A Call for Spatial Extension Agents
Shannon Criss, University of Kansas
The coronavirus has demonstrated the depth of our society’s inequality, not just through mortality rates that are having inequitable impact by race and class but also through evidences of inequitable access to the basic human needs: food, housing, healthcare, jobs. Though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention don’t share coronavirus data by race, city and state data indicate that COVID-19 cases are heavily concentrated in communities of color. “In Chicago, 23% of residents are Black but account for 58% of COVID-19 deaths. In Milwaukee, the black population are roughly one-quarter of the population and roughly one-half of COVID-19 deaths. In Louisiana, 7 out of 10 COVID-19 victims have been Black.”¹ In California, Latinos represent 70% of all coronavirus related deaths within the demographic of those 18- to 49-years-old, despite making up just 43% of the population.²
Health, like wealth, is distributed unevenly. Our country has chosen to burden individuals with safeguarding their own health rather than it being a societal responsibility. The affluent class lives in areas with clean air, clean water, open green spaces and ready access to healthy food options while people experiencing poverty dwell within underserved neighborhoods. The health outcomes of different groups are driven by the social determinants of health, through access (or not) to healthy food, affordable housing, quality education, employment, transportation, and medical care.³ Many of these determinants are spatial, driven by the nature of the built environment. This persistent bias further degrades health, and in this time of coronavirus the problem is exacerbated.
Sociologists and epidemiologists say that these social inequities increase patients’ vulnerability to coronavirus — from asthma, to diabetes, to HIV — and is appearing at higher rates in communities of color. “African Americans have twice the rate of heart disease, stroke and diabetes compared to Caucasians. They suffer from heart failure, asthma and hypertension at higher rates and earlier in their lives. Over decades, these disparities have compounded a life expectancy that is four years shorter for Black Americans than for Whites.”⁴ In some communities it has been proven that the life expectancy gap can be as high as 21 years.⁵ African Americans are less likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home and more likely to use public transportation; to live in multi-generational households exposing elderly family members to the virus; and more likely to live in food- and health-care deserts — neighborhoods without access to healthy food and without doctors or medical clinics — increasing the odds of Diabetes Type II and heart disease where the virus increases the morbidity of their cases.
There is a long history of discriminatory policies coupled with inadequacies of the built environment over time. COVID-19 has disrupted society such that we can no longer ignore the deep failures of our policies that shape the built environment. And in this instance, people of means have experienced disruptions to their own health, their incomes, and their lifestyles. Our shared experience with this indiscriminate virus has laid bare the fact that, at some level, we are all in this together: we have shared a taste of what it might be like to not have food on the shelves, a healthcare system that is overwhelmed, a loss of income, and financial vulnerability. Are we ready to truly be more empathetic with those who have historically experienced such inadequacies for generations? Is it possible to imagine healthier, safer and socially-just urban environments for a stronger, collective public health? What ingredients are needed for a true collaboration that changes social and racial equity dynamics?⁶ Are architects, designers, planners, urban designers — spatial agents of civic life — capable and willing to extend their role in embracing partnerships with those that are embedded with community-based knowledge about the specific day-to-day challenges?
This public health crisis of historic proportions has uncovered the fragility of not only our health care systems but also the very nature of systems that support our vital human needs. The value of dense and connected urban food and mobility networks has never been more necessary. It is reasonable to question our widely accepted urban models in view of lessons being learned from the pandemic, where urbanists and space-makers are challenged to re-imagine concepts about community relationships and adaptions to physical space. Community residents and business owners can provide the experiential insight and innovative thinking needed to help guide solutions for the new-forming normal daily life we are creating — collective-thinking and building on experiential knowledge are essential. “In order to avoid replicating power structures that disempower groups already struggling with diminished opportunities, those involved in coalition building must intentionally and carefully consider how to address leadership and racial and economic equity within their coalitions.”⁷ Could spatial designers redefine themselves to be coalition builders? When community members are truly a part of all aspects of change-making within food, healthy lifestyles and health systems, collective groups can work together across race and class to make positive changes.⁸
For effective collaboration to occur, we must share equally decision-making power where expert-citizens are sitting at the same table as citizen-experts. In the book Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, Till, Awan, and Schneider lay out the premise that to truly transform existing flawed systems, an inclusive process that shares decision-making power offers new means of altering our urban spaces — where collectively new forms of spatial agency are derived. “By working with the beyond, the everyday becomes an Inescapable component of working inland with space simply because it propels the architect into the territory of encounter and the unfamiliar. These instances of space that are found outside the rules and regulations that typically govern the production of space open up a more variable understanding and interpretation of space: space that is open to changing conditions and space that allows choice.”⁹ Architects and designers are challenged to practice what we call participatory design which requires they un-do years of design training that has established a privileged mindset as the expert — controlling the design process. Architects as spatial agents must be willing to embrace the messiness of participation and use the design-thinking process as tools to voice and expose the embedded knowledge of our expert-citizens. Practitioners committed to transforming community health design must understand that good practice happens at being present and building trust over time, being willing to listen and take action to find innovative solutions to the health disparities implicit in a community through the insight and experiences of the community members — those survivors of COVID-19 who are experientially understanding the needs and tools of their own survival.
May our discipline be transformed to follow a long-standing model of extension agents? Extension agents can be found throughout the world where they usually work for government agencies and land-grant universities. “Whether local citizens want to learn more about a topic, need someone to guide them through a process, want to develop local partnerships, desire to make community changes or just need an answer to a question, the Extension staff is there. Extension agents’ primary goal is to provide transformational education for local citizens.¹⁰ Innovative models are there; expert-citizens can apply themselves as Spatial Extension Agents alongside their community partners — forming a new vision of who we are as we emerge into the new normal.¹¹ Participatory design is necessary for the profession of architecture to maintain its relevance, practicing participation in an ethical and authentic way to be viable.
1. Ignaczak, Nina Misuraca and Michael Hobbes. “Black People Are Dying of COVID-19 at Alarming Rates. Here’s Why.” Huffpost, 8 April 2020. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-people-are-dying-of-covid-19-at-alarming-rates-heres-why_n_5e8cdb76c5b62459a930512a
2. California Health Department COVID-19: Data, https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/Race-Ethnicity.aspx
4. Ignaczak, Nina Misuraca and Michael Hobbes. “Black People Are Dying of COVID-19 at Alarming Rates. Here’s Why.” Huffpost, 8 April 2020. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-people-are-dying-of-covid-19-at-alarming-rates-heres-why_n_5e8cdb76c5b62459a930512a
5. “The Wyandotte Health Equity Action Transformation Report” by the Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Ohio State University, 2016.
6. Sands, Catherine, et al “Building an Airplane While Flying It: One Community’s Experience with Community Food Transformation,” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 15 July 2016, p91.
7. Ammons, S. (2014). Shining a light in dark places: Policy brief: Raising up the work of Southern women of color in the food systems.
8. Arnstein, S.R. (1969). “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224.
9. Till, Jeremy, Nishat Awan and Tatjana Schneider. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Routledge, 2011, p.70.
10. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/careers/what-will-i-do-as-a-county-extension-agent
11. https://www.aiaee.org/attachments/article/160/Swanson%2013.3-1.pdf
