Community Engagement in Design and Planning
Community engagement is a critical element of efforts to improve the built environment because it ensures that concerns of community residents are considered in projects and plans, strengthens local partnerships, and builds social capital. Improvements to
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ction Over a twenty-five-year period, residents of the El Sereno community in Los Angeles opposed efforts of investors seeking to build luxury homes on A.L. Dannenberg et al. (eds.), Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-036-1_19, © Island Press 2011
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STRATEGIES FOR HEALTHY PLACES: A TOOLBOX
the area known as Elephant Hill. After years of community organizing— canvassing door to door, developing a broad-based coalition, and mobilizing supporters to attend public hearings—residents declared victory after the city council agreed to settle a lawsuit with the developers by buying the twentyacre site for $6 million and creating a park there (Figure 19.1). Opposition efforts had reignited in 2004 not only to preserve the area as open space but also to encourage public safety and counter threats of gentrification. Residents are pleased that a part of one of Los Angeles’ last undeveloped hillsides will remain open space for this working-class Latino community that has few parks. Elva Yañez, the El Sereno resident who led the most recent efforts to preserve Elephant Hill, hailed the settlement as a victory for environmental justice: “After a long and hard fought struggle, the residents of this community have been afforded the environmental protections that are rightfully theirs. We are pleased that this poorly planned project is not moving forward and environmental justice has prevailed” (Contreras and Sanchez 2009; Elva Yañez, personal communication, May 20, 2010).
Organized, engaged community members, like the El Sereno residents described here, have the potential to create healthy and sustainable built environments. Direct organizing, public education, policy advocacy, and litigation are among the wide range of tactics stakeholders can employ. Community engagement can positively influence how streets are designed, where retail outlets are located, what services and products are available, how dense new developments will be, and to what extent infrastructure—such as affordable housing, parks, or public transit—will be available and accessible to residents. Community engagement is an effective mechanism for creating lasting health improvements and an essential ingredient for those working to create healthy and sustainable communities (Minkler and Wallerstein 2005; Roussos and Fawcett 2000). It is the basis for a healthy democracy in which all people have a meaningful voice in shaping the places where they live, work, play, and learn. This chapter describes the basics of community engagement as it relates to the built environment, explores when and why community engagement should be used, and provides useful tools to support community engagement efforts with the goal of creating healthy, sustainable, and equitable built environments. Despite the positive influence that community residents can have on the nature and impact of projects in the built environment, land-use and transportation decisions do not always take the needs and expectations
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