WPLP

One of the most interesting aspects of the West Philly Landscape Plan and the Mill Creek Project is how attuned they try to be to the context in which they are working. They seem to realize that individuals in the community have been and are central to many projects and initiatives that started over the years and that individuals would be key to the success of future projects. The original planners also seemed to fully appreciate the fiscal climate of the times – that there would be little funding coming from private or public sources. Given this, the framework favored realistic, achievable, yet still effectual interventions. It seems like the WPLP was and is trying to meet the community – the place and the people – where they’re at, rather than imposing grand schemes that only work on paper.

I also greatly appreciated the fact that they took things slowly and incrementally, much like a gardener would treat her plants. I feel like we’re currently in an era where funders and program directors are looking for that one replicable project that can be scaled and fix all things everywhere. This project seems to look at things very differently. They aren’t seeking a panacea to solve all of West Philly’s problems, nor are they condemning an entire neighborhood as having only problems. I see this landscape approach as being very similar to the participatory art topic that we learned about a few weeks back, in that through landscape design (like art), they experimented with small improvements in one place or in one way and, no pun intended, saw what grew. Sometimes it led to other improvements in other places or in other ways, which were not necessarily related to landscape design at all. As the …Framework for Action… piece states, “Successful landscape projects serve as catalysts for other community development projects and as important adjuncts to social programs such as education, job training, and employment.” I think there is an important lesson to be learned from this organic, localized, community-attuned approach. We can address all sorts of issues by paying attention to our context, by experimenting with new strategies and techniques, and we can both passively and actively propagate new partnerships that allow for greater impact that the original action or project. As usual, the natural processes of the earth sets a pretty good example from which we can learn.

One last point that I’d like to appreciate (and ask more questions about in class) is the effect I imagine it had on Penn students. We often focus on how a project affects the community, both physically and socially. We look at how the built environment has changed or how residents and their outcomes have changed – but what about how the planners or student-planners have changed as a result of the project? How does working with communities, whose physical, economic, social, and cultural realities differ from your own, affect your perception of the world and the ideas you hold about your place in it? Sure, the students learned about landscape design, as they probably assumed they would as planning students at Penn. But how did the co-learning/co-design structure of the class change them as planners, and maybe more importantly, as people? Are they better able to understand people and places that are different from themselves – and to see the commonalities, as well? Are they more equipped to work with folks, share in the responsibility and the rewards, and be open to multiple ways of seeing and doing things? And as a long-term, ongoing project (yes!) with a community, I also wonder how it may have changed cultures within Penn, as an institution, over time.

Now, this is not to say that I don’t have concerns or considerations to make. It seems like these projects depended greatly on the presence (and by that I mean power and money) of Penn, an exceedingly wealthy, elite, private university. There are all sorts of power dynamic issues going on here and I’m very curious to know how they were/are dealt with on the ground, interpersonally and institutionally. I also wonder how far the partnerships reach with the community. Have any West Philly residents gone on to attend Penn? Has Penn changed any of its procurement policies to feed into the local economy? What are some of the other outcomes of the project? How has it changed the culture or the nature of the relationship between Penn and the West Philly community?