.png)
Building Equity into the
Design Process
Address Community Needs and
Amplify Voices of Color
To establish need at the community level, the engineer could propose:
(1) Conducting a Community Needs Assessment
(2) Observing and working in harmony with the community.
Community Needs
Assessment
This serves to contextualize the project, through the lens of what the community values, in a tangible document.
Community needs should always directly influence the motivation and purpose for the design.
_edited.png)
Data for figure referenced from Galaxy Digital (n.d.)
Important questions for consideration to help initiate engagement with the community:
Are there town hall meetings or community meetings in place?
Who is showing up (or more importantly, not showing up)?
What are their primary concerns?
What is the best way to disseminate information and communicate with the community?
How does our company or organization interact with the community?
Participants at the February 23,2019 Transit Neighborhood Plan meeting in Los Angeles, California working with city planners in small groups to discuss their preferences for the Purple Line Transit Neighborhood Plan. Image retrieved from Fuller (2019).
Community Meetings
"Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression."
AUDRE LORDE
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Important questions for consideration to help understand engagement level of the community:
Is there active engagement in community matters?
Are people disenfranchised by the political system?
If they are disenfranchised, what are the conditions and circumstances that led them to be disengaged?
How can we empower the community, especially those historically excluded?
Civic Engagement
Image retrieved from the University of Edinburgh course Patient and Public Involvement (2015) and originally adapted from the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2 Federation) Public Participation spectrum, 2015
"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
HARRIET TUBMAN
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
Important questions for consideration to help understand power dynamics within the community:
Do people impacted by the project have power in the decision-making?
Do people have access to voting?
Are there people from the community represented in our company or organization?
Representation
Image by Shaull (2016) taken on Election Day November 9, 2016.
DESMOND TUTU
“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Important questions for consideration to understand the perceived needs of the community:
Are people organizing? For what purpose are they organizing?
What preconceptions and attitudes do I have toward the cause and what can I do to learn more about it?
What resources do we have to help support these movements? (e.g. technological expertise, money, time, etc.)
What would an equitable partnership look like?
How can we build rapport with the community?
Grassroots
Action
Image by Joe Brusky (2014) taken on September 28, 2014 at the People's Climate March in New York City.
SHIRLEY CHRISHOLM
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.
DOLORES HUERTA
Diving Deeper: The Next Layer of
Important Considerations:
How do we identify who is underserved in the community and build trust in partnerships?
What are some barriers to bringing the community into the design process?
Can we identify barriers to the design process for specifically historically marginalized groups?
Have we created and/or reinforced these barriers with our practice of engineering?
How must we change our practice and/or institution to overcome these barriers?
How can we leverage our technical expertise to co-design a more equitable society with the community?
Iceberg model depiction by Future Considerations (2017).
Back to Hoo City
Your company, Wahoo Engineering Group, in partnership with SDOT completed the standard Needs Assessment based on the request by local and state governments as well as regional planning organizations. The assessment process collected and analyzed current road traffic in the areas surrounding Hoo City. With this data, your team estimates increased congestion due to Cumulus Co. moving into Hoo City.
A recent opinion piece in the Hoo Daily argues for the construction of a major highway connecting the new suburbs to Hoo City that would traverse through a number of historical communities. This position sparked mixed reactions from the community.
Community members expressed concerns about:
-
A tax increase
-
A need for better public transportation/mass transit
-
A desperate need for existing roads to be maintained
-
Impacts to their community, whether by:
-
Displacing homes, people, jobs, businesses
-
Increasing road noise over current levels
-
Creating health risks due to pollution
-
Increasing mobility (neighborhoods with on-ramp access)
-
Decreasing mobility (neighborhoods with increased road traffic)
-
Introducing a toll for use of the road or other roads in need of repairs
-
-
Impacts on the environment (wildlife)
-
If this highway project will create jobs, and for whom
-
If the highway will lead to increased urbanization
-
If Cumulus Co. moving to Hoo City will have detrimental effects on the area
"East Bay Regional Parks District Master Plan Public Comment June 24, 2013" by greendoula is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
While your team was working on the technical report, you researched the new expanding suburbs and the historical communities that surround Hoo City. To learn more, you attended town hall meetings and informal community gatherings. Attendance at those meetings with community members and prominent community leaders resulted in insightful conversation on the traffic issues in the city.
Your perspective
before engagement
Your lived experience: You moved to the area just a few years prior and live in the suburbs on the outskirts of Hoo City. You drive on a highway daily for your commute to work and appreciate it for the convenience it provides. Many of the people you work with share the same experience, and therefore, a highway seemed like the logical solution to meeting the need of the growing suburbs. You have worked on a fair share of highway expansion projects; therefore, you feel very comfortable with the implementation of this infrastructure to address the congestion issues.
Your historical context of highway projects: The omnipresence of highways started when President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, authorizing 41,000 miles of interstate highways to be built, marking the largest American public works program of its time. This Act is considered to be monumental in that it accomplished turning a bunch of unconnected local roads into a national transportation network, stretching from coast to coast.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 (credit: Dwight Eisenhower Library)
National system of interstate and defense highways. Published by the American Automobile Association, June 1958. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
What you did not know
Listen to this 7 minute segment by NPR that shares a brief history
of how racism shaped the U.S. interstate highway system.
You have now come to find that there is another side of the story: Primarily Black and Brown families were forced out of established communities in order to make room for highways. Eminent domain, established by the 5th Amendment, is the power of the government to take private property and convert it into public use if they provide “just” compensation to the property owners.
However, it is hard to imagine how you could justly compensate for:
-
the splitting up of neighborhoods with dangerous, high speed roads,
-
the closure of businesses that provided jobs, essential services, and amenities to the community,
-
the exposure to increased pollution due to vehicle exhaust,
-
and the destruction of the places central to the community.
_edited.jpg)
1945—Urban Depressed Express Highways. Painting by Carl Rakeman, date unknown. Courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration
At the next meeting of the contractors and State representatives, you invite community members to present the stories and ideas that bring to life the wide-ranging reactions to the article posted in the Hoo Daily. During that time the community gave you a wealth of important feedback on this project. Your growing team of engineers, urban planners, and community members will need to use this feedback as the foundation for what this infrastructure project becomes.
At this point you take time to reflect on how community engagement this early on in the project has:
-
Re-defined the boundaries of the problem at hand,
-
Built a stronger sense of purpose and contextual framework for the project, and
-
Initiated greater community buy-in for an infrastructure improvement project.
You give your engineering team assignment in order to bring them up to speed. It includes reading this article that has firsthand accounts of Black community experiencing the distractions of their neighborhoods due to highway construction.
You ask each team member to reimagine how they would improve transportation infrastructure in Hoo City if they a member of the Hanford Village and King-Lincoln/Bronzeville community, such as Ann Walker, from the article.
Your team reports back to you on different ways the design process and infrastructure projects have evolved over time. The team particularly grasped onto how important it is to enhance both accessibility and inclusivity in the built environment so people with a diversity of experience can benefit from it. The theme of the conversation quickly dials in on a few buzz words: inclusive/universal design and human-centered approach.
_edited.jpg)
Design approaches that promote socially just outcomes
_edited_edited.png)
_edited_edited.png)
The desirable result of projects based on inclusive design principles is to create a valuable experience to people regardless of their circumstances. Designing for all means designing for the needs of people with permanent, temporary, situational, or changing disabilities and that the design does not disadvantage or stigmatize any groups based on abilities, age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, and other forms of human difference.
Image retrieved from the Inclusive Design Research Centre (n.d.) at Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University.
Human-centered design is a design framework in which developing solutions to problems is done by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.
After discussions with your team regrading the various socially just design practice, you be begin to strategize how to incorporate it into your work. During this time, a team member brings to your attention an article on creating a barrier-free experience for users of transportation systems.
From the article,
What are some universal design solutions to creating a “seamless transportation chain” when considering the construction of roadways and/or enhancing public transportation options?
_edited.jpg)
Based on the Needs Assessment supplemented with the conscientious Community Needs Assessment you advocated for, the State is ready to initiate a new project to enhance infrastructure that would alleviate the congestion issues surrounding Hoo City.
The State is working on the annual budget for the following year and needs to know how much money to allocate for this project. SDOT was so impressed by the report and intel provided by the Wahoo Engineering Group that they are moving forward with working with you on this project.