Community DesignAuthor(s): Mark FrancisSource: JAE, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 14-19Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools ofArchitecture, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1424592Accessed: 16/10/2009 16:34

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D Unity Park mural done by workers of "sweat equity" housing project, People's Development Corporation, South Bronx.

CONTINUING PARK DESIGN IMPORTANT PUBLIC MEETING

ON JULY 23, 1981! Time: 10 am - General Meeting

1 pm Chinese Translation

Place: Cadillac Hotel Lobby, 380 Eddy Street

The Designers need you for the park at

~Jones & Eddy Streets!

Where do you want to enjoy ~'

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THE SUN :0. f,' THE TREES ; : -

THE SCULPTURE i ,'f/o; THE SITTING F .t .

THE PLAY [ _

Table 1: Some Key Differences Between Community and Traditional Design Practice

COMMUNITY DESIGN: (As Practiced by Community Designers)

TRADITIONAL DESIGN: (As Practiced by Larger Landscape Architecture and Architectural Planning Firms)

-Small Scale -Local -Appropriate Technology -Human-Oriented -Client Redefined to Include Users -Process and Action-Oriented -Concerned with Meaning and Context -Low Cost -Bottom Up Design Approach -Inclusive -Democratic

-Large Scale -National/International -High Technology -Corporate or Institutionally-Oriented -Single-/Client Oriented -Building and Project-Oriented -Concerned with Style and Ornament -High Cost -Top Down Design Approach -Exclusive -Authoritarian

Participation in environmental change has a solid following of designers joined by research- ers and social critics. Participatory ideas and methods have been applied extensively to archi- tecture,5 landscape architecture,6 urban design,7 planning,8 and environmental psychology.9 A substantial number of "known" architects, plan- ners and landscape architects employ participa- tion as a central part of their approach and phi- losophy, including Ralph Erskine (Sweden), Walter Segal (England), Lucien Kroll (Belgium), Johannes Olivegren (Sweden), John F. C. Turner (England), Giancarlo de Carlo (Italy), and numerous Americans, including Christopher Alexander, Sandy Hirshen, Richard Hatch, Charles Moore, Karl Linn, David Chapin, James Vann, Paul Davidoff, Randy Hester, Henry San- off, and Troy West, to name only a few. Several new residential communities have been designed and developed such as Village Homes in Davis, California using participatory methods. Some sixty community design centers remain active in many diverse towns and cities, provid- ing institutional leadership for community designers elsewhere.10 While there has been much debate amongst participatory designers and researchers about style, technique and approach, there is an emerging consensus about what community design is and how it dif- fers from traditional design. Some Qualities of Community Design Participatory design has several qualities which sharply differ from architecture, landscape archi- tecture, and urban design as they are commonly practiced (see Table 1). Community design is typically small-scale, local and inclusive of user needs. Traditional design as practiced by the majority of larger firms and "big name" design- ers is frequently large, national or intemational, single-client oriented, and exclusive of users and communities. These are also values that many

"post modernists" herald as the future of design.1l Traditional design, as stated in archi- tectural criticism over the past years, is typically more concemed with style. Participatory design, by its very nature of close dialogue with users, is more concemed with meaning, context and appropriateness. Community design is also con- cemed with process-oriented design which translates human needs into buildable plans. Traditional design is frequently product-oriented and devoted to institutional or corporate goals.

These two markedly different approaches and styles of design provide clear choices for future areas of practice and designer activity. Community Design: Some Troubling Questions Even though community design has established itself as an altemative to more traditional ways of designing, there are a number of questions which continue to trouble those of us committed to its practice. These are questions which grow out, in part, from our own work on community design.12 Some of the most nagging of these questions are briefly discussed along with some of their implications for future practice. If participatory design is so wonderful, why are not more people participating in design? This is a common concem to those who attempt to involve people in design practice or research. Community designers have learned that not everyone wants to participate in design deci- sions and it is often impossible to get complete involvement. Many community designers have come to the conclusion that while full local par- ticipation and representation in design projects is not possible, even partial involvement contrib- utes to shaping more pluralist and appropriate solutions. Many community designers agree that new methods need to be developed which provide different ways for people to participate. For example, observational, interviewing and simulation methods borrowed from environmen- tal psychology can be extremely useful in broad- ening participation in community design projects.

Do communities want what community design- ers want? This is an issue which plagues designers in community design practice. Past work has shown clear differences in values between community designers and their com- munity clients.13 For example, aesthetics has been found not to be as important to commu- nity clients as it is to designers. Issues of room size, provision of private open space, and main- tenance costs, are commonly rated as much higher priorities in community design projects than aesthetics. Even more importantly, design- ers tend to define housing, parks, etc., as prior- ities while the real concems of community peo- ple may not be directly environmental but relate to problems such as unemployment and crime. A more serious concem of designers is their most appropriate role in projects. This has been an issue which has plagued community design

a Meme, medical student housing, Catholic University of Louvain, outside Brussels, designed and built with extensive user and worker participation. Community Designer: Lucien Kroll.

Ea Lucien Kroll's plan for Cergy Les Vignes Blanches, France where the design was developed with resident participation, Lucien Kroll, Architect, Brussells (from: B. Mikellides, Architec- ture for People, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980).

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centers in particular. Because the way some CDC's receive their funding, design centers can be placed in the awkward position of initiating projects or finding clients rather than responding to community requests for assistance. Project initiation is a critical stage in a community which can threaten or enhance a project's success.14 Designers often run the risk of dominating a project or inventing client groups rather than responding to real community requests for tech- nical assistance. As designers, it is essential to remind ourselves that the project is ultimately theirs, not ours. In the reality of people's lives, how important is design? This is a larger question which faces environmental design in general but frequently comes up when working in low income com- munities. As discussed earlier, many commu- nity people do not see design as the critical problem in their communities. While they would like their neighborhoods, houses, and parks to

"look nice," residents are frequently concerned with solving problems such as jobs and health. While design can influence these larger prob- lems, it cannot solve them. For community designers, it is critical to keep a realistic per- spective on what design can and cannot do. Many participatory designers have come to the conclusion that the benefits of local change and action can add up to be more than just cosmetic solutions to deeper problems. We now know that participation has much wider effects on people and environments than just creating a park or affordable housing.15 For example, par- ticipants can develop skills which they can use in improving other aspects of their lives. Envi- ronmental competence and human development are important products of community design which may have broader and more lasting effects than environmental improvement.

Does community design create better environ- ments? This is a critical question which few community designers have attempted to explore and document. Does participation create better places than more traditional design approaches that exclude users as part of the process? Part of the answer to this question rests in how some designers have used or misused participa- tion. For example, some designers have used participation as a way of building a constituency to support their own preconceived design solu- tions. This has been a particular problem with the "workshop" approach employed by some professional landscape architects and archi-

tects.16 One of the positive benefits of participa- tory design is that it can help get a project implemented. Unfortunately, many design professionals may be turning to participation as a way of ensuring the approval of their projects rather than out of a sincere commitment to hav- ing users and the community inform their designs. The Aesthetics of Community Design Community design is reshaping both design process and product. What is especially striking about community design is how the resulting built environment or landscape is markedly dif- ferent than produced by other forms of design. A new aesthetic may be emerging. This is inti- mately connected to the set of social and con- textual goals which guide community design projects. These goals in turn contribute to quite different visual and even functional results than modern or postmodern design approaches. The aesthetics of community design, as Hester points out, is often "personalized, self-reliant, loved, unfinished."17 This is in sharp contrast to more traditional design aesthetics which may embrace visual goals which are "simple, clean or efficient." An example of the differences between these can be found in how each treat edges. Community design projects may result in complex, undelineated edges in contrast to sharper more clearly articulated edges which may result from modern design. For example, a community designed park to a professional designer may look fuzzy and cluttered while to the users the visual complexity may reflect the diverse values of the community. While this new aesthetic still needs to be better defined, it stands to contribute much intellectually to design theory and may eventually lead to a new folk or vernacular style.

Some Consequences of Community Design A key question remains, what does participatory design result in that traditional design does not? There are several consequences of participation which are starting to emerge from a small but growing body of research on community control and involvement. There are several conse- quences of community design which may differ from traditional design; for the people involved in the process; for people who were not involved but end up as users of the projects; for the environment created as part of the commu-

Common area, Village Homes, Davis, CA. Developed with extensive resident participation. Community Designers: Michael & Judy Corbett.

Student working at Elmhurst Community Design Center, East Oakland, CA.

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nity design process; and for the larger neighbor- hood or community environment. Research and evaluation studies are beginning to tell us some- thing about these consequences. For the participants, the process does appear to increase user satisfaction with the project as well as contribute to increased self-esteem. For example, in a study of a community garden, Rachel Kaplan reports several psychological benefits for people involved in designing and maintaining a community open space.18 Her research found that involvement in the garden increased personal satisfaction, interest and fas- cination. In a recent study of community designed open spaces in New York City,19 parks and gardens created by neighborhood residents were regarded as highly successful neighbor- hood places by both participants and non-partic- ipants alike. Use of these neighborhood designed spaces was generally found to be greater than adjacent professionally-designed public parks. Resident designed spaces were also found to be better maintained with significantly less vandalism than traditionally produced parks.

The effects of community design projects on the overall neighborhood are only just beginning to be documented. One area where benefits have been documented is in economic benefits on land and property values.20 Another impact is on community pride. As a result of several years of community design work in Manteo, North Caro- lina, landscape architect Randolph Hester has documented with resident participation "sacred places" which have been integrated into the long range development plan and revised zoning for the town. The process has increased local awareness and concern with preserving the quality of the town,21

One troubling aspect of community design has been the lack of documentation and evaluation of participatory projects and their consequences. While lack of documentation and evaluation is common in design, it is needed for the benefits of community design to be argued. Since most community designers are busy with the day to day demands of their projects, an important role can be played by environmental design researchers in assessing the consequences of projects. Questions which need to be asked include: How does the final designed project match the original needs and desires identified in the participatory process? How is the project used and perceived by both participants and

other residents or neighborhood users? What were the economic effects of the project such as building and maintenance costs, effects on land values, etc.? Answers to these and other ques- tions can help guide future community design practice.

Skills for Community Design How does one practice community design? There are several important skills needed in community design. Many of these are not part of traditional design education. These qualities seem especially critical for the training of future community designers and raise issues for future design education.

Community designers need to be able to ask the right questions. Since a large part of participa- tion is dialogue and discussion, designers need to be good question askers, knowing when to raise issues and how to manage discussion.

Community designers need to be good listeners and observers. As much as be good facilitators, designers need to be able to observe how peo- ple live their everyday lives, use spaces and act out their lives. They also need to carefully listen to what local people say and, even more impor- tantly, be good recorders of everyday activity and attitudes. Behavioral mapping and interview- ing are particularly useful methods in being good listeners and observers.

Community designers need to be good anticipa- tors of the future and be able to articulate the impacts of design decisions. One important role designers can play in community development is to provide assessments of the possible effects of design decisions. How will a space be used? What economic effect will it have on the neigh- borhood? Designers can be good anticipators of the impacts of alternative decisions. Community design requires critical reflection on past proj- ects so designers can use past experience in informing future decisions.

Community designers need to be able to trans- late people's everyday experiences into buildable plans, designs and policy. This is what commu- nity design is all about. Community designers can be translators of people's basic experiences into design and policy. Here is where methods such as use mapping and favorite place invento- ries can be very valuable techniques for commu- nity designers.

Neighborhood Design Center in Copenhagen.

Traditional and community design styles side by side at Catholic University of Louvain, Medical School, outside Brussels. Com- munity Designer of project on right: Lucien Kroll.

Woonerf play street designed and managed by neighborhood residents, Stavanger, Norway.

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Community designers need to understand that good environments are not designed but evolve. This is an especially difficult concept to accept but one which many designers are coming to recognize through their community design work and research. Design is an important part of making good places but not the only one. Many other issues interact with places to make them successful including meaning, ownership and time.

Expanding Boundaries of Community Design Several emerging areas of community design are providing new opportunities for future prac- tice. Four important areas of new practice are community management and maintenance, community ownership, design advocacy, and evaluation/redesign.

Community clients have become concerned with the maintenance and management of spaces once they are designed and built. How a park is maintained, a housing cooperative funded, or a street improvement managed, has not frequently been the interest of community designers. Local residents lack technical assistance on how best to manage and maintain their projects and are now requesting this assistance, expanding the role for community designers.

Secondly, community ownership has been increasing at the local level. Residents have begun to realize that ownership is one way to realize community control and power. One expanding area of technical assistance is in community ownership of neighborhood land.22 For example, residents in Boston, through the assistance of Boston Urban Gardeners and Trust for Public Land, are assembling a number of parcels of land into a community-owned land bank.23 Community ownership is a form of development which designers need to better understand in the future.

A further new type of community design activity is design advocacy. As designers have better established themselves in local communities, some have taken a more active role in being advocates for both community needs and appropriate design. There are several excellent examples of this including the involvement of the San Francisco Community Design Center in

- fI V- Jefferson Market Park; community developed neighborhood Community designed, built, owned, and managed housing on open space designed and managed by block association, Green- E. 11th Street, Lower East Side, NYC. wich Village, NYC. (All Photos Are By Author)

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shaping the Yerba Buena Redevelopment Proj- ect; Oakland Design Advocates, who have raised basic design and community questions regard- ing the impact of the proposed massive com- mercial development in downtown Oakland; and ARAU (Atelier de Recherche et d'Action Urbaine), a group of architects and residents who have been an influential force in guiding development in Brussels, Belgium.24 Community design has an important civic and public role to play in expanding public environmental awareness.

Another important future role for community design is project evaluation and redesign. Com- munity designers have not done much better than other designers in documenting and evalu- ating the effects of their projects. This is critical for several reasons. Evaluation can help reveal what is working and not working in projects, which can directly inform future projects. Sec- ondly, evaluation can provide extremely useful information for redesign and management of existing projects. The documentation and reflec- tion required for evaluation and research can also provide important legitimization for the efforts of neighborhood people. Community designers need to build evaluation into the design process and be able to use the informa- tion in future projects. The Future of Community Design As a field, community design has matured con- siderably since the 1960's. Ideas and ideals common to community design have become rooted in community development and environ- mental design at many levels. Funders of local projects now require participation, local officials request it and local people demand it. With the forum of design debate and funding being focused at the local level, community design will undoubtedly be part of how we design and build in the future.

The potential contribution of community design to design education is also significant. Commu- nity design provides an excellent vehicle to expose architecture and landscape architectural students to social and psychological aspects of design. Even more importantly, community design is an excellent way to introduce design students to contrasting theories of aesthetics. As

recently pointed out by Jon Lang25, there is growing evidence that formal aesthetics as taught by most design schools may be outdated and clash with basic social goals. Community design may also serve as a vehicle to teach pluralistic and diverse aesthetic styles, leaving students to choose which is appropriate to a given project. One seminal idea that community design has contributed to our field is an under- standing that there is not a "right" way to design but only "appropriate" approaches to design problems. Our methods are improving and community designers are beginning to do a better job of talking to each other and sharing common prob- lems. There is still much to learn and many dif- ficult challenges ahead. By its very nature and focus, community design provides a valuable alternative future to traditional environmental design practice.E Notes

1 Portions of an earlier version of this paper were part of an invited talk entitled "Issues in Participatory Design" given at the National Conference on Participatory Design in Low Income Communities, American Institute of Architects, Octo- ber 26, 1982.

2 See Hatch, C. Richard. "Social Architecture: Giving Form to Life," Architectural Record, December 1979; Mikellides, Byron. Architecture for People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980, Sommer, Robert. Social Design. New York: Prentice Hall, 1983, for excellent reviews of community design projects.

3 Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture without Architects. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1964.

4 See for example, Halprin, Lawrence and Jim Burns. Taking Part: A Workshop Approach to Collective Creativity. Cam- bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974; Sanoff, Henry. Designing with Community Participation. New York: McGraw Hill, 1979; Francis, Mark and Stone, Andrew. "Neighborhood Residents as Environmental Researchers and Planners," In Findlay, R. et al (Eds.). Design-Research Interaction. Washington, D.C.: EDRA 1981, pp. 172-182.

5 "Arrowstreet. Another Side of Architecture," Progressive Architecture, December 1976, pp. 68-71; Hatch, op. cit.; Kroll, Lucien. "Architecture and Bureaucracy, In Mikellides, op. cit.; Turner, John F. C. Housing by People. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.

6 Halprin and Burns, op. cit.; Hester, Randolph Jr. "Process can be Style: Participation and Conservation in Landscape Architecture," Landscape Architecture, May 1983, pp. 49- 55.

7 Barnett, Jonathan. An Introduction to Urban Design. New York: Harper & Row, 1982; Francis, Mark. "Toward Partici- patory Urban Design," In Ferebee, A. (Ed.). Proceedings of the First National Conference on Urban Design. Washington, D.C.: RC Publications, 1978, pp. 373-379.

8 Godschalk, David. Participation, Planning and Exchange in Old and New Communities: A Collaborative Paradigm. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, Center for Urban and Regional Studies, 1972; Hartman, Chester. Yerba Buena: Land Grab and Community Resistance in San Francisco. San Francisco: Glide Publications, 1974.

9 Becker, Franklin. User Participation, Personalization, and Environmental Meaning: Three Field Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University, Program in Urban and Regional Studies, Septem- ber, 1977; Sommer, Robert. Design Awareness. Corte Madre, CA: Rinehart Press, 1972; Wandersman, Abraham. "A Framework of Participation in Community Organizations," Journal of Applied Behavioral Science Vol. 17, No. 1, 1981, pp. 27-38.

10 See Sachner, Paul. "Still Planning for the Poor: Community Design Centers Keep up the Good Work," Architectural Rec- ord, June 1983, pp. 126-131, for recent review of Commu- nity Design Centers.

11 Hester, op.cit. 12 While this professional experience has been limited to urban

design and landscape architecture, it does form over ten years of work with users and communities including neigh- borhood design and development, downtown and auto- restricted zone planning and community open space design, all directed at developing methods and models for community design.

13 Becker, op.cit.; Turner, op.cit.; Francis, Mark, Lisa Cashdan, and Lynn Paxson. The Making of Neighborhood Open Spaces: Community Design, Development and Management of Open Spaces. New York: Center for Human Environments, 1981.

14 Cashdan, Lisa, Bernd Fahle, Mark Francis, Steven Schwartz, and Peter Stein. "A Critical Framework for Participatory Approaches to Environmental Change," In Francis, M. (Ed.). Participatory Planning and Neighborhood Control. New York: Center for Human Environments, 1978, pp. 31-40.

15 Cashdan, et al, ibid., p. 32. 16 Francis, 1978, op.cit., p. 377. 17Hester, op.cit., p. 49. 18 Kaplan, Rachel. "The Psychological Benefits of Gardening,"

Environment and Behavior, Vol. 5, No. 2, June 1973, pp. 145-161.

19 Francis, et al, 1981, op.cit., p. 19. 20 McKean, Charles. Fight Blight: A Practical Guide to the

Causes of Urban Dereliction and What People Can Do About It. London: Kaye & Ward, Ltd., 1977.

21 Hester, Randolph and Marsha McNally. "Protecting Rural Landscapes and Lifestyles from Tourism," Paper presented at Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Conference, Virginia, 1982.

22 Institute for Community Economics. The Community Land Trust Handbook. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 1982.

23 Naimark, Susan. A Handbook of Community Gardening. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983.

24 See for example, O'Connor, Tom. "Does Anyone Care How the City Looks?" The Museum of California, Vol. 6, No. 3, Oakland, CA: Oakland Museum, November/December 1982; Schoonbrodt, Rene. "ARAU: Balance and Prospects after Five Years Struggle in Brussels," In Appleyard, D. (Ed.) The Con- servation of European Cities, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979.

25 Lang, Jon. "Perception Theory, Formal Aesthetics and the Basic Design Course" in D. Amedeo et al. (eds.) EDRA 1983: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association. pp. 48-55. Washington, D.C.: EDRA 1983.

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Article Contentsp. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17p. 18p. 19

Issue Table of ContentsJAE, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 1-32Front MatterPrologue [p. 1]Toward a History of Teaching Architectural History: An Introduction to Herbert Langford Warren [pp. 2 - 7]Doing Design, Making Architecture [pp. 8 - 13]Community Design [pp. 14 - 19]The Lenin Institute: Leonidov's Icon of the Future [pp. 20 - 26]Book Reviewsuntitled [pp. 27 - 28]untitled [pp. 29 - 30]untitled [pp. 30 - 32]

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