Planting Imagination: Community Co-Design for Toronto’s Chinatown West

Planting Imagination ran from 2021 to 2023 (during a pandemic recovery period) in Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood. It brought together a group of local Chinatown community organizations and University researchers to recruit 60 diverse ‘Chinatown Activators’ (CAs) and six Community Facilitators (CFs) from across the community. CFs and Cas used virtual reality (VR) technology to co-design a local community garden and develop new visions for the future of Chinatown. Using cutting-edge VR visioning and the principles of the Collaborative Community Engagement Model (CCEM) co-design, the Chinatown community was provided with a platform to virtually envision the future of their own community and neighbourhood as a collaborative process. In doing so, they explored how we might transform the way we build and mobilize communities, (re)construct community identities, and strengthen the community’s resilience to promote social justice and equity. This process strengthened community solidarity to enable local residents to more readily steward the future of the built environment and respond collectively to challenging events like the pandemic. Bringing together diverse disciplines and practices (including architecture, cultural psychiatry, interior design, immersive technology, computer science and public health), Planting Imagination developed models of therapeutic VR co-creation delivered through a series of online and in-person multi-lingual community co-design and co-fabrication sessions that prioritized the communities and neighbourhoods disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.98

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6