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To a Place Called Home: The Arts Pow Wow and Redesign of Slocan Park: Building Community Through Urban Design in Vancouver's Renfrew-Collingwood Neighbourhood Moffatt, Lisa
Abstract
Since at least 1972, planning scholars have critiqued the many weaknesses of the expert based, top-down model of practice and instead advocate models of mutual learning, drawing on local knowledge, dialogue, more participatory techniques, etc. From Forester’s deliberative planner to Healey’s collaborative planning to Sandercock’s radical planning and other alternative ways of knowing, the profession has been challenged. In some subfields (social planning and community development planning for example), participatory and community based approaches have become the new conventional wisdom. But in the urban design field, the dominant paradigm has remained an expert-based model, not withstanding the handful of authors and practioners (Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Clare Cooper Marcus, William H. Whyte,) who have adopted and advocate more participatory and community based approaches to design. My project inhabits a veritable no-man’s land between urban design and community development planning. I am persuaded by the more collaborative and participatory approaches to planning in general and wanted to explore whether and how more participatory approaches to urban design might not only create better public places but also contribute to community building. Further, I am specifically interested in the challenges of community building and of creating inclusive public spaces in multicultural, multiethnic cities as such cities are becoming the norm in the 21st Century. Thus I have chosen to study a community-driven process for the design of a neighbourhood park in Collingwood, one of the most culturally diverse neighbourhoods within the City of Vancouver, which is itself one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world with 51% of its population from non-English speaking backgrounds. Slocan Park has apparently been transformed since the late 1990s from a place many local residents avoided to a place many people now see as an extension of home. My study traces and dissects this transformation, exploring two main questions. The first is a process question: Did the community-driven design process contribute to community-building in this neighbourhood, and if so how? The second is an outcome question: How successful was the community-driven design process in producing an inclusive, popular, well-used public place? That is, was this a good placemaking exercise? A subsidiary to both of these questions concerns the role of the arts and artists in both process and outcome. The goal of the research project is to inform practice debates in the urban design field as well as in community development planning. Designers might learn something about the importance of becoming involved in and encouraging community-driven process. And community development planners might learn something about the importance of design and how it relates to a community’s needs. At least that is my ambition for this project. The next chapter (chapter 2) will introduce both the neighbourhood and the Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH) as a local institution that played a critical role in this park’s redesign and reclamation. Chapter three briefly summarizes the story of the reclaiming of Slocan Park, which is also depicted in my accompanying film for this project. Chapter four discusses the community building dimension of the park project. Chapter five evaluates the success of Slocan as an exercise in placemaking in a multicultural city and neighbourhood. Chapter six draws out the significance of this case for community development and urban design planners.
Item Metadata
Title |
To a Place Called Home: The Arts Pow Wow and Redesign of Slocan Park: Building Community Through Urban Design in Vancouver's Renfrew-Collingwood Neighbourhood
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Creator | |
Date Issued |
2008-02-08
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Description |
Since at least 1972, planning scholars have critiqued
the many weaknesses of the expert based, top-down
model of practice and instead advocate models of mutual
learning, drawing on local knowledge, dialogue, more
participatory techniques, etc. From Forester’s deliberative
planner to Healey’s collaborative planning to Sandercock’s
radical planning and other alternative ways of knowing,
the profession has been challenged. In some subfields
(social planning and community development planning for
example), participatory and community based approaches
have become the new conventional wisdom. But in the
urban design field, the dominant paradigm has remained
an expert-based model, not withstanding the handful of
authors and practioners (Christopher Alexander, Jane
Jacobs, Clare Cooper Marcus, William H. Whyte,) who have
adopted and advocate more participatory and community based
approaches to design.
My project inhabits a veritable no-man’s land between
urban design and community development planning. I am
persuaded by the more collaborative and participatory
approaches to planning in general and wanted to explore
whether and how more participatory approaches to urban
design might not only create better public places but also
contribute to community building. Further, I am specifically
interested in the challenges of community building and of
creating inclusive public spaces in multicultural, multiethnic
cities as such cities are becoming the norm in the 21st
Century.
Thus I have chosen to study a community-driven process
for the design of a neighbourhood park in Collingwood, one
of the most culturally diverse neighbourhoods within the
City of Vancouver, which is itself one of the most culturally
diverse cities in the world with 51% of its population from
non-English speaking backgrounds. Slocan Park has
apparently been transformed since the late 1990s from a
place many local residents avoided to a place many people
now see as an extension of home. My study traces and
dissects this transformation, exploring two main questions.
The first is a process question: Did the community-driven
design process contribute to community-building in this
neighbourhood, and if so how? The second is an outcome
question: How successful was the community-driven design
process in producing an inclusive, popular, well-used public place? That is, was this a good placemaking exercise?
A subsidiary to both of these questions concerns the role
of the arts and artists in both process and outcome.
The goal of the research project is to inform practice
debates in the urban design field as well as in community
development planning. Designers might learn something
about the importance of becoming involved in and
encouraging community-driven process. And community
development planners might learn something about the
importance of design and how it relates to a community’s
needs. At least that is my ambition for this project.
The next chapter (chapter 2) will introduce both the
neighbourhood and the Collingwood Neighbourhood House
(CNH) as a local institution that played a critical role in this
park’s redesign and reclamation. Chapter three briefly
summarizes the story of the reclaiming of Slocan Park,
which is also depicted in my accompanying film for this
project. Chapter four discusses the community building
dimension of the park project. Chapter five evaluates
the success of Slocan as an exercise in placemaking in a
multicultural city and neighbourhood. Chapter six draws out
the significance of this case for community development
and urban design planners.
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Extent |
20878582 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Series | |
Date Available |
2008-02-08
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
All rights reserved
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0107169
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URI | |
Affiliation | |
Peer Review Status |
Unreviewed
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Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Copyright Holder |
Lisa Moffatt
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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