Champion City Part 2: We Pounded the Pavement and This is What We Learned
As dawn crested in New Rochelle, birds stirred in their nests, delivery trucks rumbled to life, and pre-programmed coffee makers snapped into gear. Despite these quotidian going-ons, it was a special day. First, because it was May 4th (“Star Wars Day” if you’re not a geek) and so anyone who wanted to talk like Yoda could, without being completely ostracized. But more importantly, it was the kick-off day for Sprint 1 of New Rochelle’s Mayors’ Challenge and we were excited to get started!
Working on a survey we had been, and that survey was hopefully going to tell us a lot. We wanted to hear from New Ro residents how engaged they currently felt in the city planning process, how engaged they wanted to be, what kinds of co-design opportunities they would like to participate in if offered the chance, how comfortable they felt around technology and so on. Our findings would help us test our assumption that our city’s residents wanted to participate in the physical design of their city if given the opportunity, and determine what kinds of technologies (if any) they might like to use during that process.
Our team (made of local nonprofit reps and City employees) posted ourselves at two locations: downtown, along Main Street and in front of the main library branch, and on the North End, near the Starbucks to ensure we caught a nice cross-section of residents. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish. We administered our survey by phone, either by asking the questions and typing in the answers for the residents being surveyed, or allowing the resident to scan a QR code to pull the survey up on their own phone. This is what we learned….
- Residents liked being approached by our team, informed of our project, and engaged in questions about their city. This is good to remember: whatever we propose for our final project might have greater success if we can easily bring immersive media co-design experiences to the public rather than expecting the public to come to the City for those experiences.
- It was really, really easy to engage residents when they had cell phones, and almost everyone had a cell phone. Getting people to take the survey was a cinch as soon as we said, “Oh, just take a picture of the QR code with your phone!” A lot of immersive media works on cell phones, so that’s something for our team to chew on as well.
- Some residents didn’t know they had the right to provide feedback to their city regarding the built environment and urban planning projects. It’s obvious that there are certain individuals that are really savvy on how to give feedback regarding city planning projects… but how can immersive media help reach the folks who had absolutely no idea they could come to a design charette or public meeting (or the inability to come due to transportation, child care challenges, etc.)?
- When asked to choose between two options, an overwhelming majority is telling us that they would rather help their city design a new public space using immersive media technology tools (like virtual reality and augmented reality) than more typical design charette tools (such as brainstorming with Lego blocks or art supplies). This is not to say that more tactile tools used to engage residents in idea generation should completely be abandoned, but it does make a case for adding immersive technology tools to the urban planning community co-design toolkit!
- People 100% don’t want to be surveyed when they haven’t yet had their morning cup of coffee. (Key finding from our team positioned in front of the Wykagyl Starbucks). We heard you loud and clear on that one! Sorry for holding up your java fix.
If you live in New Rochelle and haven’t yet taken the survey, we’re keeping it open through the beginning of August and would really appreciate your input.
May the force be with you!
This is one in a series of posts about New Rochelle’s participation in the Bloomberg Philanthropies 2018 Mayors’ Challenge.
