Four Ways of Knowing: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Teaching Community-based Design

Design education, especially in an undergraduate course of study, seeks to prepare students for professions and for citizenship in a world they hardly know. The studio typically provides only a surrogate experience in addressing formal and spatial problems, and is limited by time, by its geographic space, and by a dialogue that is more often than not, self-referential. It very rarely engages systemic questions of public policy, or the specific challenges of implementing at full scale ideas that are conceived through representational means. The constrained intellectual context is most poignantly seen in the urban design studios where problems are situated in the real world, and where issues outside the purview of design are found embedded in a place. Form-focused studio exercises that are necessarily a part of beginning architecture education are inadequate for exploring the indeterminacy of urban space and the complexity of human environments. When students enter an urban design studio, especially when they undertake community-based projects, they must take up the mantle of citizenship and engage in an enterprise that is fundamentally relational and grounded in experience. They need more information and more ways of knowing the world than traditionally the design disciplines can offer. This paper presents the outcomes of an experimental neighborhood-based teaching project undertaken as a collaboration among classes in architecture, landscape architecture, urban geography and the fine arts at Temple University. Although initiated through the architecture faculty's desire to enrich its own undergraduate urban design studio, all the collaborators shared our concern about the narrowing effects of disciplinary bracketing on student learning, especially when the goal was to address real world situations. Each discipline brought to the project its particular disciplinary culture -- its language, methodology and areas of concern -- and a shared aspiration to puzzle together these diverse perspectives around questions of making places that are meaningful, humane and sustainable. The struggles and synergies among disciplines were alternatively inspiring, annoying, challenging, rich and imperfect. But intense engagement with a community re-centered the dialogue from inside the academic context to outside, and framed a multidisciplinary way of thought. The community itself proved to be a powerful coalescing agent; the inherent layering of issues in the real-world context made it virtually impossible to remain insensible to interdependencies in life that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Here Richard Sennett's definition of what constitutes a democratic urbanity was applicable. The Greek term for "public”, synkoikismos, means "to bring together in the same place people that need each other but worship different household gods.” (47) This deceptively simple public-making concept became the basis for a process of learning, and a vehicle for working with the larger truths about how cities are formed and experienced

Revolution will be prosthetized

Journal ArticleIt's October at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., and Jonathan Kuniholm is playing "air guitar hero," a variation on Guitar Hero, the Nintendo Wii game that lets you try to keep up with real musicians using a vaguely guitarlike controller. But the engineer is playing without a guitar. More to the point, he's playing without his right hand, having lost it in Iraq in 2005. Instead he works the controller by contracting the muscles in his forearm, creating electrical impulses that electrodes then feed into the game. After about an hour he beats the high score set by Robert Armiger, a two‑armed Johns Hopkins University engineer who modified Guitar Hero to train amputees to use their new prostheses

Uneven spaces: core and periphery in the Gauteng City-Region

Peripheral areas of the Gauteng City-Region – like small towns on the edge, large peri-urban and commercial farming areas, sprawling dormitory townships, huge swathes of displaced urbanisation in ex-Bantustans, and remote industrial and mining areas – are all poorly understood. Yet there is evidence that many of these areas are undergoing rapid change, with profound implications for many current policy debates including what to do about inequitable economic growth patterns, how to manage ongoing population movements in the post-apartheid period, where best to locate large public housing schemes, and so on. Uneven spaces: Core and periphery in the Gauteng City-Region, GCRO’s sixth research report, comes from a clear recognition that despite the comparative wealth of Gauteng and its role in driving the national economy there are places of relative ‘peripherality’ in the GCR that require attention. The report is also a response to a strong focus in the existing literature on the physical and economic core of the province, the City of Johannesburg in particular. By contrast there is a relative paucity of analysis on less central parts of the city-region. The work is the result of a research partnership between the GCRO and the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning (SA&CP), in the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits University. GCRO’s Dr Sally Peberdy wrote the first part of the report entitled ‘Uneven development – core and periphery in Gauteng’. Prof Philip Harrison and Yasmeen Dinath from SA&CP compiled the second part, ‘Gauteng – on the edge’. Both parts, albeit through different modes, consider transitions in the social- and space-economies of outlying places. The first part investigates the dynamics of peripheral areas in Gauteng through the lens of theories of uneven development. Showcasing a wealth of data and maps generated from the Census and GCRO’s own Quality of Life surveys, it analyses the multiple ways that spaces may be peripheral. These include unequal access to housing and services; the spread of income, household assets and employment opportunities; variations in perceived quality of life; and so on. The analysis builds from an initial binary delineation of parts of Gauteng as either ‘core’ or ‘periphery. It then progressively nuances our understanding by showing that notions of core and periphery are relational, that processes of change across what may be counted as core or periphery are often indeterminate and contradictory, and that there are often ‘peripheral’ areas in the heart of the GCR, and ‘core’ features in areas conventionally regarded as on the margin. This section concludes with thoughts on the role of government in creating, sustaining and ameliorating multiple forms of peripherality, The second part of the report asks the question ‘what is happening along the geographic edge of the GCR?’, and seeks to answer this both through the lens of scholarship on edge cities, peri-metropolitan areas, and agglomeration, as well as through a number of in-depth case studies in six types of peripheral areas: 1. Areas with extractive economies (Carletonville); 2. Industrialising ex-mining areas (Nigel-Heidelberg); 3. Areas with state-implanted industry (The Vaal, including Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark and Sasolburg); 4. Decentralised growth points (Babelegi); 5. Agricultural service centres (Bronkhorstspruit); and 6, Recreational hubs (Hartbeespoort). Through its exhaustive narrative accounts of the development of specific places on the edge of the GCR, this section of the report compellingly highlights the importance of history and timing, and asks us to consider how urban development drives economic development and vice versa. Although ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ are artificial constructs, these terms gesture at very real spaces of uneven growth and development. The two parts of this report, different but complementary, considerably deepen our understanding of what is going on in parts of the city-region that are less well researched, and help focus the attention of policy-makers concerned with the causes and effects of – as well as possible solutions to – spatially uneven development outcomes.AP201

Segregation, integration, inclusion and effective provision: a case study of perspectives from special educational needs children, parents and teachers in Bangalore, India

Educating special educational needs (SEN) children in special schools is the norm in India but there is a growing trend towards inclusive practice. Perspectives were sought from children, their parents and teachers in Bangalore, India to investigate perceptions of effective provision for SEN children using an interpretative approach to provide ‘thick descriptions’. Findings suggest that integration of SEN children in mainstream schools was not the preferred model for both the children and adults in the study. Separate schooling was cited by the majority of respondents as the most appropriate model for reasons of unsuitable pedagogy and curriculum, a lack of individualised attention for children and difficulties of social interaction. The study reveals that teacher dedication, passion and care for the SEN children in their classes is juxtaposed with an acknowledgment of their professional training and development needs. These findings provide teachers and policy makers with an in depth insight from this sample case study into the perspectives of children, their parents and teachers on appropriate SEN provision and the challenges of implementing inclusive practice

The R/UDAT as Urban Theater: A Planning Alternative for North Philadelphia

In October of 1990, a cluster of neighborhoods in the center of North Philadelphia was the subject of an unusual urban design study. A volunteer team of urban experts from around the country gathered there, seeking to forge a vision for revitalizing this deteriorating inner-city community. Neither the community's grim statistical profile, nor its image as portrayed in the press, nor the abundance of its decaying and abandoned structures would suggest that there was much reason to hope for a healthy future. Over the course of a highly charged four-day visit, however, the visiting team was engaged in a process which has helped to alter dramatically some of the entrenched negative perceptions of the community. It has given its disenfranchised residents a voice and has provided the imagery and agenda for positive change. The team is known as a R/UDAT (Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team), and was fielded by the national American Institute of Architects (AIA) and invited by a local coalition of architects, planners and community leaders. The eleven-member R/UDAT team included architects and urban planners, a sociologist, an economist, an assistant chief of police, and specialists in housing, transportation, youth programs, and inner-city neighborhood development. Their visit consisted of a marathon program of on-site research, broad community outreach, brainstorming, debate, and synthesis. At the end of four days, the R/UDAT produced a fifty-page report which documented their findings, offering proposals for the neighborhoods' future development and new insight as to how the community might generate change from within

Brownfields Area-Wide Plan: Lower North Delaware Industrial District, Philadelphia

A Brownfields Area-Wide Plan is created for a key portion of Philadelphia’s Lower North Delaware Industrial District. The brownfields challenges in the project are representative of both location-specific factors and issues typical of brownfield redevelopment. One hundred and fifty years of industrial history, from coal to textile or food distribution, cannot help but leave a trace. Locational factors including high vacancy rates, weak market forces, and former industrial uses highlight the classic brownfields challenges of financial barriers, liability issues, and cleanup considerations. The coalescence of these types of difficulties significantly impacts the economic, social, public health, and environmental justice concerns within the project area, and significantly hampers development. This plan summarizes the cleanup and reuse implementation strategies for the catalyst sites using information obtained through research into community engagement, prioritization, existing conditions, partnerships, and potential resources

Future climate warming and changes to mountain permafrost in the Bolivian Andes

Water resources in many of the world’s arid mountain ranges are threatened by climate change, and in parts of the South American Andes this is exacerbated by glacier recession and population growth. Alternative sources of water, such as more resilient permafrost features (e.g. rock glaciers), are expected to become increasingly important as current warming continues. Assessments of current and future permafrost extent under climate change are not available for the Southern Hemisphere, yet are required to inform decision making over future water supply and climate change adaptation strategies. Here, downscaled model outputs were used to calculate the projected changes in permafrost extent for a first-order assessment of an example region, the Bolivian Andes. Using the 0 °C mean annual air temperature as a proxy for permafrost extent, these projections show that permafrost areas will shrink from present day extent by up to 95 % under warming projected for the 2050s and by 99 % for the 2080s (under the IPCC A1B scenario, given equilibrium conditions). Using active rock glaciers as a proxy for the lower limit of permafrost extent, we also estimate that projected temperature changes would drive a near total loss of currently active rock glaciers in this region by the end of the century. In conjunction with glacier recession, a loss of permafrost extent of this magnitude represents a water security problem for the latter part of the 21st century, and it is likely that this will have negative effects on one of South America’s fastest growing cities (La Paz), with similar implications for other arid mountain regions