Designing with People

After decades of top-down urban planning and placemaking, the movement to ensure that communities have a say in shaping the places where they live has greatly expanded when and how people are asked to weigh in on these important decisions. But both systemic and quotidian barriers-from access to clear information, to finding the time to participate, to histories of exclusion and distrust-present real challenges to authentic community engagement. So, what does it look like to meaningfully engage real people-particularly those whose voices have not been heard-in shaping the places where they live?
Christine Gaspar, a community-engaged design practitioner with 15+ years of experience designing with communities in the U.S. shares how she has addressed some of those barriers in her own work. She draws lessons from both her architecture and urban planning work with low-wealth communities recovering from Hurricane Katrina in the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and her work at the Center for Urban Pedagogy, creating accessible visually-based materials with and for marginalised communities to help them access rights and participate in civic decision-making.