Reshaping Theory in Contemporary Social Work by William Borden

Author:William Borden [Borden, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780231147019
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2009-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.4 Top: Actual Citizen’s Map—Boyle Heights; bottom: Composite Citizen Image—Boyle Heights

SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF CITY PLANNING, LOS ANGELES, CALIF. (N.D.)

AN INTEGRATIVE CASE EXAMPLE: YOUTH AS PLACEMAKERS

Increasingly, collaborative community planning efforts and community-based participatory research projects use a range of spatial methods to engage local residents in place-based evaluation, planning, and change. Dennis (2006) documents a project designed to involve youth from a local after-school youth program in a community planning process. With facilitation by university students in urban planning and design, young people used photography, narratives, drawing, and community visioning to assess their neighborhood. The project involved several phases:

1. An initial workshop was held, during which youth produced collages of their “ideal” neighborhood, discussed them, and from the discussion generated a list of youth concerns and ideals.

2. For two weeks youth maintained journals, recording their perceptions and appraisals of the neighborhood, positive and negative, using text and drawings.

3. A second workshop was held, during which youth discussed their journals and produced a master list of youth concerns.

4. Photography “homework” was assigned, in which youth documented the places they like in the neighborhood, and the places they want to change.

5. A third workshop was held, during which youth worked in groups to discuss their photos, focusing on preferred and problematic neighborhood spaces.

6. A final workshop concluded the project, in which youth worked with the design students to plan the transformation of vacant lots into green space for the after-school program. As part of this process, the students’ maps and qualitative data were linked to quantitative data, providing a larger picture of patterns of use and movement through the neighborhood and linking neighborhood conditions to larger social and economic issues.

This project, which was located in a typical social service agency, positioned urban youth as knowledgeable, capable participants in community change efforts, deliberately shifting the focus of intervention from youth as service recipients to youth as active place makers. As young people contributed positively to their neighborhood, they in turn gained important developmental benefits from participating in community change efforts.

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