PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS

(Dis)Continuous Engagement with Partners in Community Design in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, Dan Abramson, University of Washington (USA)

Community Design and Human Rights, Graeme Bristol,
Centre for Architecture and Human Rights (Thailand)

Learning from the Rural Communities of South Asia, Omar Faruque, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo (USA)

Increased citizen activism for environmental improvement since the 1995 Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake, Mayumi Hayashi, University of Hyogo (Japan)

Creation of New Opportunity and Method for Citizens’ Initiatives of Community Development struggling for the Issue of Community Revitalization, Yasuyoshi HAYASHI, (NPO) Tamagawa Machizukuri House (Japan)

Community Studio: A Student Run Collaborative Design Initiative, David Hohenschau, Community Studio (Canada)

Intergenerational and Intercultural Design Participation in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District, Jeff Hou,
University of Washington (USA)

Applicability of Farmers’ Market Activity for Community Development in the United States and the Comparable Recent Tendency in Japan, Ryoko SATO, WAN I.R. (Japan)

(Dis)Continuous Engagement with Partners in Community Design in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China

Dan Abramson
University of Washington

Following presentations at previous meetings of the Pacific Rim Community Design Network in 2002 and 2004, this presentation describes an on-going collaborative relationship between community members and planning officials in the city of Quanzhou in Southeast China, and an international group of faculty, students and professionals from other locales in China and from North America, Taiwan, and Japan.  As described at the earlier meetings, this relationship was forged in an effort to explore new community-level planning and design practices suitable in a city where standard Chinese large-scale redevelopment is being questioned, and where many de facto development-related investments and decisions are in the hands of citizens.  Previous presentations focused on the activities of students in trying to engage citizens, and demonstrating to local planning officials how citizens might be better engaged, in a planning and design process.  For the World Urban Forum III, this presentation draws on a new phase of the relationship to focus on how official attitudes and policies towards community engagement and citizen empowerment have evolved (or not).

The local contexts for exploration were two communities: one that had been designated for historic preservation by the municipal government but was suffering from economic decline; the other a site of rapid industrialization and large influxes of migrant worker populations and was suffering from environmental degradation.  Up through 2004, the partners carried out their activities with support from the Ford Foundation, partners from Beijing and Nanjing, and from the University of Washington, University of British Columbia, and National Taiwan University undertook at various times a series of participatory design and planning research activities with residents in these communities. Planning officials tended to have a hands-off approach to these activities, while giving them its tacit support.  In Summer 2005, the government for the first time paid from its own budget for further use of some of the methods tried out earlier, this time in a different community facing similar issues of preservation and revitalization.

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Community Design and Human Rights

Graeme Bristol
Centre for Architecture and Human Rights (Thailand)

The Declaration on the Right to Development and many other UN documents recognize the fundamental right of self-determination and the right to participate in the decisions about development. Yet for the poor facing eviction, that right is poorly recognized, if at all, by local and national governments. Further, there are many other rights that are more recognized in the breach than in reality. This panel illustrates two examples of communities whose struggle for recognition has been protected by design and planning. It then goes on to ask what other rights can be protected and promoted by design. In doing so, it presents a summary of the conclusions of the inaugural international symposium on architecture and human rights.

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Learning from the Rural Communities of South Asia

Omar Faruque
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo (USA)

In developing countries, the search for better economic opportunities has put a lot of pressure on the villagers to abandon their rural communities in favor of urban centers. However when they make such a move, only a few actually succeed in creating a better living situation, and a large majority end up living under poor housing conditions and, sometimes, creating slums.

Most of the rural communities in South Asia emerged through self-help planning, design, and construction over decades, and sometimes over centuries. They can be viewed as the ultimate participatory design. They have sustained for a long time. Now they are faced with many challenges and uncertainties. Why? What can we learn from them? Can they be improved? How can they sustain?

This paper examines the user-design-build vernacular communities in rural South Asia specifically in India and Bangladesh. It looks into their history and evolution. In the layout and design of those rural communities, the author seeks to find the common principles that are timeless and sustainable, and probes into the reasons behind them. The paper also investigates into how some of these principles can or cannot be replicated in the urban or semi-urban or other more attractive rural areas where the villagers are now moving or intend to move. It also exemplifies a prototypical model that can be used in a participatory design.

Finally, the paper poses a series of social, cultural and economic questions that are interlinked with building viable communities in South Asia, and suggests answers to them.

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Increased citizen activism for environmental improvement since the 1995 Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake

Mayumi Hayashi
University of Hyogo (Japan)

Presentation Poster

The Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake was a devastating disaster that took more than 5500 lives. After the Earthquake, however, volunteerism, concern for green and natural environments, and interest in community design have grown, creating waves of citizen activism. In this report, I will describe and analyze the urban environmental improvement activities of the Hanshin Green Network, a wide-area nonprofit organization, and the continuing education programs of a school that the prefectural government established in 1999, as well as the activities of the 3000 graduates of this school.

The Hanshin Green Network was established one year after the 1995 earthquake. The more than 100 members include professionals, government officials and other citizens. These members continue to engage in local projects started during the reconstruction. Network members have tried many new things such as provision of flowers and plants, environmental improvement collaborations with community groups, and design workshops for parks that were planned just after the Earthquake. The efforts of the Hanshin Green Network have not only continued, but are becoming wider and more diverse to include park use promotion, environmental education using natural habitat restoration biotopes, and urban-rural network building.

During the same period, the Hyogo prefecture government founded the Awaji Landscape Planning and Horticulture Academy, a new type of educational institution run by University of Hyogo staff. In addition to professional course graduates, 400 to 500 students have completed continuing education courses annually. These graduates collaborate actively with local governments and other citizen groups to implement open garden programs, undertake rural mountain conservation, plant and maintain parks, and promote and support other citizen groups. These graduates, who now total more than 3000 people, not only become volunteers, they also found nonprofit organizations and private companies that contribute to their regional environments. In the future, they need to build even stronger relationships with and between governments, professionals, companies and citizens to become even more effective.

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Creation of New Opportunity and Method for Citizens’ Initiatives of Community Development struggling for the Issue of Community Revitalization

Yasuyoshi HAYASHI
(NPO) Tamagawa Machizukuri House (Japan)

Community revitalization is now a major concern shared by a broad scope of people connected with community development in Japan. At the same time, the government now expects communities and NPOs as they are the leading role for community revitalization.
In this article I would like to submit a proposal of new method and opportunity for community revitalization, that I have gained the hypothetical image through observation on social phenomena prevailing in Japan now, such as:

1.’Machizukuri Competition System’ (Proposal-solicitation type support system) that has been already adopted in some local governments. This system has brought up residents’ ability to take initiative in the sector of community development and as a result, ‘Machizukuri Field’ (communities that many resident-led activities appear) come into existence.
2. ‘Machizukuri Teams’ are flourishing, as a Japanese TV program, ‘Hidden Ability of Neighborhood’ reported, they have abundant problem solution ability at the community level.
3. J-League (Japanese Professional Soccer League) method has drawn utterly new management system with participation of various organizations including residents in each area.

Through these successful phenomena, such method is drawn as follows:
1. As a first step, carry out ‘Machizukuri Competition’ in local government level area.
2. Create new method in order to support and encourage the residents making proposals at the competition, and to empower ‘Machizukuri Team’ in each area.
3. Establish ‘Machizukui League’ that is an united body of ‘Machizukuri Field’. The League will evaluate each Field and Team, and, sponsor a national report meeting. It will be a grand event of information publicity and commendation, and will activate the struggle of community revitalization.

It is assumed this method will be managed mainly by non-governmental organization as NPOs, with support of private companies and administration in the extent of benefit the area receive by the community revitalization project.

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Community Studio: A Student Run Collaborative Design Initiative

David Hohenschau
Community Studio (Canada)

Presentation Posters: 1, 2, 3

Community Studio is a student-initiated, student-run, design outreach group that has been providing front-end design services for over two years to community organizations that are working to advance local projects. We would like to submit three boards which will portray our organizational model, vision, and several selected projects. Selected projects will illustrate the variety of client organizations, project types, collaborative strategies, conceptual design results, and project results and achievements. The clients and projects include school yards and school groups, community gardens and environmental youth organizations, memorial gardens and church groups, interpretive centres and First Nations communities, and urban farms. The students have provided charrette facilitation, conceptual design development, design training workshops, advocacy support through research, and have seen almost all of their projects move forward to some degree including construction.

We hope this submission will illuminate the specific value and challenges found in student design outreach, and the general challenges of organizational and project development found in collaborative design initiatives.

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Intergenerational and Intercultural Design Participation in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District

Jeff Hou
University of Washington (USA)

Multiculturalism and diversity have presented a growing challenge to the practice of urban design and planning in North American cities. Specifically, studies have shown how different cultural groups hold different spatial preferences and engage in different uses of urban open space. In addition, different community styles and conceptions of issues may arise among different populations . How can designers and planners work with culturally and socio-economically diverse urban populations? How can they engage those who speak languages and have cultural backgrounds different from their own? This presentation introduces a series of recent projects in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District that involve cross-cultural participatory techniques. Specifically, it focuses on a recent design workshop that involved bilingual high school students, Chinese-speaking elderly immigrants, and graduate landscape architecture students in designing an open space in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District. The workshop was developed in collaboration with the Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development (WILD) Program of the International District Housing Alliance. WILD is a unique program that involves local youths in intergenerational activities, including teaching English-as-Second-Language (ESL) lessons for immigrant elders and survey of elderly residents’ perspectives on neighborhood issues and assets. In collaboration with program coordinators and youth leaders, the design workshop was developed as part of the ESL class for the neighborhood’s elderly residents. Activities were designed to combine English lessons and design of a neighborhood park and involve both youths and elders. Based on participant observations during the workshop and written feedbacks from youth facilitators, the paper examines the methods and outcomes of the workshop. Specifically, it describes the intercultural and intergenerational mechanisms that engaged the youth and elderly participants in the design process. The paper also discusses specific participatory lessons and insights on design of public open space in an urban ethnic neighborhood. The experience of the workshop shows that by working with locally connected community organizations and individuals, designers and planners can overcome linguistic and cultural barriers to engage diverse and often marginalized urban populations. By partnering with community organizers and stakeholders, intercultural and intergenerational design process can also contribute to community building and social learning in diverse communities.

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Applicability of Farmers’ Market Activity for Community Development in the United States and the Comparable Recent Tendency in Japan

Ryoko SATO, WAN I.R. (Japan)

Farmers’ Markets are considered to be a useful resource that encourages community development in the United States of America. They are helping directly and/or indirectly to revitalize communities. I studied six cases: Santa Fe (NM), Ithaca (NY), New York (NY), Charleston (SC), New Orleans (LA), and Washington D.C. They tell a diversity in types of markets, especially when and how they were set up and how they reflect local characteristics.

Farmers’ Markets revived in the 1960s. The number of Farmers Markets in the U.S. doubled in the last decade. As Dr. Robert Sommer wrote in his book, it is a Renaissance. The earlier cases started in the 1960s or the early 1970s. These cases Santa Fe Farmers’ Market and Ithaca Farmers’ Market, which were set up by a handful of farmers seeking a way to sell their products directly to urban consumers. Since the latter half of the 70’s to the 1980s, local governments realized that a Farmers’ Market is useful for community revitalization. Though it remains part of a privately funded organization, New York Greenmarket has its office in the Council on the Environment, which is a part of office of Mayor of New York. Charleston Farmers Market was created by Joseph P. Riley, Mayor of Charleston. In recent years, Markets were opened by citizens’ organizations such as CDCs and NPOs. The both cases in New Orleans and D.C. are established and operated by NPOs.

Each case suggests effects of Farmers Markets on their communities: improving urban people’s nutritional condition, reviving local economy, creating new jobs, protecting farmlands, utilizing urban spaces, bringing people together, making untraditional relationship, and cultivating sense of community. For these aims, the citizens’ organizations such as NPOs play a very important role operating and managing Farmers Markets.

On the other hand, a direct sales of local food is growing in this decade in Japan. Especially, direct sales depots (store) become very popular. Local governments subsidize construction of direct sales depots. They sometimes build depots by themselves. Some magnificent depots are built by Agricultural Cooperatives that are nation wide organization. Those buildings are big and mostly they are in suburban. Such depots are sometimes called “Farmers Market.” However, farmers are not there in many cases. There is no “direct” contact or “direct” relationship between rural and urban people. It is a serious trading place of local foods. Meanwhile, a new trend toward more direct sales appears in some cities. Farmers go to downtown with their products to sell by themselves like Farmers’ Market in the U.S. Though we Japanese have traditional markets, they are no longer ordinary markets where people usually go for daily glossary shopping. It is one of new tendencies in the direct sales in Japan.

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