Abstract
Language marks the maturation of any concept. The concept of community-driven design emerged in response to the traditional patron-as-client relationship through which designers understand the scope and program of their work, as well as who counts as a stakeholder. Sometimes the patron funding a project might be socially motivated, sometimes not; either way, design was assumed to emerge purely from the head of a creative genius. “Community-driven design” exists on a continuum of modes of practice that aspires not only to make design tools and processes more relevant to the needs and aspirations of lower-income communities, but also to address complex urban problems through collaboration guided by local knowledge.
We are concerned with changing the architect’s role. We envision a change from the architect representing the rich patron to the architect representing the poor, representing them as individuals and as an interest group. This implies, we feel, studying cities from a different point of view. Not whether or not the architect dislikes cars, but whether or not people actually use cars and want cars; finding out what ideas people have about modern technology, about a good kitchen, about a good street, about a desirable way to live.
—Architects’ Renewal Committee in Harlem 1968
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Notes
- 1.
For more on using participatory action research in design and planning with vulnerable communities, see K. M. Reardon, “Participatory Action Research as Service Learning,” New Directions for Teaching Learning, no. 73 (Spring 1998): 57–64; and Mallika Bose et al., eds., Community Matters: Service-Learning in Engaged Design and Planning (London: Routledge, 2014).
- 2.
For more on the current thinking regarding citizen science, see R. Crain, C. Cooper, and J. L. Dickinson, “Citizen Science: A Tool for Integrating Studies of Human and Natural Systems,” Annual Review of Environmental Resources 39 (2014): 641–65; R. Bonney et al., “Next Steps for Citizen Science,” Science 343, no. 6178 (2014): 1436–37; and F. Fischer, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
- 3.
Michael Rios and P. Lachapelle, “Community Development and Democratic Practice: Pas de deux or Distinct and Different?” Community Development 46, no. 3 (2015): 190–97, as well as the other articles in the special issue this article introduces.
- 4.
John Forester, Planning in the Face of Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); John Forester, “Making Participation Work When Interests Conflict,” Journal of the American Planning Association 72, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 447–56; Lawrence Susskind and Patrick Field, Dealing with an Angry Public: The Mutual Gains Approach to Resolving Disputes (New York: Free Press, 1996); De la Pena et al., eds., Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2017); Leonie Sandercock, Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998); and Jeffrey Hou, ed., Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (London: Routledge, 2013).
- 5.
For great resources on the full range of jargon used within the field, see John Cary and Gilad Meron’s “Glossary of Public Interest Design” on the Impact Design Hub at https://impactdesignhub.org/resources/glossary/and the equity-focused version by Liz Ogbu and Christine Gaspar, “Using Our Words: The Language of Design for Equity,” Impact Design Hub, accessed August 1, 2017, https://impactdesignhub.org/2015/03/04/using-our-words-the-language-of-design-for-equity/.
- 6.
H. J. Gans, “From the Bulldozer to Homelessness,” in People, Plans and Policies, ed. H. J. Gans (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 212–24; and C. W. Hartman, ”The Housing of Relocated Families,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 30 (1964): 266–86.
- 7.
H. J. Gans, ”The Failure of Urban Renewal: A Critique and Some Proposals,” Commentary 39, no. 4 (1965): 29–37; and Larry Keating, “Redeveloping Public Housing,” Journal of the American Planning Association 66, no. 4 (2000): 384–97.
- 8.
Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles (London: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- 9.
Walter Thabit, A History of PEO—Planners for Equal Opportunity, 1999. Accessed October 20, 2017, http://progressivecities.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Thabit-on-PEO-1999.pdf.
- 10.
Paul Davidoff, “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31, no. 4 (1968): 331–38.
- 11.
Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (July 1969): 216–24.
- 12.
ARCH, East Harlem Triangle Plan (New York: Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, 1968).
- 13.
D. W. Dunlap, “J. Max Bond Jr., Architect Dies at 73,” New York Times, February 19, 2009, A20.
- 14.
C. Klemek, “The Rise and Fall of New Left Urbanism,” Dædalus (2009): 73–82.
- 15.
Kathleen Dorgan, “Seventh Generation: Is the AIA a Place for Design That Matters?” Progressive Planning 193 (Fall 2012): 2, 9–11, accessed July 24, 2017, http://www.plannersnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/PPMag_F12_Dorgan.pdf.
- 16.
Dorgan, “Seventh Generation.
- 17.
Walter Thabit, A History of PEO—Planners for Equal Opportunity (1999), 41, accessed October 20, 2017, http://progressivecities.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Thabit-on-PEO-1999.pdf.
- 18.
Barbara B. Wilson “Learning to Listen: Designing Architectural Education through University/Community Partnerships,” New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy 18, no. 2 (February 2008) : 177–92; Kathleen Dorgan, “Principles of Engagement: (Mis)Understanding the Community-Design Studio,” Cityscape 10, no. 3 (2008): 9–19.
- 19.
H. Sanoff, “Origins of Community Design,” Planners Network (Winter 2006): 14–16.
- 20.
Dick and Rick can be downloaded from the Center for Urban Pedagogy website at http://welcometocup.org/Projects/TechnicalAssistance/DickRick.
- 21.
David Perkes, personal communication, May 11, 2009.
- 22.
B. Sahd, “Community Development Corporations and Social Capital: Lessons from the South Bronx,” in Community-Based Organizations: The Intersection of Social Capital and Local Context in Contemporary Urban Society, ed. R. M. Silverman (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004): 86.
- 23.
Brian Purnell, “‘Taxation without Sanitation Is Tyranny’: Civil Rights Struggles over Garbage Collection in Brooklyn, New York during the Fall of 1962,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 31, no. 2 (2007): 52–76.
- 24.
Purnell, “Taxation without Sanitation,” 66.
- 25.
Purnell, “Taxation without Sanitation,” 67.
- 26.
Randy Stoecker, “The CDC Model of Urban Redevelopment: A Critique and an Alternative,” Journal of Urban Affairs 19, no. 1 (1997): 1–22.
- 27.
Sahd, “Community Development Corporations and Social Capital,” 86.
- 28.
Stoecker, “The CDC Model,” 3.
- 29.
For a contemporary instance of this approach, see Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2013).
- 30.
For more on the products of that pro bono work, see John Cary, The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories About Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients (New York: Metropolis Books, 2010).
- 31.
The Surdna Foundation funded the research presented in chapter 4 on Paths to Pier 42.
- 32.
John Forester, “Making Participation Work when Interests Conflict,” Journal of the American Planning Association 72, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 454.
- 33.
George Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the Hidden Architecture of Landscape,” Landscape Journal 26, no. 1 (2007): 10–23.
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Wilson, B. (2018). A Short History of Community-Driven Design. In: Resilience for All. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-893-0_2
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