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Abstract

Since at least 1972, planning scholars have critiqued the many weaknesses of the expert based, top-down model of practice and instead advocate models of mutual learning, drawing on local knowledge, dialogue, more participatory techniques, etc. From Forester’s deliberative planner to Healey’s collaborative planning to Sandercock’s radical planning and other alternative ways of knowing, the profession has been challenged. In some subfields (social planning and community development planning for example), participatory and community based approaches have become the new conventional wisdom. But in the urban design field, the dominant paradigm has remained an expert-based model, not withstanding the handful of authors and practioners (Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Clare Cooper Marcus, William H. Whyte,) who have adopted and advocate more participatory and community based approaches to design. My project inhabits a veritable no-man’s land between urban design and community development planning. I am persuaded by the more collaborative and participatory approaches to planning in general and wanted to explore whether and how more participatory approaches to urban design might not only create better public places but also contribute to community building. Further, I am specifically interested in the challenges of community building and of creating inclusive public spaces in multicultural, multiethnic cities as such cities are becoming the norm in the 21st Century. Thus I have chosen to study a community-driven process for the design of a neighbourhood park in Collingwood, one of the most culturally diverse neighbourhoods within the City of Vancouver, which is itself one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world with 51% of its population from non-English speaking backgrounds. Slocan Park has apparently been transformed since the late 1990s from a place many local residents avoided to a place many people now see as an extension of home. My study traces and dissects this transformation, exploring two main questions. The first is a process question: Did the community-driven design process contribute to community-building in this neighbourhood, and if so how? The second is an outcome question: How successful was the community-driven design process in producing an inclusive, popular, well-used public place? That is, was this a good placemaking exercise? A subsidiary to both of these questions concerns the role of the arts and artists in both process and outcome. The goal of the research project is to inform practice debates in the urban design field as well as in community development planning. Designers might learn something about the importance of becoming involved in and encouraging community-driven process. And community development planners might learn something about the importance of design and how it relates to a community’s needs. At least that is my ambition for this project. The next chapter (chapter 2) will introduce both the neighbourhood and the Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH) as a local institution that played a critical role in this park’s redesign and reclamation. Chapter three briefly summarizes the story of the reclaiming of Slocan Park, which is also depicted in my accompanying film for this project. Chapter four discusses the community building dimension of the park project. Chapter five evaluates the success of Slocan as an exercise in placemaking in a multicultural city and neighbourhood. Chapter six draws out the significance of this case for community development and urban design planners.