Community Development and Preaching to the Choir : Can It Be Avoided? (Week 12)

After attending several municipal meetings that are open to the public, it has become clear to me that the same people show up time and again.  These people take it upon themselves to engage with their local government, and to keep themselves informed as to the recent developments within their community.  However, they are a very small minority of the population, and thus, while it is a good thing, their engagement is not indicative of a successful community engagement strategy.

A large portion of the population is unaware of what is going on at the local level, and it is largely not their fault.  Many meetings are scheduled during normal work hours, and people that are living paycheck-to-paycheck have bigger concerns than trying to book time off work to keep track of everything that goes on at city hall.  Unfortunately, these are the people that most often are affected by things that are decided at these meetings that they are unable to attend, as they are the ones that utilize many of both the city and the Region’s social services.

Although all of this information is technically available online for anyone to access at any time, the amount of information that is made available to the public regarding the inner-workings of their local government would likely seem overwhelming to a newcomer.  These documents are often highly-technical and very thick; essentially requiring a full-time job and several degrees to fully understand what is being discussed within them.

So how do you reach people who do not have time to be reached?  I don’t have the answer, but offering abridged and annotated versions of council agendas and minutes could be one such direction municipalities could go, if they are not already doing this.  The Region of Waterloo has time-stamped all of their online archives of past-meetings, and I think this is a great step, allowing people to pick out parts of the meetings that are immediately relevant to their lives.  

To engage an extremely diverse community with different wants and needs the methods need to be extremely open, extremely accessible, and extremely visible.

Place-Making: The Intersection of Urban Design and Community Engagement (Week 10)

Over the past couple of weeks two of our courses, Urban Design and Community Engagement have begun to intersect each other.  The idea of place-making, that is, creating a desirable space within a community where people want to congregate, is an issue that has risen to prominence in the urban design field within the last thirty years.  Place-making, while now thought of as primarily an urban design matter, has its roots in community engagement theory, and it is interesting to think about how these two fields have become more and more intertwined over time.

Jane Jacobs, often hailed as the pioneer of place-making, advocated for an “eyes on the street” approach to urban design.  This design philosophy emphasized the needs of city dwellers over the needs of the architect, who were too often concerned with designing places that looked good in a portfolio, rather than places that felt good for the people that lived there.  By creating “places”, cities can create areas where people from all walks of life can gather and interact, building both social fabric and capital.

Well-designed and well-utilized public spaces can also play an important role in community engagement.  They can serve as rallying points for protests, speeches, and rallies, and a gathering point for civic engagement and activism.  Cities and businesses are aware of this as well, and it is likely the reason that traditional schools of urban design often emphasized creating areas where people passed through, rather than where people stayed and socialized.  In Happy City, Montgomery gives the example of a business soliciting advice for how to best implement spikes around a tree to keep people away.  This type of design philosophy is emblematic of a distaste for the public that many, particularly “upper-crust” institutions (i.e. Wall Street financial institutions) hold, and until very recently, have reflected in the very architecture that these institutions are located in.  Alongside this, a city hall with a large public space in front of it almost invites political rallies and spectacle, and it would be interesting to see how many cities have embraced, or run, from this very real possibility.

The intersection of Urban Design and Community Engagement, particularly with respect to place-making, has been interesting to watch develop, and I am curious to see if any more intersections will occur as both courses continue to progress.

Region of Waterloo “Strat Chat” & Youth Engagement (Week 9)

On Thursday I attended the Region of Waterloo’s “Strat Chat” chat hosted at Conestoga College.  The speaker at this event was Mike Murray, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Region of Waterloo, who was at the college to talk about some of the issues that will make up a large part of the 2015-2018 Region of Waterloo Strategic Plan.  The presentation itself was thematically similar to the “Big Shift” presentation that we went over in-class; dealing with topics such as demographics, population growth, and urban intensification.  Feedback was given throughout the presentation through the use of some “i clicker” like devices, along with a Q&A session at the end of the talk.  One such question asked how people would prefer to receive news from the Region, and, to no one’s surprise, social media was identified as the number one way in which we, the youth, would like to receive our news.

As an engagement piece, it was about as successful as you could expect.  The audience seemed engaged throughout, and there were numerous questions at the end of the presentation.  I also learned about the Region of Waterloo’s on-line “Strat Chat” discussion website, where citizens are invited to give input throughout the lengthy strategic plan development process; so it was successful in its goal raising awareness regarding the website.  It was also good to see the Region directly engaging with students, who, while largely seasonal residents of the region, make up a large part of the population, and use a large amount of Region services, most notably the Grand River Transit system.  It will be interesting to check out the “Strat Chat” website periodically throughout the development of the strategic plan to gauge how many people take to offering feedback, and whether city staff and politicians not only have a visible presence on the website, but also use it to directly interact with citizens.   

You can find the website here: http://stratchat.regionofwaterloo.ca/