Place It!: Collaboration through Construction
“… We are very interested in this idea of, “How do you talk about people before you talk about buildings?” That’s been a lot of the drive of the work we’ve been doing. How do you put into the center, the voice of people that are otherwise voiceless and how do you get them to actually talk about the city they want?” — Tau Tavengwa
Within our democracy, every city planner, organizer, and activist has the monumental task of creating and facilitating a process in which even the faintest voices of the public are not only captured and heard, but factored into decision making. To do this, you might not expect planners to pull out construction paper and a random collection of small objects, but that’s exactly what James Rojas is doing through Place It!.
Place It! is a civic engagement practice and method founded by Rojas, an urban planner based out of California and a graduate of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. By combining aspects of art making, playing, and story building, Place It! breaks down barriers and levels the playing field between planning “experts” and the public, and between the diverse members of the public themselves.
When I, along with a group of students and colleagues, participated in a model Place It! workshop at MIT, Rojas asked us to build our favorite childhood memory in 10 minutes using the construction paper and random objects — like corks, plastic eggs, blocks, and hair curlers. After the ten minutes were up, we each shared our name and memory in one minute. While this isn’t typical for a city meeting, it is typical of a Place It! workshop, which all start with a similar personal prompt.
After listening to everyone’s stories, the group was then asked to summarize any common themes we may have heard. We noted the common themes of family, food, nature, and physical activity. Through the physical act of building and listening, Place It! revealed each person’s values while validating both their lived experience and who they are as a person.
“Place It! emphasizes listening,” Rojas explained. “Listening is just as important as talking in the urban planning process. Through listening, we establish empathy.” By establishing empathy first, Place It! empowers participants to collaboratively problem solve.
For the second prompt, we split into teams of four and had to build our ideal city in 15 minutes using the same collection of objects. After the time was up, we shared our ideal cities in two minutes, highlighting our favorite features. Each team member was asked to imagine themselves on a future day and time somewhere in their city, which brought the models to life.
To end, we highlighted common themes and desires among all our creations. The second prompt does not always require people to build their ideal city, but will involve a specific planning problem or plan to address. From there, a planning team would work with what participants created and shared to highlight important spaces and form collective solutions.
For example, Rojas noted that Latinos often build their grandmother’s yard and added that at a recent Place It! workshop in Santa Monica, an African-American woman spoke about the removal of the beauty supply store on Pico Boulevard. “African-American women tend to talk about bonding with their elders through doing their hair. The abuela’s yard or the beauty supply store have a narrative and value to communities. We need narratives of place!”
Place It!, as a collaborative and participatory planning process, allows participants and the public to discover their built-in intuitions of place and space. Through expressing their lived experiences, memories, and imaginations, the public comes to realize that they themselves are also experts at creating meaningful spaces. By beginning with story building, sharing, and listening, the activity also allows a diverse public to bond, have fun, and empathize with one another.
As Tau Tavengwa discussed on the latest podcast episode of The Move, planners have the critical task of bringing the voice of the otherwise voiceless into the center of city planning conversations. And ultimately, Place It! is about collaboratively creating voice through a common narrative in a hands-on experience, one that can be understood regardless of language, age, education, ethnicity, and profession.
“Participants have to experience the value of diverse perspectives for solutions,” Rojas said. “They need to create a nurturing and healing community through collaboration. Building together bonds people together. ”
Originally published at themove.mit.edu on September 27, 2018.
