Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems - Chapter 24

Chapter 24 GIS and the artist: shaping the image of a neighbourhood through participatory environmental design Kheir Al-Kodmany 24.1 INTRODUCTION Participatory planning is fundamental to finding appropriate and effective solutions to community design and planning problems. The benefits of broad-based community involvement in planning and design are widely documented; they include enhancing the capacity of citizens to cultivate a stronger sense of commitment, increasing user satisfaction, creating realis-tic expectations of outcomes, and building trust (Altschuler 1970; McClure et al. 1997). However, these benefits do not come easily; a truly participa-tory planning process requires a serious commitment of time, energy, and resources on the part of both the technical expert and the community expert, as well as a mutual respect for the assets that the others bring. Planners and designers contribute technical skills and knowledge; citizens provide community history, local knowledge, cultural values and under-standing. These types of expertise complement each other and result in richer, more comprehensive planning and design solutions. The first significant task of the planner is to create a framework and a language for the planning process that motivates the public to participate and allows them to comfortably share their knowledge, ideas and vision for the community. Lynn McDowell (1987) argues that ‘the public needs a language that can give its creativity a focus and help individuals turn their intuition and knowledge into a workable idea’. That language must also be able to bridge the gap between the vision of the community resident and the technical thinking and jargon of the architects’ (p. 20). Stanley King (1989) contends that visualization provides just this – it is the only common language to which all participants, technical and non-technical, can relate. Visualization provides a focus for a community’s discussion of design ideas; it guides community members through the design process, it raises their design awareness and facilitates better communication. Consequently, exploring alternative visualization techniques could be a key to promoting participatory planning and utilizing community expertise and local know-ledge (Sanoff 1990; 1991; Nelessen 1994). © 2002 Taylor & Francis GIS and the artist 321 This chapter describes a collaborative community planning process involving faculty and staff at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and residents and community leaders from the Pilsen neighbourhood in Chicago. In the initial stages of the project, it became clear that the UIC team lacked appropriate visualization tools to engage the residents. It was also clear that creating these tools would be a major component of having a truly participatory planning process that built trust between the two par-ties. The UIC team then developed a process that involved a combination of high-tech and low-tech tools: a high-tech GIS and real-time sketching done by a skilled artist. A significant finding during the subsequent planning workshops was that the role of ‘expert’ constantly shifted as the professional planners and the residents shared their knowledge on a variety of issues. 24.2 THE PROJECT The shared history of UIC and its neighbours includes not only the dis-placement of homes and businesses to accommodate the University’s need for expansion, but also large, well-publicized, and eventually discontinued community service programmes. These issues have created a nearly univer-sal distrust of the University in Pilsen, a neighbourhood just south of the UIC campus. In recent years, the UIC has been working to rebuild trust with its neighbours through collaborative community planning and design. Pilsen is a largely Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant commu-nity of nearly 50,000 people. Leaders in the Pilsen community expressed an interest in a participatory, collaborative approach to the planning and design of their neighbourhood. A particular focus was 18th Street, the neighbourhood’s main commercial district. Leaders were very interested in promoting commercial tourism along this business corridor and in address-ing such problems as urban blight and decay, vacancies and crime. Community leaders were anxious to harness the creative energies of resi-dents as a way to foster the enthusiasm required to take serious actions and improve the neighbourhood. Leaders felt that the meaningful involvement of all stakeholders – including the technical experts at the University of Illinois – would strengthen the sense of community and that a cooperative effort would help present a ‘unified front’ when funding opportunities arose. A planning team was formed that included 25 community residents, including representatives of the 18th Street Development Commission, two architects, two planners, and one artist. The University team’s objectives went beyond the actual neighbourhood planning and design process. UIC’s objectives included creating a mutually respectful partnership with neighbourhood residents, preserving neighbour-hood history, gaining a broader understanding of urban issues, and exploring © 2002 Taylor & Francis 322 K. Al-Kodmany effective visual communication methods. Building trust was the highest pri-ority in the planning process. Trust arises from consistently meeting expecta-tions and creating outcomes that all partners perceive as beneficial. One of the first lessons that the University team would learn was that effective visu-alization was a key to engaging residents and building trust. 24.3 THE PROBLEM In his book Designing with Community Participation, Henry Sanoff (1978) writes that currently employed methods of user participation actually dis-enfranchise the user because the methods of communication do not accom-modate a non-design-oriented population. This was true in the case of UIC and the Pilsen community. After a short period of involvement, University design professionals realized that the presentation and visualization tech-niques at their disposal were not promoting trust and meaningful public participation. At the first working session, dozens of slide images of the neighbour-hood were presented to display current site conditions. Slides were set and presented in a fixed sequence. As the discussion moved from the project introduction to the design development stage, there was no interaction between the images of the present conditions of the neighbourhood and the images of potential future design images. Because a slide projector lacks navigational capabilities, the images of site conditions were not readily available during the second half of the workshop, the design discussion. When participants requested to see a specific image, it was impractical to search for it in the slide tray. The process lacked a means of visualizing what was being proposed within the context of what currently existed. Residents and community representatives experienced context disorientation. Long-time community residents became overwhelmed trying to remember small details of specific sites, rather than applying their community knowledge and expertise to develop overall strategies and solutions. Planners, architects and artists also grew frustrated with the limitations of the design process. It became clear that the role of the technical experts had to be expanded. It was insufficient merely to lend planning and design expertise to the process; specific tools had to be developed to enable community members to fully participate in the process. In order for community residents to participate as co-planners and co-designers, they needed access to the same tools as planners and designers, and these tools had to be developed for use in a public setting. The UIC team began searching for a visualization environment that could effectively connect the two traditional stages of a project: (1) orientation and (2) design development. An intimate relation-ship exists between proposed design alternatives and their physical context. A visual connection between the two had to be established to enable citizens © 2002 Taylor & Francis GIS and the artist 323 to participate in evaluating these design alternatives to the fullest extent possible. 24.4 THE GIS A system was needed that would illustrate geographically the neighbour-hood’s context – its geography, cultural and architectural history, as well as present conditions, including neighbourhood strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The system also needed to provide some design prototypes to foster discussion about how the neighbourhood might look in 5, 10 and 20 years. An interactive GIS image database was developed. First, a historic data-base was compiled, consisting of maps, images, tabular data, and textual information about the Pilsen neighbourhood and its surroundings. Thematic layers were created for plat maps, land use maps, zoning maps, base maps, historic maps, and current aerial photographs. Historic images showing the neighbourhood characteristics in various time periods were collected and hot-linked respectively to historic maps of various periods. Second, the database had to show existing conditions of the neighbour-hood, particularly the 18th Street Corridor. A digital camera systematically documented the present condition of the neighbourhood, and images were hot linked to their geographic locations. Finally, a GIS library of environ-mental design prototypes was incorporated in the database. It consisted of photographs of key developments in Chicago’s neighbourhoods, particu-larly those adjacent to the campus. The artist on the University design team annotated these photographs regarding quality, historical significance, architectural style, and building materials, and these photographs were hot linked to their geographic locations. This arrangement was intended to visually represent types, architectural styles, and locations of buildings and designs that could be incorporated into the neighbourhood plan (for viewing the GIS database, images and some of the artists’ sketches, refer to http://www.evl.uic.edu/sopark/new/RA/). 24.5 THE ARTIST The GIS provided critical contextual information, such as maps, demo-graphic information, and neighbourhood images. But this technology was no substitute for human drawing capability that could quickly transform ideas into realistic drawings. To facilitate the design process, a graphic designer was recruited to the UIC design team. The artist was trained speci-fically to draw urban scenes including streets, parks, plazas, and retail areas, as well as detail elements such as shrubs, street signs, benches, and chairs. © 2002 Taylor & Francis 324 K. Al-Kodmany She also depicted human activities in her sketches, to bring a human scale to the drawings. With a few lines, this highly skilled artist could capture the salient features of an image. The artist’s role was to listen to participants and sketch their ideas as they articulated their preferences and desires for their community. 24.6 IMPLEMENTATION Workshops were planned for four consecutive Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at a church in the Pilsen neighbourhood. The president of the Pilsen community organization served as the host for the event, welcoming and introducing community and university participants, detailing the goals and objectives of the workshops, and describing the contribution of partici-pants in the long-term planning process. Inspired by the work of Stanley King (1989), researchers set ground rules for the workshop discussions, including: (1) speak only for yourself; let others speak for themselves; (2) don’t criticize an idea; instead, suggest alternatives; and (3) don’t focus on solutions; rather, brainstorm for alternatives. Equipment for the planning workshops included a computer, an elec-tronic sketchboard, two projectors, and two large screens. The electronic sketchboard is a drawing board with a forgiving surface – it is easy to erase. Sketches on this board can be saved as an electronic file in a graphic format, such as a TIFF or JPEG, to a zip drive. The sketches were projected onto a screen using a multimedia projector while, beside it, another screen was used to display the GIS images. The positioning of the screens allowed for cross-referencing for both the artist and the participants. The images on the large computer screen showed the existing condition of the street or building under consideration, or the ‘before’ scenario. The other large screen showed the artist’s sketches as she changed the scene according to participant input, or the ‘after’ scenario. The positioning helped keep the artist and the residents in check with reality, to ensure that the emerging drawings were practical, applicable, and relevant. This design process was in many ways counter to conventional practice. It is common for architects and planners to prepare a master plan and then proceed to address details. Often, the first communication with the public is the presentation of the final plan. In this example, however, residents and other key stakeholders were actively involved in the development of the design plans. In many cases, participants would become so involved in the dis-cussion that they would proceed to the electronic sketchboard and draw their own ideas. The artist was then able to take their ideas and build upon them. The GIS image database greatly assisted all members of the planning team in visualizing past and present conditions of the neighbourhood. It engaged community members in developing alternative design solutions and © 2002 Taylor & Francis ... - tailieumienphi.vn