Community Engagement Lessons From the “Open Streets” Trend
In Durham, North Carolina, a model for community listening
By Aidil Ortiz
The pandemic pushed all sectors of society to think differently about their work, and at city transportation departments across the country, the most common models sought to give residents safe ways to move freely outside: Slow Streets, Shared Streets, Open Streets. As the Durham, North Carolina Transportation Department pursued this model with its “Shared Streets” project, it had to recognize that this was harder to do in some places than others. In East Durham, a deeply resilient low-income neighborhood in the urban tier, residents’ most powerful memories about their relationship with transportation initiatives have often been related to trauma and harm.
The City of Durham wanted to help make the selected streets in East Durham safer for people to bike, play, walk, and roll during the pandemic. Yet the history of urban renewal, including the building of Durham Freeway 147 through the neighborhood, as well as difficult-to-access traffic control options and sidewalk disrepair, left a lot of residents skeptical about the City’s intentions or its ability to deliver on what community residents suggested to make Shared Streets a reality.
To overcome the obstacles of community trust, Durham’s Transportation Department chose to partner with a local cultural organizing non-profit called SpiritHouse, which has organizers who have lived or worked in East Durham for over 20 years, and where I am a longtime member. One of the ways in which SpiritHouse works is by using a methodology called “popular education.” Brazilian educator Paulo Friere created this methodology while working with people who lived in poverty and were politically marginalized. The popular education model centers on the idea that everyone teaches and everyone learns, seeks to create conversations that are inclusive and accessible, leverages lived experiences as an expertise, and uses many modes for communication, such as art or small group storytelling to share data and history. In this effort, SpiritHouse’s process centered the residents that lived on the streets that could be impacted by the Shared Streets concept.
Before this process began, SpiritHouse required that the Durham Transportation Department agree to what we saw as a critical aspect of building trust: If residents said NO — that they did not want any of the Shared Streets programming on their street — then the Department of Transportation would obey that no. Too often, in Durham and cities around the country, city-initiated programs or infrastructure plans do not give community members the option to stop or turn down what the city is offering. That creates a lot of hesitation around participating in community outreach. Who wants to show up to a process only to have their sincere desires ignored or run over? Or worse, superficially addressed?
The SpiritHouse process included three workshops for the residents of each of the five East Durham streets that were being impacted by the Shared Streets program. The first round of workshops was to identify history, concerns, and other issues with people using their residential street while not in a car. The second round was to identify solutions from a menu of options that could be implemented quickly and within budget. The third round was a “build day” where residents and volunteers installed the ideas that they had drafted together in the prior meeting. The socially distanced meetings were all held outdoors with food, music, art, interpreters, and local residents of the community facilitating the meetings to collect data. A local Black artist was contracted to render a design concept for all the roundabouts and curb extensions. All of the design decisions were arrived at by full consensus. The overwhelming majority of the effort was funded by a grant from the National Association of City Transportation Officials that the City of Durham won to pursue this work.
Through this process, the community gained more awareness about how transportation projects get done in the city and how many people and departments impact decisions like speed hump installation. They also learned things like the time of year certain paints can be installed on streets and the language for various design features.
For organizers and elected officials, from this process, there were a number of lessons learned. One was that community-rooted nonprofits have a hard time partnering with government departments because of operational hindrances, like the long time it takes to move money to pay for supplies that move the work forward. Also, when multiple government departments have to review something, it can add delays to the work that shatter community trust and hard-earned momentum. The government may not lose much from these reputational risks, but nonprofits that prioritize relationships as their greatest asset may not want to harm that asset for a temporary project.
While “shared streets” projects surrounding the pandemic were primarily focused on making safe outdoor space for communities, the lessons of this work can guide other efforts, like Vision Zero. There are four major recommendations that came out of SpiritHouse’s Shared Street workshops that are relevant to eliminating pedestrian injury and deaths within the mission of Vision Zero:
First, it is critical for transportation departments to fund the primary relationship holders of those most impacted by unsafe conditions. Out-of-town consultants don’t and won’t cut it. Which partners are rooted in the community or population you seek to impact? Have you invited them to a partnership where you co-design and shape the effort together? Have you identified money to contract the expertise of these organizations?
Second, transportation departments must make room for the concerns and solutions that get brought up in its community engagement process, but which they did not plan for within the effort. Otherwise, the outreach effort will look transactional and superficial. In the SpiritHouse process, we wanted to talk about tactical urbanism with Shared Streets and ended up needing to have a conversation about the eligibility process for street humps and stop signs.
Third, a transportation department engaging with a community should take the time to assess what it can reasonably offer based on the timeline, the capacity of staff and volunteers, and budget. Just asking “what do you want?” without offering ready solutions is a recipe for the community to be disappointed, and to harm the reputation of organizations with whom the city is partnered. In Durham, a sheet with pictures and descriptions was offered to community members so that they could note where they wanted each feature on a street map. This gave clarity about what and where residents wanted certain elements.
Last, a transportation department should go into these efforts with the ability to hear and honor no if it wants to build trust and respect between residents and municipalities.
By taking these steps, transportation departments can listen to communities, begin to repair past harm and mistrust, and create streets that truly serve the people who live on them.
Aidil Ortiz is a tribe member of SpiritHouse, a multigenerational Black women-led cultural organizing tribe with a rich legacy of using art, culture, and media to support the empowerment and transformation of communities most impacted by racism, poverty, gender inequity, criminalization, and incarceration. She is also the principal at Aidilisms, a consultancy focused on supporting government departments, non-profits, and communities wishing to make equity-driven systems, policy, and environmental changes. As a long-time facilitator, trainer, organizer, and technical assistance provider that has worked on local, state, and federal efforts, Aidil is currently implementing equitable community engagement strategies on mobility issues.
