A more sustainable Chinatown in Boston without dirty street
As a Chinese, Chinatown always gives us a sense of belonging. But unfortunately, the reputation of Boston’s Chinatown is getting worse. This is heartbreaking. I started looking for the reasons behind this phenomenon. (Overseas Chinese were forced to move out, law and order issues, etc.) But many of them seem to be caused by force majeure. As a designer, I initially decided to focus on some of the issues that can be solved by design. For example, the rubbish of the land, through the feedback of the tripadvisor website, is obviously one of the reasons for the bad reputation of Chinatown. Through preliminary observations, waste paper accounts for a large proportion of these wastes. According to the survey, 85% of the waste paper can be completely recycled and reused. They are so scattered in the Chinese city, which not only causes pollution, but also destroys the image of Chinatown. It is also a serious waste of resources.
Through my field trips and statistics, waste paper on the streets is indeed the largest number of pollution projects.
How did this phnomenon appear? I started research related information and build a problem map.The low status of Chinese workers in the early days has led to the urban planning of Chinatown also tending to labor-intensive design. This has led to a variety of problems such as traffic and the environment. Today’s government seems to want to make some reforms through economic means, such as the development of new homes in Chinatown, but this has led to other conflicts and problems.
How were these pollutions solved? I started looking for existing solutions and trying to assess whether they are sustainable. First of all, the Boston government, I did not find a timetable for Chinatown in their public street service plan. Instead, two Chinese non-profit organizations almost exclusively contracted the cleanliness of Chinatown streets. They will apply for funds from the government to clean up themselves, but I am curious why the government does not come to do what the government should do? I will have an answer in the next survey.
I started to learn about other stakeholders, and my first concern was the store owner on the streets of Chinatown. They live here as residents and are also profitable here. So I think that waste paper on the ground will have the biggest impact on their business and life. Through my investigation, it is true that most store owners believe that the waste paper problem has had a certain impact on them. But they don’t have a good solution. Most of the treatments are just sweeping the garbage to the corner of the garbage gathering, and they are not willing to spend too much time and energy to deal with these small and annoying fragments. Like most Chinese people, they can bear it.
“We will handle our own site well, but we are also weak in public space.”
“All the trash cans are full. This is just a piece of paper and it doesn’t matter. Everyone is doing this.”
“We will clean up the main roads and the gates of Chinatown, but the cleaning cars can’t get in because of traffic problems. If it is too high to hire professionals to collect and clean up the garbage every day, this problem can only be left to residents themselves.”
These attitudes show different motivations from different stakeholders. People are more concerned with other issues like survival condition than environmental issues, but such pressures are all transferred to volunteers.
As we can see from the ecosystem map. Visitors, shop owners and local residents are all consciously or unconsciously making more waste paper. Basically, only volunteers really want to solve problems, and there is a lack of communication and communication between them. While the volunteers solve the problem, other stakeholders create more problems. The problem has gradually become worse. At the same time, the garbage cleaning and recycling of volunteer groups is not professional and sustainable, and their ultimate means is to seek the help of the government. But the government cannot respond to the volunteers so frequently. In the end, only emergency services and financial assistance can be provided.
The interior of Chinatown must unite to build this community better. They don’t want to be defeated by capital. They should not be self-defeating, but in some way reflect their higher value to show the rationality of the community’s continued existence. And this rationality will affect the tourists and at the same time reduce the burden on the government.
More specific pain points are shown right now. More than 61%of the street waste paper cannot be professionally processed into garbage rather than renewable resources. Not only caused pollution of the ecological environment, the deterioration of culture and living environment, but also caused a lot of resources to be wasted. And this behavior continues uninterrupted every day. Then all stakeholders have their own problems behind this big pain point. Then I got some insights at this stage.
All in all, the follow-up design philosophy must be based on these three insights:
MORE AWARENESS NEEDED
RE-ESTABLISH A SUSTAINABLE, HEALTHY COMMUNITY
CORRECT INDUCTION AND MOTIVATION
My initial idea about solution is kind of building a net for each stakeholder. Enhance their respective connections and collaborations to create a blueprint for problem solving. I have already got a relatively macro pain point based on previous research, but the specific behaviors and related issues of various stakeholders in the whole process have not been clarified.
Based on this point, I set up a simple persona and journey map to try to understand as more detail as possible. I chose one volunteer as hero of this journey, because based on the ecosystem-map we have known that the volunteers are the only group who really care about the street clean problem. I using one the of life to draw the journey and I noticed behaviors of different stakeholders all came from different motivation. Then how to link these motivations and change collective behaviors have become the hardest point of this stage.
I got the inspiration from mascot culture, intensive façade from Chinatown stores and feeding desire. Eventually I got a similar trash can like a mascot (lucky cat or could be customized), which is a small device suspended on the façade of local stores. The ideal situation is the device will eat all waste paper on the road. This device would be bought by store owners. This device has two filtration devices through which the device can obtain relatively pure waste paper. Store owners also have responsibility in set up, design, maintenance and repair. All stakeholders would use this device consciously but not throwing to the street anymore. In another hand, the shape of the device and the cultural output behind it enhance the unity of the community.
When this device is full, it will notice the volunteers automatic, meanwhile it would be detectable by certain digital platform which will be easier for volunteer organizations to check the statues of the device. Then after volunteers collecting the waste paper. What will happen?
Basically, they have two options. First, refer from previous method, asking help from government. But the difference as before which is, they will have higher collection efficiency, and the number of calls to government help may be significantly reduced as well. Thereby saving human resources.
The other more sustainable way is cooperation with Massart. After collecting a certain amount of waste paper materials, volunteers contact Massart from time to time to consult the school’s demand for the material. The collected waste paper is then handed over to Massart. According to statistics, a Visual language course can consume about 300 pieces of waste paper material. Through their creativity, students turn garbage into works of art and even products.
After that, Massart can choose to return these artworks to Chinatown. Those in need can obtain them free of charge through Chinatown’s non-profit, or keep these reborn artworks as part of the student portfolio and even have a chance to make a profit. If the school asks for too much waste paper material, don’t worry, call the government to recycle it again. Because they are waste paper that has been collected, it is convenient and easy.
Thanks for reading!
