Community Resilience Through Two Models of Public Space Intervention: Top- Down Stakeholder Driven and Bottom-Up Grassroots Community Initiatives

In the aftermath of disaster, resilience of a community can be improved throughinterventions in public spaces. This presentation will discuss the design and ongoingresearch of two public space interventions in response to the 2011, EF5 tornadoin Joplin, MO and the 2012 Superstorm Sandy in New York/New Jersey. TheseOpen Space, Sacred Places are designed to improve resilience across individual,family, community, and social-ecological scales.Two distinct models of intervention were taken for each location. One is a topdownstakeholder driven (Joplin), the other is bottom-up community driven (NYC).Stakeholder partnerships with the university and architecture students includedgrassroots community organizations, the local municipality, private disaster responseorganization, individuals affected by the storm, businesses, disaster resistantmanufacturers, private grant foundation, the USDA Forest Service and theDepartment of Natural Resources and Civic Ecology lab at a second University.The community driven project in New York allowed for informal, grassroots interventionsto take place in five separate communities as researchers observedand documented the process before a trans-disciplinary research team offeredassistance for one of the public spaces.The diversity of the research team included the disciplines of Architecture, MusicTherapy, Civic Ecology, Engineering, Social Science, Psychology, Forestry andLandscape Architecture. Through this unique collaboration along with studentsand the respective communities the two Open Space, Sacred Places (OSSP) weredesigned and built.The Joplin OSSP, the stakeholder project, is full of symbolism and sentiment allintended to help those affected by the storm to improve resilience by movingthrough the healing process. The design weaves together four main conceptualdesign ideas derived from Worden’s four tasks of Mourning with four architecturalelements in the OSSP. These tasks describe the means by which a healthy personworks through the pain of grieving for a loved one or something lost, and movesinto the next phase of life. Architectural and natural elements symbolically representthe tasks as a person moves through the gardens.The New York OSSP, the community driven project, has little to no symbolism and ismore organic and bottom-up from the community. Research will continue throughthe next five years on the impact of the two approaches to intervention in thesepublic spaces. This presentation will discuss best practices for designing and leadingstakeholder interventions, insertion into curriculum and present to date findings ofthe comparisons of the two sites and their impact on community resilience.

Volume Editors
Alice Kimm & Jaepil Choi

ISBN
978-0-935502-91-6