Superbia! : 31 ways to create sustainable neighborhoods (with links to resources)

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

[ The resources linked below are those referenced in the book, p179ff ]

Easy Steps

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Bolder Steps

[more links to follow]

Boldest Steps

  • Create a community energy system.
  • Establish alternative water and wastewater systems.
  • Establish a more environmentally friendly transportation strategy.
  • Create a common house.
  • Create a community-shared office.
  • Establish weekly entertainment for the community.
  • Narrow or eliminate streets, converting more space to park and edible landscape, walkways and picnic areas.
  • Retrofit garages and rooms in your homes into apartments or add granny flats to house students or others in need of housing.
  • Establish a mixed-use neighborhood by opening a coffee shop, convenience store, and garden market.
  • Promote a more diverse neighborhood.

From Dan Chiras & Dave Wann (2003). Superbia!: 31 ways to create sustainable neighborhoods. Gabriola, B.C.: New Society.

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11 key elements in transforming public spaces into vibrant community places

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

Thanks to Richard Layman for pointing us to PPS, and to Bill Berkowitz for recommending the book.

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public places that build communities. It has identified 11 key elements in transforming public spaces into vibrant community places, whether they’re parks, plazas, public squares, streets, sidewalks or the myriad other outdoor and indoor spaces that have public uses in common. These elements are:

  1. The Community Is The Expert. The important starting point in developing a concept for any public space is to identify the talents and assets within the community. In any community there are people who can provide an historical perspective, valuable insights into how the area functions, and an understanding of the critical issues and what is meaningful to people.
  2. Create a Place, Not a Design. If your goal is to create a place (which we think it should be), a design will not be enough. To make an under-performing space into a vital “place,” physical elements must be introduced that would make people welcome and comfortable, such as seating and new landscaping. The goal is to create a place that has both a strong sense of community and a comfortable image.
  3. Look for Partners. Whether you want partners at the beginning to plan for the project or you want to brainstorm and develop scenarios with a dozen partners who might participate in the future, they are invaluable in providing support and getting a project off the ground. They can be local institutions, museums, schools and others.
  4. You Can See a Lot Just By Observing. We can all learn a great deal from others’ successes and failures. By looking at how people are using (or not using) public spaces and finding out what they like and don’t like about them, it is possible to assess what makes them work or not work.
  5. Have a Vision. Essential to a vision for any public space is an idea of what kinds of activities might be happening in the space, a view that the space should be comfortable and have a good image, and that it should be an important place where people want to be. It should instill a sense of pride in the people who live and work in the surrounding area.
  6. Start with the Petunias: Experiment…Experiment…Experiment. The complexity of public spaces is such that you cannot expect to do everything right initially. The best spaces experiment with short term improvements that can be tested and refined over many years. Elements such as seating, outdoor cafes, public art, striping of crosswalks and pedestrian havens, community gardens and murals are examples of improvements that can be accomplished in a short time.
  7. Triangulate. “Triangulation is the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other” (Holly Whyte). In a public space, the choice and arrangement of different elements in relation to each other can put the triangulation process in motion (or not).
  8. They Always Say “It Can’t Be Done.” Creating good public spaces is inevitably about encountering obstacles. Starting with small scale community-nurturing improvements can demonstrate the importance of “places” and help to overcome obstacles.
  9. Form Supports Function. The input from the community and potential partners, the understanding of how other spaces function, the experimentation, and overcoming the obstacles and naysayers provides the concept for the space. Although design is important, these other elements tell you what “form” you need to accomplish the future vision for the space.
  10. Money is not the issue. Once you’ve put in the basic infrastructure of the public spaces, the elements that are added that will make it work (e.g., vendors, cafes, flowers and seating) will not be expensive. If the community and other partners are involved in programming and other activities, this can also reduce costs. People will have so much enthusiasm for the project that the cost is viewed much more broadly and consequently as not significant when compared with the benefits.
  11. You Are Never Finished. Being open to the need for change and having the management flexibility to enact that change is what builds great public spaces and great cities and towns.

excerpted from Eleven Principles for Creating Great Community Places

The book puts it a little differently:

  1. The community is the expert. The people living and working in a place are the folks who know what needs to be done and how best to do it.
  2. You are creating a place, not a design. The blueprints for a neighborhood improvement effort are much less critical to its success than other factors, such as a management plan and the involvement of local citizens.
  3. You can’t do it alone. Finding the right partners will bring more resources, innovative ideas, and new sources of energy for your efforts.
  4. They’ll always say “It can’t be done.” When government officials, business people, and even some of your own neighbors say it won’t work, what they really mean is “We’ve never done it like this before.” It’s a sign you’re on the right track.
  5. You can see a lot by just observing. The smartest way to turn a neighborhood around is to first take a close look at what goes on there, watching out for what works and what doesn’t in that particular place.
  6. Develop a vision. For a community vision to make sense and to make a difference, it needs to come from the people who live there, not from consultants or other outside professionals.
  7. Form supports function. If you don’t take into account how people use a particular place in the beginning, you will have to deal with the consequences later.
  8. Make the connections. A great place in a neighborhood offers many things to do, all of which enhance each other and add up to more than the sum of the parts.
  9. Start with petunias. Little things can set the stage for big changes, especially by proving to local skeptics that change is indeed possible.
  10. Money is not the issue. If you have a spirited community working with you, you’ll find creative ways around financial obstacles.
  11. You are never finished. Eighty percent of the success of any good place is due to how well it is managed after the project is done.

KaBOOM! – Empowering Neighborhoods and Restoring Play

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

Peter Gray is a research professor of psychology at Boston College. He has conducted and published research in comparative, evolutionary, developmental, and educational psychology; published articles on innovative teaching methods and alternative approaches to education; and is author of Psychology (Worth Publishers), an introductory college textbook now in its 5th edition.

Peter Gray

In Empowering Neighborhoods and Restoring Play, Psychology Today columnist Peter Gray asked his readers to help him develop a proposal to build a neighborhood play and learning center “that could serve as a model that communities everywhere might emulate”. I said I’d help, and after putting in a few hours, recommended that he check out KaBOOM!, a nonprofit founded by Darell Hammond, who studied under John Kretzmann, Director of the Assets Based Community Development Institute (ABCD Insitute) at Northwestern University.

A 2008 study authored by Deborah Puntenney found that “when implemented appropriately, the KaBOOM! Community-Build process creates a lasting impact on the communities it partners with, both in terms of building capacity, enhancing community pride and cultivating leadership, as well as enhancing the play experience of neighborhood children.” Dr. Puntenney’s researchers conducted site visits and telephone interviews with 110 playspace builders, and reported that:

  • Nearly 100% believe that their KaBOOM! playground positively impacted the quality and quantity of children’s play
  • 94% believe that their playground project helped strengthen relationships among neighborhood residents and among community partners
  • 91% said that the KaBOOM! Community Build model and tools work

The KaBOOM! model (Road Map) comprises eight steps:

  1. KaBOOM! Road MapResearch – Why play matters, the “community-build model,” benefits of a community build model, play equipment appropriate for specific ages, abilities, and types of play, playground safety hazards in old equipment, make the case for a new, community-built playground.
  2. Conceive – Create a project vision and mission statement, form a planning committee, choose a playground site, choose a surfacing and equipment vendor, estimate the project budget, establish a project timeline, create a fundraising strategy.
  3. Organize – Organize and hold the first playspace meeting, start fundraising, finalize planning committee teams, determine the necessary site preparation, create a project website.
  4. Design – Holding a Design Day, working with an equipment vendor to select a design, press materials and media involvement, accelerating youth involvement through the Design Day and service learning projects.
  5. Coordinate – Recruiting Build Day volunteers and captains, creating a contingency plan for bad weather and emergencies, mapping the build site and the Build Day “matrix,” creating a maintenance plan with the landowner and staff, leveling the site and removing old equipment.
  6. Energize – Planning final fundraisers, writing and sending out a media advisory to notify local newspapers, radio, and TV stations, ordering side project materials, confirming delivery schedule for equipment and surfacing, training build day captains.
  7. Build – Equipment and surfacing delivery, organizing materials one to two days before the Build Day, motivating volunteers, rehearsing the ribbon cutting ceremony, taking pictures of the site and securing the area.
  8. Maintain – Sending official thanks you’s, starting your maintenance program, hosting a final planning meeting, supervising, playing and enjoying, RALLY!-ing for play.

The website’s toolkit provides resources (including samples) for every step on the map, including pre-planning, community involvement, volunteer recruitment, fundraising,  construction, and maintenance.

KaBOOM! also provides free online training, and a Project Planner: a free website that aims to help you plan each step of your project, communicate with your team, recruit local volunteers, raise money, get free advice from the professional playground builders at KaBOOM!, and connect you to a community of people like you who are building playspaces around the country.

KaBOOM! Project PlannerClick here to read news articles on KaBOOM!

50 ways to serve in your neighborhood

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

[ Extracted from the "Neighborhood Enhancement" section of 366 Community Service Ideas. Compiled by Janet Fox, 4-H Extension Specialist. Value-added: we linked to resources that might help you apply these ideas. If you have more (or better) links, please reply below. ]


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Feeling Artsy? Help Finish Myrtle’s Mural

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

[ takeaway: murals brings community; and they're fun ]

Wanted: local painters, no artistic training required.

Tomorrow the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project and the South of Navy Yards Artists will roll out brushes, pencils and buckets of paint for the young, and young at heart, to put the final brush strokes on a community mural.

Since last Sunday, local residents have been adding their artistic flair to the 80-foot stretch of wooden fencing that surrounds the gaping hole left by the collapse of a Myrtle Avenue building on June 21. What could have been an eyesore is now a collage of blue, gray, purple, green, red and white mixed with drawings of everything from hearts to peace signs to faces.

“Collaboratively painting large scale murals like this allow the whole community to come together to create something,” said Ellie Balk, a SONYA board member who is supervising the project. “Kids and parents paint together and can walk by later and take ownership of the whole mural. I love to hear people walk by and say, ‘I did that!’”

The mural is part of the Move About Myrtle project that MARP started on Sept. 7, closing off seven blocks along Myrtle Avenue to create temporary, vehicle-free public space on Sundays in September. Tomorrow is the last day of the street closing.

“We organize a number of different activities to take place during the event to ‘program’ this new public space,” said Meredith Phillips Almeida, director of community Development for MARP, which is marking its 10th year. “And this mural is one of those activities.”

Organizers see the mural as an opportunity to build and strengthen a sense of community through painting. Business owners, as well as residents, are appreciating the locally made art.

For Chong Kim, owner of the J. Love Gift Shop on Myrtle Avenue, the opportunity to share art is cause for celebration.

“It is very beautiful,” said Mr. Kim, who brought his grandchildren to see the mural last Sunday. “You see everybody painting with the kids.”

Read the full story: Feeling Artsy? Help Finish Myrtle’s Mural – The Local – Fort-Greene Blog – NYTimes.com By Ines Bebea

School worker leads effort to develop a community center

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

Janice Mitchell (left) with parent Elysia Monroe and her son Darrion Brown at what will be the new Neighborhood Connection Center on E. Main Street in Urbana on 2009 By Darrell Hoemann

The Neighborhood Community Center, expected to open in November, will give students a place to do their homework and have fun, according to Janice Mitchell, the center’s organizer.

“It gives the kids a positive place to go,” Monroe said. “In Urbana, in our neighborhood, we don’t have any place.”

Mitchell, the parent-community outreach coordinator for the Urbana school district, said the center has been her vision for years. The building – on Main Street, east of VFW Post 630 – is owned by the Housing Authority of Champaign County and has been used as a warehouse.

A member of the housing authority board, Mitchell convinced Director Ed Bland that the building would be ideal as a community center. Bland said the housing authority purchased the building a few years ago with the idea of using it for storage, but the agency would not need all of the building.

“So, when Mrs. Mitchell approached, we thought this would be something that will benefit the whole community,” Bland said.

The teen center – which will not pay rent but will share in the cost of utilities – will occupy about 3,400 square feet, he said.

Over the summer, more than a dozen youths and other volunteers from the neighborhood helped clean out the front part of the building, she said.

Mitchell got the idea for a teen center 10 years ago as a volunteer working with families in east Urbana. A onetime community organizer in Chicago, Mitchell said her whole background is “personal investment in community.”

Mitchell, who is not being paid for her work at the center, said she is in the process of assembling a board of directors and applying for tax-exempt, nonprofit status.

She said the center will become a place where students can get tutoring and recreation, and where parents can meet and families can get information and referral to other resources in the community, like public health and housing.

Urbana Middle School Principal Nancy Clinton said the school district has after-school programs called Students Learning and Playing After School Hours. But that program is only available six weeks and there are gaps – two to three weeks each session, plus holidays and vacations – when there is nothing going on.

There’s a need to have positive alternatives, she said.

Urbana Alderman Dennis Roberts, D-5, said Mitchell’s idea is a model he would like to see in several areas of the city. He said the former Tri-Star building at 1301 E. Washington St,, which was donated to the city, could house a community center for the East Washington/South Lierman neighborhood.

“This is a very at-risk area of the city,” Roberts said. “I have learned by sponsoring two neighborhood meetings with residents of this neighborhood and the Scottswood Manor Apartments complex that they have many needs.”

A community center could be a safe place for youth activities, mentoring and “a place to meet friends instead of walking the streets each evening,” he said.

Mitchell said all Urbana neighborhoods need similar programs and she sees the Main Street program as the “first phase of neighborhood development.” King Park and the Carroll Addition in east Urbana would likewise benefit, she said.

Read the full story: The News-Gazette.com: School worker leads effort to develop a community center. By Steve Bauer

In one Paris neighborhood, Jews and Muslims live as they did in N. Africa: together

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

It’s a few hours before Shabbat in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris, and a Lubavitch Chasid is helping an elderly Tunisian Jew put on tefillin in the doorway of a kosher butchery.

Across the street, bearded Muslim vendors are hawking sweets and pastries to crowds of North African immigrants for the nightly Ramadan break-fast meal, called the iftar.

Further down the boulevard lined with kosher restaurants, Ouali Boussad, an Algerian Berber, prepares coffee at the Lumiere de Belleville café.

“Jews, Arabs and Berbers live in Belleville like they did in North Africa,” Boussad says. “They have the same culture.”

Despite the tensions that have marked Muslim-Jewish ties in France in recent years, this neighborhood in northeastern Paris has managed to stay relatively free of them. The Arab-Israeli conflict still complicates relations between the two communities, but residents describe Belleville as idyllic compared to the hostility between Jews and Muslims in the immigrant suburbs surrounding Paris.

“A whole generation here has worked, lived and grown up together,” says Serge Cohen, who runs a kosher bakery off the boulevard.

While France officialdom holds that successful integration can take place only if minorities renounce their ethnic factionalism, pejoratively known as communautarisme, Kamel Amriou thinks the U.S. model would work better.

“America offers the most lasting model of integration in that communities keep their customs while respecting the other,” Amriou says. “I want to create a movement inspired by my neighborhood, where Jews and Arabs coexist but maintain their own traditions and religions.”

Annie Paule Derczansky, director of a grass-roots organization called Peace Builders, is working to deepen coexistence by organizing meetings between Jewish and Arab women from the neighborhood. This summer she held a halal/kosher picnic with some 150 local Jews and Arabs in the Butte Chaumont, a hot spot for intercommunal violence in 2008.

“We held the picnic without any police security,” she says. “Observant Jews and Muslims attended, mingled and enjoyed kosher ice cream and cotton candy — served by Muslim vendors in the park.”

Read the full story: Cleveland Jewish News > News > Nation & World. By Ilan Moss

Meals unite Claremont neighborhood

in community engagement, community stories, Place-based communities, Safety

All it took to rally the neighbors was a little prime rib and an invitation.

“I know how easy it is to make friends when you’re a chef,” Crocker said with a chuckle. “So when I moved to Claremont, I thought I would combine both. I bought the largest prime rib I could find, put out fliers inviting people who lived around me to come and eat and waited. I thought I might have a lot of food to eat, but 40 people came, and the only thing on the agenda was to get to know each other.”

The spontaneous dinner invite led to driveway parties, where one person or family was asked to serve as host and people were encouraged to attend and to help out.

Little by little, the neighborhood got a bit bigger, as the neighborliness started extending farther down the street.

As people sat and ate, they started talking.

“We started sharing honest communications with each other. Then we started finding out that a truck had been broken into twice. Then we found out other families had had their cars broken into. My car was broken into twice. And a house had been burglarized during the day,” she said.

“I got mad. This was destroying my dream. I said, ‘I think we can handle this craziness,”‘ she said.

So she decided to talk to Claremont police Capt. Gary Jenkins about ways to protect her turf – from Mountain Avenue to Indian Hill Boulevard and north of Baseline Road to the Thompson Trail – which amounts to about 400 homes. Jenkins was more than enthusiastic.

claremont

Again, Crocker put the call out and 200 people attended a meeting with the Police Department. She collected e-mail addresses of the attendees.

“And I found out we now had an electronic communications board to use,” she said.

The concern and interest shown at the meeting resulted in the placement of 30 new Neighborhood Watch signs in the area.

“First, we wanted to get educated, and we did that. Then, we wanted to make sure our community continued,” she said.

The once loosely connected collection of homes now is a strongly forged neighborhood. The fall gathering is now a tradition.

Suzanne Sproul, Staff Writer. Read the full article: Meals unite Claremont neighborhood – DailyBulletin.com