What I liked most about studying this case was that it reminded me of all that I have learned in this course. Going back and making comparisons and connections to other planners we have talked to and strategies we have discussed was not only easy, but also helpful to understanding the success of this case.
Like several other students mentioned, I did not immediately understand how landscape architecture would relate to community building and engagement. Thinking back to our first guest, Wendy Sarkissian, who spoke a great deal on social stigma attached to a deteriorating environment, I realized we had already seen an example of residents taking back spaces in the community that were not fulfilling a functional role. The West Philadelphia Landscape Project incorporated many elements that I think Sarkissian would have embraced. Not only was capacity building used in training community members to read the topography and collect information, they acknowledged community knowledge and came to rely on it. After so much data was collected on where the abandoned lots were, why they had come to be abandoned, the project also made suggestions on what to do with different types of abandoned lots depending on their size and location. Residents were given recommendations as to what might work, but were left to make up their mind about how to move forward.
I also appreciated this case study becasue it challenged my conceptions of the impotence of physical land in urban planning, even in a city, is so much more than the building built on top of it. Understanding the geography of the city is important if we are ever to make truly sustainable cities. Hearing about the decay of the apartments when they flooded or sewers collapsed underneath them, is proof that this part of the city as not built with any understanding or respect for the local environment. The burying of the creek in North Philidelphia, reminded me of traveling in Sao Paulo and learning that two of the multiple lane roads near the center of the city were build on top of intersecting rivers. How long do planners and urban residents believe they will get away with the lengths they go to to alter the green environment?
I was also reminded of the City of New Orleans, and the spatial injustice so inherent in the lay out of the city. The city is built near wetlands, and is hit by hurricanes most years. The parts of the city that are on higher ground are the tourist and historic district, the CBD, and wealthier (mostly white) residential neighborhoods. The neighborhoods that are more likely to flood, and that suffered the most from hurricane Katrina when the levies broke, were majority low income communities of color. Its not only the physical land that effects a community, but the spatial relationships within and between the community.
DSNI also had a unique relationship with land throughout their history – campaigning for environmental justice against illegal trash dumping, and forming a community land trust. We have had two remarkable examples of urban residents making important decisions about how land is used in their neighborhoods. Instead of businesses, residents in both cases seemed more interested in improving homes, and leaving some land ’empty’ or not built 0n, rather than putting in more store that claim to improve the local economy. The health and well being of the community needs to be measured through different means that just analyzing the local economy and providing jobs. Parks for children and adults to exercise in, community spaces where organizing can occur, connecting paths between different sub-communities with in a place can facilitate and strengthen the community in ways new jobs cannot. And remarkably, all of this is made possible by pairing landscaping with participatory planning.
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