Designing with: An engaged studio approach to applied community development scholarship

Abstract

When members of the volunteer Beltzhoover Neighborhood Council approached us in 2008, they represented one of several dozen low-income Pittsburgh communities struggling with five decades of industrial and population decline and persistent inequality. The Council wasn’t looking to dwell on its troubles. Instead, members were intent on leveraging the community’s substantial reserves of talent and passion. Their focus was across an array of physical and environmental challenges, from neglected public infrastructure and ecosystems to the recently closed elementary school. The citizens of Beltzhoover (population 1,900) wanted pleasant, tree-lined streets with functional sidewalks and access to transit, the
same as the city’s more affluent communities. They wanted to revive the green grocer–bakery, community center, and playground. And they saw the neighborhood’s +30% residential lot vacancy—the upshot of cycles of economic decline, disinvestment, and landlord indifference—more as resource than blight.

Full text

Community Development
Education
Practice Insights
From Around the World
Issue 12

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Designing
With
: An
Engaged Studio Approach
to Applied Community
Development Scholarship
Ken Tamminga
Beyond Service-Learning
At the same time, I was about to
reprise the advanced Pittsburgh-
based studio that I had led in the
1990's. Influenced by my research in
Sub-Sahara Africa on anticipatory
community learning and adaptation
in the face of climate change, I
resolved that the 2008 studio would
engage collaboratively with at-risk,
under-served communities. As it
happened, the Beltzhoover studio
would be facilitated through the new
Penn State Center (Pittsburgh’s
“community connector”) as its first
pilot project. And it would push well
beyond the usual service-learning
model.
As with many public land-grant
institutions in the U.S., service-
learning at Penn State had long been
standard fare. Typically, planning and
design faculty would approach a
local ocial with an oer of
technical services provided by a
class of 30-40 students. After a
formal memorandum of
understanding was signed and a
budget set, the design process
would take place entirely within the
confines of campus. Creative
interactions with stakeholders were
rare. Service-learning’s main
purpose, then, was to expose
students to the client-consultant
model of acquiring technical
experience as eciently as possible.
Inherently a clean and one-way
proposition, possibilities for
mutually-beneficial discovery and
growth were never likely.
Studio Overview
In contrast, the goal for the 2008
Pittsburgh Studio was a mutually
beneficial process of engaged
design-in-place—students and
community participants working
collaboratively. Importantly, we were
invited, and the Penn State Center
was the match-maker. Formalities
were limited to a handshake. Since
that first Beltzhoover experience, the
course has become a Fall semester
fixture. Fifteen weeks in length, it
directly partners 12–14 upper-year
students with local citizen groups in
one or two Pittsburgh
neighborhoods. To date, we have
partnered with 22 communities,
most of them low-income and
economically distressed.
The Pittsburgh studio now plays out
“…community design as primarily
vested in the community. Solutions
emerge from the local, rather than
being miraculously delivered as gifts
or commodities from elsewhere”
(Tamminga and DeCiantis, 2012). Our
focus on neighborhood-scale assets
have included detailed concepts for
When members of the volunteer Beltzhoover Neighborhood Council approached us in 2008, they
represented one of several dozen low-income Pittsburgh communities struggling with five decades of
industrial and population decline and persistent inequality. The Council wasn’t looking to dwell on its
troubles. Instead, members were intent on leveraging the community’s substantial reserves of talent and
passion. Their focus was across an array of physical and environmental challenges, from neglected public
infrastructure and ecosystems to the recently closed elementary school. The citizens of Beltzhoover
(population 1,900) wanted pleasant, tree-lined streets with functional sidewalks and access to transit, the
same as the city’s more auent communities. They wanted to revive the green grocer–bakery, community
center, and playground. And they saw the neighborhood’s +30% residential lot vacancy—the upshot of
cycles of economic decline, disinvestment, and landlord indierence—more as resource than blight.

41 Issue 12 | Practice Insightswww.facebook.com/IACDglobal/
civic spaces, green infrastructure,
public art networks, urban farms,
vacant lot recycling, convivial main
streets, and adaptive reuse of civic
buildings. Throughout, we are
reminded by our local partners that
projects should seek to catalyze
social entrepreneurship and
employment from within.
Students and partners interact
primarily through on-site meetings
to conduct analysis, relate back-
stories, and pin down place-based
issues and opportunities. Back on
campus, I introduce students to
participatory techniques, focusing
on ways that students can promote
both analytical and imaginal literacy
in their neighborhood partners.
A mid-semester design workshop
marks the transition from research
and analysis to site programming,
conceptualization, and form-giving.
With workshop ideas as grist, an
extended period of iterative design
exploration, testing, and,
visualization follows. This phase
demands that students exert their
full design skills, while regularly
calling on community partners (now
fast friends) to review their work or
supply further insights. Finally, a
public presentation and open house
is hosted in the neighborhood. The
projects are finalized, compiled as a
portfolio, and made publicly
available online. Community partners
continue meeting with Penn State
Center sta to explore
implementation strategies.
The Practice-Theory Dialogue
While the pedagogy of the studio
evolved mostly experientially, it has
been influenced by several scholarly
strands. Its learning-by-doing
sensibility is in the constructivist
tradition of David Lebow (1993, p.6)
who called for practical community-
based scholarship “…firmly
embedded in the social and
emotional contexts in which learning
takes place.” The studio’s activist
leaning was spurred by
conversations with Penn State
colleagues, Associate Dean of
Outreach, Craig Weidemann, and
geographer, Lakshman Yapa, both at
the forefront of the public
scholarship movement. Additionally,
learning theorist Étienne Wenger’s
writings on communities of practice
deepened our awareness of the
importance of direct working
relationships between community
partners and students. The
Pittsburgh Studio built on these
notions, scaolding up from
conventional knowledge-building to
transformative levels of empathy,
vision, and creativity.
Intangible and
Tangible Outcomes
Each Fall semester, community
partners remark that the most
important consequence of their
Pittsburgh Studio involvement is
coming to know the power of
design. They see how the half-dozen
or so project proposals can
collectively result in a shared vision
for regenerative priorities in their
neighborhood.
Since most of our students come
from suburban or small-town places
in the mid-Atlantic, there’s an
essential acclimation period during
which they reconcile issues of
“otherness”, make friends, and dive
into the productive rhythm of
working relationships. During
in-class reflections, students often
share feelings of humility at knowing
less about the place they’re studying
than their local partners, while, at
the same time, reveling in their
designers’ role as form-givers.
The more tangible outcomes of the
Pittsburgh Studio are many and
varied. The 22 partner communities
usually continue their relationship
with Penn State Center post-studio.
Typically, actionable projects tend
toward follow-up planning grants
and improvements to civic spaces
and community landscapes. At the
other end of the spectrum, our 2009
Larimer village center and green
infrastructure proposals were at the
core of a successful $30 million
grant application for Choice
Neighborhood program funding
from the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development.
On the academic side, the studio
was the subject of a documentary
short film produced by WPSU Public
Broadcasting Service and shown
widely on campus. The film, along
with several presentations I made to
the Council of Engaged Scholarship,
were influential in Penn State’s
recent creation of the Oce of
Student Engagement Network.
Studio Framework

42 Practice Insights | Issue 12 Read IACD’s Daily News on community development from around the world
In 2011, the studio was awarded the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation Engagement Award–Northeast Region
from the Association of Public and Land-Grant
Universities, and was national Finalist for the Peter C.
Magrath University/Community Engagement Award.
Finally, ours was one of 74 Exemplars of Engaged
Scholarship recognized by Campus Compact, a
national coalition of 1,000+ colleges and universities
committed to building democracy through civic
education and community development.
Community-engaged studios are messy, sometimes
fraught, and always exhilarating. They provide an
inclusive, creative space for community partners and
students alike to experience the power of democratic
design. My hope is that this kind of public scholarship
continues emerging as a meaningful contributor to
community development practice. To help, here are
guidelines for practitioners and academics considering
a similar approach:
• Establish working relationships early. Pre-
planning is vital in reconciling community needs
with pedagogical goals.
• Recognize place-based design as a valid
component of community development practice.
Assert that design is an essential human endeavor
in which all should participate.
• Discuss realities of power, privilege and exclusion.
Nurture (pre)professional humility and pluralistic
understanding in students.
• Think small. A compact student team of about
10-15 is best. Then ensure six or seven dedicated
key community partner-mentors to achieve a 2:1
student/partner ratio.
• Arm the public scholarship principles of
reciprocal learning and co-generated solutions.
• Avoid the parochial discipline trap. Privilege
direct student interactions with local residents/
content experts over bureaucrats and
professionals.
• Pass the baton. Relational continuity between
community and institution is vital in moving ideas
into action. Community connectors like the Penn
State Center are essential in facilitating pre- and
post-studios activities, while aording faculty
space to teach.
• Be patient. During a 2017 public meeting on
community improvements, Beltzhoover residents
voiced concern over a lack of anticipated spin-o
jobs, while citing our studio’s 2008 work as the
impetus to designing with local residents (Kramer,
2017). Remember, tangible results can take time to
ferment.
• Reflect. Discuss ways the studio is personally
relevant to students, and how it might influence
future career choices and modes of practice. Close
the feed-back loop by conducting post-studio
evaluation with key partners and community
connector.
Top: Summary of Select Pittsburgh Studio Metrics to Date
Bottom: Working Relationships
References
Kramer, M. (2017) Will McKinley Park upgrades improve the
struggling Beltzhoover community or leave its longtime residents
behind? August 31, 2017 article, www.publicsource.org.
Lebow, D. (1993) Constructivist values for instructional systems
design. Educational Technology Research and Development, vol. 41,
no. 3, pp. 4–16.
Tamminga, K. and DeCiantis, D. (2012) Resilience, conviviality, and
the engaged studio. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and
Engagement, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 115-151.
Ken Tamminga
Distinguished Professor,
Landscape Architecture, Penn State University.
He holds professional degrees in
urban planning and landscape architecture
krt1@psu.edu