
With this in mind, I wanted to analyze the complexities of this new decentralized approach to beautification, how stakeholders have ebbed and flowed in their respective successes and challenges as a result, and what the future of beautification looks like.
Talking with Experts: Deep Dives
In the world of beautification, I identified a few stakeholders involved. All in all, I spoke to five beautification NGOs, including Keep America Beautiful (KAB), which is considered the top beautification and environmental NGO in the United States; six capital cities’ parks and recreation or public works departments, as I had reached out to all fifty capital cities; the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with its official historian for historical context on the Highway Beautification Act; one lobbying group, Scenic America; my local city’s beautification commission; and my alma mater, Hofstra University, as it has a registered arboretum on its campus.
Walking Away with ‘Lady Bird’
As I sometimes consider myself a history lover, I would say my first highlight was the conversations I had with the U.S. FHWA Official Historian, Richard F. Weingroff, and the President/CEO of the LBJ Foundation and former Director of the LBJ Presidential Library, Mark K. Updegrove. In both of these conversations, Weingroff and Updegrove noted to me the importance of understanding the history of First Lady ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson’s impact, not only from an environmental perspective but also from a problem-solver viewpoint through the lens of ‘The Great Society’ in the background. In addition to social and health reform as the image of the Johnson presidential administration, there was a burgeoning push for environmental reform, and understanding yesterday to analyze today is crucial for any research topic.
My second highlight was the conversations I had with the beautification NGOs, who told me the truth about their ongoing struggles, some of which have lasted for decades, yet found a way to smile at what their successes have been; and the capital cities’ parks and recreation or public works departments, some of whom sighed at deficient leadership prioritization and funding, yet found positives in how their community has supported their endeavors.
I truly enjoyed my experience competing in the Map the System competition, and I encourage anyone, whether they have just started undergraduate or are knee-deep in graduate school work, to work on a research project outside of their day-to-day classroom work. Though it may be daunting at first, once you’re full-frontal in an area you’re passionate about, it doesn’t feel like a chore but rather a hobby – and that’s what beautification has unintentionally become for me.
Thank you, Lady Bird!
To read Elissa’s full report, check out the current teams area on the Map the System’s Website.
