The journey is the reward. (Chinese Proverb)
Preface
This work embodies perspectives from a cross-disciplinary life. It is not written to solve a dilemma nor a challenge to any of the multitudes of books-conferences- articles- keynote speeches on the architectural community planning process. Simply, I write to share my insights ‘at various locations and stops along my journey.’
After a decade of experiences visioning, dialoguing, collaborating with communities in a multitude of planning situations, the lessons assembled here emerged chronologically, by locations, stops and then, serendipitously, by parallel recall of other venues’ significant points.
Introduction
As a practicing architect and educator in the field, work with communities reconfirms what a crucial role the architectural dialoguing and visioning can play in addressing the unique needs of both large and small communities as they confront planning --whether due to economic necessity or good opportunities.
During my career as private practitioner, and then as a professor of studio and professional practice in academia, I have had a stream of experiences and dialogues with cities, suburbs, communities and rural towns about a wide array of architectural and planning challenges and opportunities. These experiences taught me the importance of understanding such processes as:
(1) Observation
(2) How to Communicate to and Visualize the Plan to the Community:
Scaled Physical Model as Best Modality
(3) Pre-work Dialogue and Communication
(4) Phases of the Architectural-Community Processes
(5) Grant Strategizing
(6) Participants and Stakeholders
(7) Hindsight
While working with different municipalities has made me realize that a “one size fits all” approach does not work, my journey convinces me that certain core issues arise in each architect/planner community exchange. In what follows I describe a suggested “basic tool kit/treasure chest” of strategies and observations for successfully working and communicating with diverse communities. From my academic perspective, I hope it demonstrates at the same time why architects and the work we do is vitally important to the quality of our lives.
We begin with Jane Jacobs’ declaration in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961): “The way to get at what goes on…to look closely, and with as little previous expectation as is possible, at the most ordinary scenes and events, and attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads of principle emerge among them”. (Jacobs, J.,1961, p17.)
Tool Number One: Observation- San Francisco Bay Area
In the mid-1970s, city revitalization projects on the east coast focused on rigorously ‘observing the city’ at all times of the day and night. To expand on this point, coming from an undergraduate background laden with painting and art history at Mills College in the San Francisco Bay Area under the mentoring Art Historian Professor Wanda Corn (later to Stanford, -I to Palo Alto as intern curator), I did wonder if the idea of ‘observation as key’ to effective urban planning was not conceptually linked to Claude Monet’s 1891 series of paintings Haystack in which the artist rendered the same subject matter in a succession of different lights.
I have always wondered… did Jane Jacobs by chance know of Monet’s physical strength and dedication to paint all day in the snow, wind or fog? In 1970, I had the opportunity to be part of a government grant to revitalize downtown Providence, Rhode Island in a period when many eastern cities were claimed to be dying. As I sat at all times of the day on the steps of the oldest Arcade in the United States and as I recorded what I saw in the then dying January downtown of Providence, Rhode Island thinking that I too had become a “trapper” of light as Monet was described by his companion Guy de Maupassant in October 1890:
“I am beginning to work so slowly that I am desperate but the more I continue, the more I see that a great deal of work is necessary in order to render what I seek: instantaneity, especially the envelope, the same light spreading everywhere and more than ever am I dissatisfied with the easy things that come in one stroke.” (Phoebe Pool, Impressionism, 1967, p227)
Clearly, the experience and its accompanying ‘rigorous observation’, gave a ‘fabulous strength and splendor’ to Monet’s work, and touched my view of the planning process for the rest of my professional experiences. (Phoebe Pool, Impressionism, 1967, p227)
While the ‘observational’ work in the 1960/70s was centered in the development of the getting the architect-planning students focused on site and plan relevancy, the tools to record the observation remained an academy tradition -sketch and craft.
Tool Number Two: How to Communicate to and Visualize the Plan to the Community: Scaled Physical Model as Best Modality -Providence, Rhode Island
The standard tool and process for visioning communities in the 1970s was the physical model of the community on which one was working. In 2012, ubiquitous computer tools are available. Three dimensional (3-D) computer modeling is prolific. Because of this, one has to ask: does the crafted hand or laser produced physical model still have a place? And, just as importantly, does technology inherently dilute the collaborative process? With my students, these questions arise in our planning sessions before engagementwith communities. Always, there are the students that enjoy the craft-making, others that gain confidence upon completion of such a large task, and I am not anti-technology.
In researching psychology of physicality, Maslow considered physical needs as the most basic. I would like to infer from this and my observations that there is a value to tangibility: that the large physical model allows for higher conceptual arguments, friendship or philosophy. (Leis Network Physicality www.leisnetwork.com/science/psychology) Most recently, after presenting an elaborate video of our three-dimensional project to city officials from the City of Yukon, their City Manager Grayson Bottom became enamored more so with two physical models in the studio. At the time, my students and I found this humorous but later, justified his reaction to be a critical budget line item in our $ 65,000 Tomorrow’s Yukon grant.
The large physical model of the City of Providence gave stakeholders the opportunity to spatially push and pull various scenarios (move cardboard cube here to over there) in front of officials, the public, and design students. I can recall the upper level warehouse-like room: it was filled with a hum of energy as students were consistently on one side with glue gun and the public officials and faculty were engaged in conversations with two or three guests running elsewhere along the perimeter of the model; animated discussions unfolded and participants were busy pointing to various facets. The model and the room had the breath of life and a synchronicity of its own. Thirty years later, Providence is bustling with vitality. I have no idea where that physical model is today but the streets, parks, and infrastructure all tell us its contribution was uniquely valuable.
Since this seminal experience, in my visioning scenarios I have not always found such passion created by IT modeling, however sophisticated or projected, which can captivate community members, designers and other stakeholders.
I look closely for the impact of the physical model. I often wonder if the laborious, expensive, material and maintenance laden effort is worth the time and money toerect? Why not use the technological savvy IT equipment and multifunctional rooms with audio ability and screens to set the stage? The fact of the matter is so often the involved rural, inner-city or neighborhood communities cannot offer such high tech amenities in all situations. And, while you can fray and impose technology, the physical model, no matter how it is created, is the catalyst for commonality and good communication. The physical model helps define and create the context in which community members participate and reveals a deeper communication as inhibition is peeled away like an onion skin.
This ‘tool # two’ is deeply rooted in Architecture Schools across the globe. The craft and cost of building physical models to communicate concept, boundaries, enlarged details, the ‘bigger picture’ come out of the academy. It routinely takes five years of specialized study to read and to produce architectural drawings and models, let alone present them. How can one expect Communities and their diverse ‘public’ to grasp the two-dimensional section, plan and elevations readily? Succinctly found in practice, all players in the Construction Industry per say at the round table on any project, -the policy infused city planner, the interior designer, engineers, the contractor rely on the architect to bring this skill/craft to the table and it is a good one.
According to widely used texts, the emergence of consensus building as a method of deliberation has provided the opportunity to reformulate comprehensive planning. (Judith E. Innes, “Planning Through Consensus Building, A New View of the Comprehensive Planning Ideal,” (Journal of the American Planning Association, 1996, p. 461))
Tool Number Three: Pre-work Dialogue and Communication-Edmond, Oklahoma
In the late 1980s, dialoguing with the community became a tool of choice for architectural and planning outreach. In a suburb (Edmond, Oklahoma), I was appointed liaison and coordinator for a program dubbed “Tomorrow’s Edmond,” where all of the stakeholders decided to include the community in the evolution of the twenty year vision plan using weekend workshops. The Friday evening eachweekend was devoted to establishing synergy (-exceeding individual contributions). The agenda for those evenings all included time for: introductions, ‘getting to know one another games’ where the team far outscored the individual and inspirational team-building videos. (I thought this rudimentary process inappropriate until a few years later, while working with engineers and architects and their students to pre-plan for entering the Solar Decathlon Competition, absolutely no synergy or collegiality developed. The process was crippled from the start: the engineers went to one side of the room to use the blackboard to make calculations and the architects sought to disengage and stare and start their own conversations and sketches. In a matter of months, the team work crumpled and never regained momentum. Needless to say, the work product was unimpressive.)
In my practice, on any given project, when the contractor and I take time to socialize (food) and get to know one another (taking the necessary time to understand the intent of the deliverables) the results improve measurably. In fact, never have I found rushing relationships among the different fields in the construction profession to be productive. So why would the process be different for community work?
In 2009, I journeyed to the CRS Center, College of Architecture at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas on a funded research program. (Caudill Rowlett Scott started as a two-man firm in Austin, Texas in 1946. This small partnership grew over time to become CRS, the largest architecture-engineering-construction corporation in the United States until its decline in the late 1980s. The CRS Firm archives are housed in the CRS Center, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University in College Station.) In perusing the archives of the innovative CRS Firm, I learned the main tool for problem solving began for their firm as a ‘Squatter’. (CRS came up with the term “squatters” which can be related to the French term ‘Charrette.’ The name originated when CRS highlighted processes within standard services of an architect processes (AIA’s five basic services are defined as Schematic, Design Development, Construction Documents and Contract Administration) to ensure steps were not forgotten and lost in the fast paced environment of architectural practice and communication. The term also connotes sitting or getting down at the same level with the real user of the building. Specifically, for example and as poignantly noted in CRS notes, - know their fears, assume nothing, understand all players.) This nicknamed step ensured their team architects truly sat and listened to the building’s customer’s future user. Overtime, CRS and their associates developed a template (outside of the usual architectural contractually-accepted fee structured ‘basic services’) that could guide any architect through the programming process. (Examples: The new jargon CRS developed shows the firm’s fierce dedication to rigor in documenting research, discovery and the client’s communication processes: ‘Snow card’ (Thumb nail sketches), ‘Squatters’ (Sitting and Hearing), ‘Future Thrusts’ (Visioning))
Tool Number Four: Phases of the Architectural-Community Processes –Spencer, Oklahoma
In mid-1990s, my students and I did work in Spencer, Oklahoma helping them transform an unused county park into an inviting, vital community asset. In this primarily African-American community outside of Oklahoma City, with large acreage plots, I can in hindsight say even though the work was masterful, it did not resonate with community. The City Council of Spencer and I never reached project fruition. And as an outsider and Caucasian, clearly I had not appreciated what it took to effectively lead a process that would have results for this community.
The opportunity with the City of Spencer county park actually came around twice (1993, and 1997) for me. You would think the second time around, I would have gotten it right but this was not the case. In both instances, the project was ‘a study in frustration’. My advice from this experience is that the unfamiliar is risky. To minimize the risks for both community and for the faculty member, the architectural community collaboration process must be unique.
The CRS Firm showed me by their example to articulately define subcategories within the architectural services and phases (schematics, design development…) of industry-standard contracts. This is important to do to stay fresh and alert and not just conform to what is accepted, traditional and become habit. Seek to notice what is unique in what you do with this or that community, -then, ‘nickname’ the step. Examples: the CRS Firm used the term ‘squatting’ to illicit the ‘immersion/ getting to know one another’ in architects’ Schematic Design Phase, -Tom Simpson, Facilitator Consultant for the City of Edmond’s Tomorrow’s Edmond, typed in ‘synergize’.
Even when there are no budgets in rural communities for such work, why expand this upfront time and service? I know from hard knocks, time spent on design is a waste of your time if you don’t properly use these upfront learning moments. Upfront time to ‘squat’, ‘to synergize’ with the client and absorb their work and view and reasons. In retrospect, I believe I had assumed that these early steps could happen as we designed and students asked questions of the client. In the case of the City of Spencer, I recall that after receiving news of their community outreach project, I drove out to that community on a Sunday afternoon to familiarize and saw potluck picnic dinners going on in side yards. Here could have been my opportunity –not my demise. Potlucks and games inform the process as a point of departure for the development of the comprehensive community visionary plan. They are living teaching tools in studios and communities, students, professionals must learn how to conceive and execute them.
Working with students on many outreach projects, my focus and processes do change. At one time, it was important to allow the student full reign -a creative license to produce the wildest, the most innovative solutions. I believe this gives communities options and ideas to think ‘big’, justaposing a more refined approach by the professional. However, today, my focus is different.
Tool Number Five: Grant Strategizing- Muldrow, Oklahoma
From our cumulative experience base, we are no longer willing to leave grantwriting and fundraising to the end of our written reports. Sources of funding can no longer be merely appendices, recommendations or a list of individuals, foundations, and federal sources. The proper place for the fund-raising effort is at the beginning of the process.
Understandably, communities do not have the depth of administrative staff to engage in a multitude of fund-raising projects. Often, rural and other communities will tell you they can barely manage current aging infrastructure and are faced with declining budgets, smaller populations, and archaic IT tools. While often their chamber of commerce/non-profit community groups are energized citizens, follow-up with the city staff is disconnected, disorganized or non-responsive.
I have begun to develop a whole new set of guidelines and tools to focus and align the architectural design process with a community’s long-term visioning. I strongly believe that design and construction professionals in the United States doing Pro Bono work in communities need accessibility to ‘grant work’ funding, particularly in rural or depressed areas. Architects, using the Pro Forma templates of the business world, must initiate the link to desperately needed funds first rather than later or the project’s failure exponentially increased. (A cross reference to disciplines like Finance, Business Entrepreneur Programs to name a few who inherently consider money to outcome in their processes, their formwork). To do this the planner, the studio class and professor must determine grant appropriateness, focus our charrettes and models to produce specific grant requirements, definitions, and drawings.
This new stepping stone phase I am propose in community work requires defining upfront fundraising strategies, targets, white papers and other similar tools so the design team and community have ‘money, implementation and maintenance’ focus early. As this process becomes better articulated and conceptualized, then it can serve as a resource from single rural communities to distribution through national organizations associated with rural work and the pro bono profession.
Often, the planner will note or sense discord in the process that signal a need to return to the basic tools. Case in point, one of my students made a side comment in recent session we were doing in rural Oklahoma, specifically the Seiling, Oklahoma Spring 2012. One graduate student remarked -‘the man in the back reminds me of my Dad who never did understand why I went into Architecture.’ Sensitized, I looked out in the audience and saw the farmer who looked fed up and bored.
Tool Number Six: Participants, Stakeholders -Seiling, OK
My observation strongly suggest we need to engage the K-12 demographic a focus group of active participants in community visioning. It reminds me of the famous Case Study done by Carl Sapers at Harvard, “Who’s the Client?” (At one point in my career, I received funding to shadow Professor Carl Sapers at Harvard for three weeks). His message from my time with him reappeared again and again in my practice. When I found myself caught between several entities on a project –it could be the President of the University and my colleagues and Dean, the residential contractor and the client, a student and the class…I would pause and ask who, in the end, does the decision best serve?”
In a recent engagement in northwest Oklahoma, by an accident of available space, we presented the progress report to the community in their regional school’s cafeteria. Fortunately, our presentation was done during school hours and the community happened to include K-12 students in the audience. As it turned out, this group participated with gusto, providing comments, bluntly good and bad, on our presentation and vision for their future community. The perspectives were insightful in ways not previously voiced. (Examples: (1) “If you do go forward with the community pool, can you be sure to add an area for tanning for us gals?” (2) “We have no free wifi in our town.” (3) “I know walking across the state highway is a problem. Why would that be a problem? I do it daily and I am alive---but barely.” (4) “Never thought about a ceiling for Seiling over our hot and blinding windows on main street-cool.”)
This dialogue took on a new point of departure. The more one thinks about it, are not these youths that we want to reinvest in their communities now and in the future? Isn’t it this population the vision of the community is ultimately directed?
“It ain’t over till it’s over.” ( Quote by Baseball Catcher Yogi Berra)
Tool Number Seven: Hindsight
Twenty years later, a retrospective of my exposure to public and community work is ceaselessly surprising. Mentoring student work and the capabilities or methods of the city staff and the architectural faculty remain perplexingly challenging in specific towns. In a presentation in March 2012 at a ‘Research Day’, I furthered the discussion with emerging strategies that might prove more dynamic. (Jonathan Foote, Design-Build :: Build-Design (Journal of Architectural Education, March 2012), pg 52)
I can say in my journey, the lessons find predictability, pattern and sustenance in ‘bridging’ over to other fields as demonstrated above. Taken from a cross-disciplinary life, I would be remiss not to mention ‘hindsight’ from my various stops. Specific examples to support this latest toolkit point happened when I was involved with the San Francisco Redevelopment Plan (1970) at Hunters’ Point as a young professional in urban economics, the Community Partners: The Snowmass Village Planning Process, Aspen (1976) as a real estate owner, and a State Community and Academia Collaboration (2010) as an administrator, Associate Dean.
In the excitement of working towards ‘big changes and making the world a better place to live in,’ big directional mistakes can be made. It is important, as artists will tell you, to step away and look back at the work you have been doing. Distance matters. In the Harvard Press Book, Leadership on the Line, an entire chapter is titled Get up on the Balcony. (Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, 2002) Clearly, other fields have gained this insight.
For example, I rushed my graduate students by enlisting them to design a casino in the small town of Seiling, Oklahoma. At the time, the idea seemed perfect: a town with Indian land and huge economic need. Later, in a cafeteria filled with K-12 kids of Dewey County, I wondered.
Another completely different example, -through the construction site gate, the wind fiercely blowing (coming off surrounding waters of San Francisco) so that you could hardly stand-sketchbook clutched to chest, the idea of what was to happen at Hunters’ Point seemed preposterous. I entered the construction supervisor’s trailer; everyone seemed huddled inside. Faces concurred with what I had been thinking on my approach in to the first day of work.
Wisdom advises me to recommend series and phases and discussions in community planning, not one Charrette-not one planning meeting-not one semester. It is my belief that it is in the trusting of time, patience and distance that a masterful contribution to making communities better emerges.
Conclusion
This ‘basic tool-kit’ acts as an extremely practical resource to communities and to the academician as it takes strategic planning to a new level. It offers kick-start suggestions, specifies data collection for external funding, advises faculty on an investment program for intellectual inquiry, invites dynamic input from stakeholders and alerts planners to the pitfalls that can cause a project to go nowhere. Community s and when done right, contributes in major ways to a quality life.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the following individuals who have edited this work to date: Kelley Charles Callahan and Marshall T. Fuller.
REFERENCES
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961
