Why do we need a new model to rethink the "walkable neighborhoods?
The role of the concept "walkable neighborhoods" in the context of gentrification should be clarified here:
1. It is defined and assessed by exports without public engagement and pedagogy;
2. The quanlitative measurements keep ignoring communities’ real lives, and turn its back on the potential threatens to low-income immigrants neighborhood;
3. It even accelerates the current gentrification process, and make Chinatown become more desirable to gentrifiers.
To challenge and solve those issues, we need to add more public participation when define, assess, and design walkable neighborhoods. It is necessary to find a new model to reflect communities requirements, expand the understanding of walking from physical level into economic, social and cultural dimensions. What more important is that, we should document and public communities’ voice, as a solid evidence, to protect Chinatown’s preciousness when the outsiders try to impose some homogenous plans and design proposals into Chinatown.
How can we unpack the meaning of "walkable neighborhoods" to the communities in Chinatown and let their voice be heard?
"The specific structure of narrative with a specific style and set of characters and which includes a sense of completeness. Through this sharing of experience we use stories to pass on accumulated wisdom, beliefs, and values."
--National Storytelling Association
The strategy to response the mentioned issues and challenges is a multi-methods and multi-media storytelling toolkit.
Storytelling is a ago-old way to share narratives which can help communities in Chinatown communicate the complex ideas of what “walkable neighborhoods” means and values they love about Chinatown. Storytelling not only collecting people’s voice, but also make it more public. It also a public pedagogical tool which can spread the knowledge and spark the social conversation on walking topic.
Storytelling Model
A community oriented storytelling toolkit should not only collecting and sharing knowledge, but it should also enhance communities’ capabilities of building scenarios, clarify their own positions and make people aware choices, finally foster a strategic move for promoting new initiatives in decision making process.
In this case, I designed the whole strategic model which including research and practice part, and within the practice part are publicize tools and scenario building tools. publicize tools will help practitioners spread the knowledge and stories with Chinatown communities, which can help the public become more familiar with the walking issues, and build trust with the people who use this toolkit. The scenario building part will help communities gain participatory design skills and provide more design-oriented proposals.
Toolkit
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Why does it matter to the communities in Chinatown? What are the issues inside the traditional research? In this section, you will learn the situation in Chinatown, and the issues within the research and desicion-making process of measuring and promoting walkable neighborhoods.
Based on the innovational model, here is the value-oriented toolkit for practitioners to explore the feasible multi-method tools to gather communities’ everyday stories and insights. This toolkit is designed for identifying values and issues of walking in Chinatown, for making communities voice be heard by the wider public, for encouraging decision-makers and researchers to develop more adoptive plans for walkable low-income immigrants neighborhoods.
