Kofi Boone--Samples of work

Samples of Work Kofi Boone, Associate Professor Department of Landscape Architecture NC State University, College of Design 2014

Curriculum Vitae Samples of Work Writing Sample

Table of Contents

KOFI BOONE

address Department of Landscape Architecture NC State University College of Design Campus Box 7701 Raleigh, NC 27695-7701 tel e url

919.515.8349 kmboone@ncsu.edu «URLs»

Profile Kofi Boone is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University, College of Design. Kofi is a member of the PhD faculty, the College of Natural Reousrces faculty, and the Africana Studies faculty. Kofi is a member of the Academy of Outstanding Teachers and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Emerging Issues. Kofi focuses on the changing nature of communities, and developing tools for enhanced community engagement and design. Kofi works in the landscape context of environmental justice, and his research includes the use of new media as a means of increasing community power in design and planning processes. Kofi has explored community resilience, human health, environmental education, cultural landscape preservation, ecosystem services, and equitable development. Kofi explores these issues locally, regionally, and internationally as director of the College of Design’s Ghana International Design Studio program. His work includes multidisciplinary partnerships, and the collaborative contributions of diverse professionals. His peer reviewed scholarship has been featured in Intensions, Tourism Geographies, PRISM, and a forthcoming article in the Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning.

Professor Boone specializes in community design, urban design, design communications, advanced media, and international issues. Recent research efforts include “Cell phone Diaries”; a multi-disciplinary research project empowering stakeholders to document their own narratives of place using mobile technology.

Cellphone Diaries is featured in Community Matters: Service Learning in Engaged Design and Planning (Routledge, 2014). The African American Music Trail (AAMT), a project developed in collaboration with the North Carolina Arts Council and the Kinston Community Center for the Arts, is translating the rich music heritage of eastern North Carolina into places, linkages, and design elements for creative community economic development.

Professor Boone teaches site analysis and planning, landscape architecture theory and criticism, advanced landscape architecture communications, advanced design studios, and Ghana study abroad summer studio. He won the College award for outstanding extension service in 2008, Department Professor of the Year in 2009, and the Opal Mann Green Engagement Scholarship Award in 2010. Professor Boone is also the 2011 recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award, and is a member of the Academy of Outstanding Teachers.

Professor Boone is a frequent contributor to regional and national conferences having presented his work at the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) National Conference and EXPO, The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), The Association of American Geographers (AAG), and many other scholarly venues. Additionally, he is a contributor to popular media outlets being featured on National Public Radio and The Huffington Post.

KOFI BOONE

Employment

Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture,NC State University, 2011-present Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture,NC State University, 2004-2011 Site Designer, JJR, 1995-2004

Education

Master of Landscape Architecture, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1995 The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources, 1992

Awards

Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council Award, Central CAC, 2013 Outstanding Teacher, NC State University, 2011 Member of Academy of Outstanding Teachers, NC State University, 2011-present Opal Mann Green Engagement and Scholarship Award, NC State University, 2010 Professor of the Year, Department of Landscape Architecture, NC State University, 2009 Outstanding Extension Service, NC State University 2008 Diversity Award, NC State University, 2007 Research, Extension and Engagement Award, NC State University, 2006

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

Boone, Kofi “Disembodied voices, embodied places: mobile technology and interpreting place”, Landscape and Urban Planning special issue: Critical Visualization (under review) C. Kline, L. Johnson, K. Boone “Visitor awareness of local issues at emerging destinations: experiences gleaned from a study abroad course in Ghana”, Tourism Review International, Vol. 17, pp-211-222 Boone, Kofi “Cellphone Diaries: Mobile Technology and Self-Authored Digital Videos in Asset Mapping”, PRISM: Journal of Regional Engagement, Fall 2012 Boone, Kofi, Carol Kline, Laura Johnson, Lee-Anne Milburn and Kathleen Rieder, “Development of Visitor Identity through Study Abroad in Ghana”, Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism, Space, Place and Environment, May 2012 “The Resilience of Ruinous Futures: Race, Urbanism, and Ecology in the post-Jim Crow South”, Uncommon Ground: Everyday Aesthetics and the Intensionality of the Public Realm, Intensions, Issue 2.0, Spring 2009

Book Chapters

Amoroso, Nadia Representing Landscapes-The Digital, Routledge, NY (not yet published) Bose, Mallika Paul Horrigan et al. (eds.) “Recalling and remembering community— Cellphone Diaries” Community Matters: Service Learning in Engaged Design and Planning, Routledge, 2014

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KOFI BOONE

Book Contributions

Foster, Kelleann Becoming a Landscape Architect: A Guide to Careers in Design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, NJ 2010

Peer-reviewed Posters

“Forces shaping Ghana’s cities: Passive, Active and Reactive Urbanism”, Emerging Landscapes Conference, University of Westminster, UK, June 2010

Book Reviews

Hester, Randolph T. 2006 Design for Ecological Democracy, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, Journal of Planning Literature, Volume 23, Number 1, August 2008

Peer-reviewed Publications

Climate Change, Design and Land Planning: Towards the Development of and Application of Best Practices in North Carolina, Position paper submitted to the Chancellor, October 2008 Is Green the New Black? Exploring the Disconnect Between Communities of Color and Green Design Influence, College of Design Student Publication, 2008

Conference Proceedings

K. Boone, E. McCoy, B. Monette “Integrating Natural Processes into the City Fabric of the Global American South”, Cities, Rivers, and Cultures of Change: Rethinking and Restoring the Environments of the Global American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014 “The Effects of Small Group Participation in Creating Livable Environments”, Session Chair: Henry Sanoff, EDRA 44 Providence, Providence, RI 2013 “Designing Out of Poverty: Lessons learned from International Service Learning Projects in Ghana, West Africa”, EDRA 43 Seattle, Seattle, WA 2012 “Racialized Topography As Generative Design Tool: Community Design in Situations with Inequitable Land Patterns”, with Celen Pasalar, CELA 2010, Maastricht, Netherlands “Triggers for Ecological Thinking: Alternative Pathways to Environmental Awareness in Community Design Process”, with Celen Pasalar, CELA 2010, Maastricht, Netherlands “Homeland Insecurity: Can Agritourism and Landscape Architecture Work Together to Preserve Rural Heritage and Foster Economic Development?”, with Carol Kline CELA 2007 “Justice or Just Us? Exploring the Overlap Between Landscape Architecture and Environmental Justice”, CELA 2005, Athens, GA, 2005

Peer-reviewer

Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning, Elsevier Buildings-Open Access Journal, MDPI AG

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KOFI BOONE

Funded Research Projects

“Social Justice as it pertains to crime on the American Tobacco Trail” with NC RailTrails, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, 2013-present “Collaborative Design Strategies: Community Sustainability and Health in Peri-Urban Areas”, Faculty Strategic Funds, 2013 “Transferred:Translated:Transformed: Learning from journaling in Ghana, West Africa”, Faculty Development Grant, 2010-present Multidisciplinary Faculty Research and Professional Development Grant, “On Place: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 319 Grant, NC Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NC NEMO), 2009-2010 A Framework for Multidisciplinary Exploration of Place-Based Narratives”, with Robin Dodsworth and Kermit Bailey, NC State University, Raleigh, NC, 2009-2010 Creative Economies Grant, “African American Music Trail: Kinston Pilot Study”, with Pat Fitzgerald, NC Arts Council, 2009 Research, Extension and Engagement Grant, James Street Area, Kannapolis, NC 2008 Research, Extension and Engagement Grant, SPERNA Heritage Trail, Raleigh, NC2008 Research, Extension and Engagement Grant, WEB DuBois Historic Campus, Wake Forest, NC2007 Research, Extension and Engagement Grant, Kinston Waterfront NOW!, 2006 Faculty Research and Professional Development Grant, PLACE: Networks, 2005 Africa Project, Grant Award, 2005 Southern Agro-Medicine Center Discretionary Grant, North Carolina Mountain Farmscapes, 2004

University and Academic Service Activities

Faculty Fellow, Institute for Emerging Issues, 2014-present Acting Department Head, Spring 2013 Associate Department Head, 2013-present Member, College of Design Promotion and Tenure Committee, 2011-present Presenter, Chancellor’s Visit to the College of Design, 2012 Coordinator, Department of Landscape Architecture/College of Natural Resources Joint Faculty Meeting, 2012 Director, Ghana International Design Studio, 2011-present Presenter, College of Design Leadership Council, 2011 Curator, Master of Landscape Architecture Accreditation Gallery Show, 2010 Member, CEST Land Use Working Group, NC State University, 2010 Member, College of Design Leadership Survey Committee, 2010 Curator, Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Accreditation Gallery Show, 2009 Member, Africa Advisory Group, 2008-present Senator, NC State Faculty Senate, 2008-2009 Member, Institute for Emerging Issues Working Group, 2008-present Member, Urban Serving Universities Health Task Force, 2008-present Member, Department of Landscape Architecture Faculty Search Committee, 20082009 Member, College of Design Courses and Curriculum Committee, 2007-present Chair, Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Admissions Committee, 2007-present

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KOFI BOONE

Co-Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture Student Award Committee, 2007present Curator, “Place, Artifact, Motif”, Ghana Study Abroad Student Gallery Show, 2007 Member, Leisure Studies Summit Planning Committee, 2007 Member, Faculty Resource Team, Hunt Library Charrette, 2007 Panelist, College of Design Conference “Designing a Sustainable Region”, 2007 Faculty Advisor, African American Design Student Association, 2006 – 2009 Member, Department of Landscape Architecture Department Head Search Committee, 2005-2006 Member, Department of Landscape Architecture Faculty Search Committee, 20052006 Member, College of Design Conference Committee, 2005 – present Co-Director, Art + Design Ghana Studio, 2005 - present Faculty Coordinator, LAR Department Charrette, Holden Beach, NC 2005 Curator, Landscape Architecture Alumni, Faculty and Student Show, 2005 Curator, “Amee!” Ghana Study Abroad 2005 Student Exhibition”, 2005 Member, College of Design Awards Committee,2004 – present Member, College of Design K-12 Taskforce, 2004 Member, Graduate Faculty, 2004 – present

Professional Service Activities

Member, American Institute of Architects Sustainable Design Assessment Team (AIA S/UDAT), Covington, KY 2013 Consultant, North Carolina Central University Campus Community Garden Vision Plan, 2012 Member, American Institute of Architects Urban Design Assistance Team (AIA R/UDAT), Pratt City, 2011 Consultant, Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park, Wilson, NC, 2010 Consultant, Kinston Music Park, Kinston, NC, 2010-present HALS Liason, NCASLA, 2010-2011 Consultant, Town Common Master Plan, City of Greenville, NC, 2009-2010 Consultant, Town of Clinton Public Art Plan, Clinton, NC. 2009-2010 Member, Cultural Master Plan Board, Durham, NC, 2009-2010 Member, Raleigh Public Art and Design Board, 2009-2010 Juror, Moore Square Design Competition, Raleigh, NC, 2009 Consultant, African American Music Trail Pilot, Kinston, NC 2009 Member, NCASLA HALS committee, 2006-present Member, Resource Team, Open Space Leadership Mayor’s Institute, 2006 Consultant, Public Art Master Plan for Parrish Street, Durham, NC, 2006 – 2008 Member, American Institute of Architects Sustainable Design Assessment Team (AIA SDAT), Oklahoma City, 2005 Curator, ASLA North Carolina Chapter Professional Awards Gallery Show, 2003 and 2005 Member, American Institute of Architects Urban Design Assistance Team (AIA R/UDAT), Randallstown, 2003 Member, ASLA North Carolina Chapter Professional Awards Jury, 2002 – 2004

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KOFI BOONE

Invited Lectures and Presentations

Presenter, “Towards Social Resilience” American Society of Landscape ArchitectsNew Jersey Chapter, Annual Meeting 2015 Presenter, “Geospatial analysis of physical and socio-economic factors impacting safety on the American Tobacco Trail”, College of Natural Resources, May 2014 Panelist, “New Forms of Design Practice” SREE Scholarship Symposium, 2014 Presenter, “NC State and Ghana 2013-2014”, Friday Forum, School of Architecture Panelist, Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, New York, 2012 Panelist, “International Service-Learning as Revolutionary Pedagogy: Design Projects of Community and Consciousness” Working Group (Chair: Dr, Henry Sanoff), Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) 43 Seattle, Emergent Placemaking, 2012 Panelist, Imagining America National Conference, Minneapolis/St. Paul, 2011 Panelist, “Landscape Architecture Leadership for Challenges of the 21st Century”, ASLA 2010 Annual Meeting & Expo, Washington, DC Panelist, “Engaging Community to Preserve Rural Heritage and Foster Economic Development”, Civic Tourism III, National Association of Interpretation, 2010 (presentation accepted, did not present) Presenter, “Forces shaping Ghana’s cities: Passive, Active and Reactive Urbanism”, Emerging Landscapes Conference, University of Westminster, UK, June 2010 (presentation accepted, did not present) Panelist, “Creating Place”, North Carolina Arts Council, Raleigh, NC 2010 Presenter, “Racialized Topography As Generative Design Tool: Community Design in Situations with Inequitable Land Patterns”, CELA 2010, Maastricht, Netherlands Presenter, “Triggers for Ecological Thinking: Alternative Pathways to Environmental Awareness in Community Design Process”, CELA 2010, Maastricht, Netherlands Presenter, “Why I Draw and How”, Advanced Drawing Forum, College of Design, 2010 Presenter, “Design in Context”, D103, College of Design, 2010 Presenter, “Landscape Architecture and Heritage Tourism”, School of Business, NC Central University, Durham, NC, 2010 Presenter, “South Park East Raleigh Heritage Trail Concepts”, Central CAC Meeting, Raleigh, NC 2009 Panelist, “Diversity and Sustainability in the Landscape Architecture Field”, University of Michigan Landscape Architecture Centennial Celebration, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009 Presenter, “The Fourth ‘R’: Repair”, Landscape Architecture Faculty Lecture, College of Design, 2009 Panelist, “Landscape, Environmental Justice, and Sustainability”, Unspoken Borders Conference, University of Pennsylvania, 2008 Presenter, “Homeland Insecurity: Can Agritourism and Landscape Architecture Work Together to Preserve Rural Heritage and Foster Economic Development?”, CELA 2007 Discussant, “The Natural Environment, Built Environment, and Social Environment”, Breakout Session, Integrating Environment and Human Health, 7 National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment, Washington, DC, 2007 Lecturer, Environmental Justice: Moving from Protest to Proposals for a Better Quality of Life for All”, Stanley White Lecture, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2007 th

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Lecturer, “Environmental Justice and Landscape Architecture”, Harlow O. Whittemore Lecture, Department of Landscape Architecture, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2007 Panelist, “Justice or Just Us? Exploring the Overlap Between Landscape Architecture and Environmental Justice”, CELA 2005, Athens, GA, 2005

Media

“Blazing New Trails”, Designlife, Winter 2014, NC State University College of Design http://issuu.com/designislife/docs/designlife_winter2014/10 “American Design Students Service Learning with Kofi Boone in Ghana” by Atim Oton, The Huffington Post, July 7, 2012 retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/atim-oton/global-design_b_1459468.html “Trayvon Martin discussion” with Rich Benjamin, The Marc Stenier Show-Intelligent Talk Radio, April 9, 2012 “It took a neighborhood”, Interview with Lonnette Williams, Robin Dodsworth, and Kofi Boone on The State of Things with Frank Stasio, WUNC, January, 11, 2011

Courses and Curricular Development

LAR 582 009 Emerging Digital Graphics: Panoramic Representation, Spring 2012 LAR 582 007 Landscape Architecture Theory and Criticism, Fall 2010-present LAR 582 009 Design In Difference, Spring 2011 LAR 582 D Site Analysis and Planning, Fall 2007-present LAR 500 LAB Landscape Narratives, Spring 2010 LAR 582 R+S Next REX, Spring 2009 LAR 582 V Advanced LAR Communications: Digital Video Case Studies, Fall 2008 LAR 582 V Design Strategies for Community Building, Fall 2008 LAR 582 H+I/LAR 503 Design Development, Fall 2008-Fall 2010 ADN 495/LAR 565 Ghana Study Abroad: Landscape Architecture Studio, Summer 2005-present Landscapes in Eco-Tourism (developed with Carol Kline), Ghana Study Abroad, Summer 2005-2008

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Advanced Visualization Independent Study Working with student teams, I led a study of alternative futures describing how Dorothea Dix Hospital, a 306 acre site in Raleigh, North Carolina, could transform into a destination park. The content of the images reflected student research on the successful urban parks, and the format was designed for digital presentation in the Hunt Library’s Imemersion Laboratory.

Advanced Visualization Panoramic Video This seminar explored the use of panoramic video in describing landscapes. The course introduced students to equipment, editting, and presentation techniques borrowed from filmic techniques.

Students applied these techniques to a digital video simulation of change on the NCSU Veterinary Medicine campus.

Advanced Landscape Architecture Studio This studio investigated the impacts of growth on greyfields and other underutilized auto-dominated landscapes in post war suburbs. Students conducted detailed socio-economic and ecological analyses, and retrofitted these sites using programs and performance standards based on City growth projections, and Sustainable SITES guidelines.

Advanced Design Independent Study This study visualized potential relationships between urban growth and urban stormwater management. Through a “kit of parts� approach, urban landscape strategies were developed that resulted in stormwater systems that could exceed projected stormwater volumes, allowing nearby developments to densify if connected to this green system.

Advanced Landscape Architecture Studio Working with student teams, I led a studio examining the relationship between suburban form, land use and transportation systems and human health and well-being. Site analysis incorporated scoping strategies used in Health Impact Assessment (HIA), and provided a baseline of human health factors for testing potential design strategies.

Advanced Landscape Architecture Studio This studio continued previous investigations of the impacts of growth on greyfields and other underutilized auto-dominated landscapes in post war suburbs. Students used the population and transporation projections from the City of Raleigh and Triangle Transit Authority to visualize reinvestment that addressed climate adaptation, food security, and active living.

Ghana International Design Studio This studio immersed students in current issues facing the developing world. Through a partnership with Women-In-Progress/ Global Mamas, students worked with local batik artists to generate concepts for a Fair Trade Workshop. The Workshop would scale up their efficiency and productivity while respecting specific ecological and cultural values.

Ghana International Design Studio This studio immersed students in current issues facing Accra, the capital of Ghana.

Through a partnership with the Mmofra Foundation, students worked with Ghanaian youth to prototype educational play equipment inspired by local and traditional forms of play and learning. The prototypes were created and tested at the Mmofra Foundation’s Playtime in Africa site in Accra.

Potential Development Impact and Storm-Water The Carver School Neighborhoods Kannapolis, NC - 4.28.09

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

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April 2010

Master Plan Community Design-Old Carver School Area Vision This engagement project incorporated extensive archival research, geospatial analysis, and community interaction to uncover opportunities for revitalization in the Old Carver School Area of Kannapolis, North Carolina.

The vision proposed that floodplains and valleys that were once valued open spaces in the community were reclaimed for a variety of social and ecological functions. Mixed use and compact walkable neighborhood patterns were developed to accommodate existing and new residents.

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Storm water CAMPUS SYSTEMS DIAGRAMS CAMPUS SYSTEMS DIAGRAMS

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Community Design- WEB Dubois Campus Vision In partnership with the WEB DuBois School Alumni Association, this vision plan used extensive community engagement to assess existing site conditions, and develop proposals for a 21st century community school and service center. The process introduced a series of community capacity building workshops including topics of social and ecological sustainability.

The Du

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The Dubois School is a Rosenwald School, and first phase proposals incorporated restoration of the historic school building.

histor camp Educational 1. 9th Grade Center 2. Science / Tech Labs 3. Cafeteria 4. Library

Legacy + Vision 1. Restored McElrath Building 2. Green Collar Job Center

ampus ...

Cultural 1. Auditorium 2. Alumni Housing 3. Leasable Building

Wellness 1. Wellness Center 2. Daycare and Clinic 3. Senior Center

The DuBois Center thread is

W.E.B. DuBois Center Campus Vision Plan

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VISION PLAN

South Park Heritage Walk Project

Reconnect major institutions and open spaces that were once vital components to the historic neighborhood fabric with a reasonablyscaled, continuous, safe, enjoyable, and walkable routes.

STRATEGY 1

CONNECT PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ACTIVITIES SNAPSHOTS: HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS, NARRATIVES, EVENTS (PAST AND PRESENT)

Group 1 Walk Route

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Group 2 Walk Route

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Group 3 Walk Route

Composite Walk Route Focus Areas

ST. AUGUSTINE COLLEGE

OLD ST. AGNES HOSPITAL

CITY CEMETERY

OLD ROYAL THEATER OLD HARRIS BARBER COLLEGE

old retail

OLD corner LIGHTNER ARCADE OLD HARRISON LIBRARY

MOORE SQUARE

old retail corner

unwanted behaviors

unwanted behaviors

ROBERTS PARK

empty lots CARLTON PLACE OLD ST. AMBROSE CHURCH

OLD MASONIC TEMPLE LINCOLN THEATER

OLD TUPPER BAPTIST CHURCH

POPE

old grocery corner

unwanted behaviors

HOUSE

new housing CUMBO’S BARBERSHOP

HERITAGE WALK

Worth Street SHAW UNIVERSITY

old grocery corner

CHAVIS HEIGHTS REDEVELOPMENT

“NETWORKED” PUBLIC SPACES dangerous intersections

CHAVIS PARK

“TOP” GREENE CENTER

HARRIS BARBER COLLEGE

OLD WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL

unwanted behaviors

courts unwanted behaviors

MT. HOPE CEMETERY

unwanted behaviors

CAROLINA TRAILWAYS

In addition to physically linking these major historical institutions through the walk , this strategy also encourages and explores the use of contemporary media and mobile communications technology to create a series of “networked” public spaces that can encourage a virtual connection between people, places, and activities. unwanted behaviors

abandoned industrial site

EWS

CONNECT PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ACTIVITIES SNAPSHOTS: HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS, NARRATIVES, EVENTS (PAST AND PRESENT)

common walk routes

COMMUNITY INPUT POTENTIAL HISTORICAL TRAIL ROUTES South Park - East Raleigh Preservation and Education History Program

the park for most of ents. The professional ed in John Chavis lly wonderful place for ctivities of all ages. It at point.

proposedmain main trails walk routes alternate/detour trails alternate/detour common routes

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Following the street perceptions exercise, residents were asked to prioritze some of the places that have been identified to map out a potential heritage walk route that can connect all of them together. Three groups mapped out three different routes and common overlaps among the route, as well as certain “anchoring” areas, were identified.

LOCATE: GPS ENABLED HERITAGE WALK MAP

Traditional historical markers may indicate directions of the heritage walk at critical turning Community Design-South points.

It can also provide a phone number to call to obtain more information regarding a specfic Park East inRaleigh Heritage place on your mobile Walk/Cellphone Diariesdevice. These may include downloadable historical maps, photographs, descriptions, and information on events, as well as This multidisciplinary actual footage ofcollabovarious oral history interviews.

South Park Heritage Walk Project

Hmm ... I wonder what this place was about ... let me call

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Cellphone diaries, a research effort using smartphones, was developed within this process.

South Park Heritage Walk Project

rative effort uncovered the cultural history of Raleigh’s largest African American community and proposed ways of encoding that history into the public landscape. The resultant walk provided a structure around which to strategically develop community needs including open space, food security, affordable housing, and education.

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LISTEN: ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

The major thing we went to the park for most of the time was for athletic events. The professional negro baseball leagues played in John Chavis Memorial Park. It was a really wonderful place for families to go and to have activities of all ages. It was Intergenerational at that point.

LOCATE: GPS ENABLED HERITAGE WALK MAP

The Park edge is defined by Little Rock Creek, an urban stream that was the place many South Park got their first experiences engaging nature. Currently, the creek edges have been transformed by N ronment and Natural Resources riparian buffer guidelines and a State of North Carolina conservatio to improve water quality. The 50’ buffer on each side of the stream, allowing ad hoc vegetation has the perception and use of park spaces along its edges. The vision plan proposes using stream buffe portunity to balance improved water quality with park perception and use. Borrowing a concept kno a more place-appropriate vegetation maintenance regime that can improve the perception and acce areas, the vision plan proposes the use of specific plantings, mowing, and manicured landscape edg park from stream uses, and minimize misperceptions of creek quality.

Chapter 5

Recalling and e r membering community – Cellphone Diaries Kofi Boone

Introduction Community design and engagement processes, especially in service-learning projects, rely on methods for eliciting information about communities in off-site (i.e., remote) group settings and not always in the physical locations of the places where physical change or revitalization will occur. Tools and techniques range from discussions and interviews to mapping and the use of design models to visioning exercises intended to gather perceptions of proposed community changes. In many cases, these forms of engagement happen in public meeting and workshop settings. The designers and planners in these settings ask community stakeholders to recall information about a place by providing prompts to encourage constructive community dialogue.

Asset mapping, a process in which communities self-identify their most valuable community characteristics, offers a useful window of recollection about community strengths, with the actual places being off site and removed from the location at which the asset mapping is occurring (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). Many questions arise from the use of this technique. Are the assets being described all of the assets to be considered? Are the “right” people in the room at the time of the mapping exercise, and is this mix of people conducive to open and honest discussion of a community’s strengths? If there is a facilitator, has this individual provided the right prompts (maps, aerial photography, writing, key words) to spark effective community dialogue?

Are there alternatives to traditional asset mapping processes that enable community partners to be more directly involved in the documentation process? The rise in the use of digital media and mobile technology is creating different forms of social interaction. From using mobile technology to access social media to digital photography to mapping, people are

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Figure 5.1 A photomontage representing the simultaneous experience of Chavis Park today and in historical narratives. Image credit: Kiddee Chaeroenpanitkul.

increasingly reliant on devices to navigate and document the lives that they lead in neighborhoods and other places. Access to mobile technology remains uneven in terms of race and class. Although the overall trend in the United States shows an increased access to mobile technology and wireless networks by most, Crawford (2011) argues that there is the “new digital divide,� and it still disenfranchises communities of color, especially African Americans and the poor, by disproportionately limiting their access to the fastest equipment and networks.

However, Smith (2010) uncovered the fact that African Americans are among the fastest-growing users of mobile technology; in fact, they use mobile technology more than White Americans. Additionally, people of color disproportionately use digital photography and videography on mobile devices in coordination with social media websites. The explosive rate of increased use by these groups is tied to an aspect of the digital Divide: residents of communities of color generally lack access to the Internet via desktop and laptop computers and so use mobile devices as their primary Internet access (Smith, 2010). The trend of increasing use is now extending to seniors as well. According to McMurtrey and McGaughey (2010), the elderly, although still underserved by mobile technology, are rapidly gaining access in part due to innovations in mobile health care services, including filling prescriptions and tracking personal health and well-being online.

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Recalling and remembering community 85

While communities of color are enjoying increasing digital community access, they are also facing increasing threats to the physical places in which they live. The literature on the meaning and power of place in community identity is well established (Buttimer & Seamon, 1980; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 2001). Hayden (1997) argues that where one lived, especially in the pre–World War II era, had a tremendous impact on one’s sense of identity and connection with community. In some cases, artifacts of place (buildings, streets, landscapes) served as important shared symbols of community identity (Hayden, 1997). There are many vehicles for cataloging these physical artifacts and protecting them through policy, such as historic designation, cultural landscape inventories, and markers. However, in cases in which significant urban revitalization and other planning processes eviscerated physical evidence of a neighborhood’s history and events – such as July 4 celebrations, church picnics, parades, and dances – fewer tools are available to accurately document and link those “memories” to physical locations. Although lacking physical evidence of their occurrences, the memories of these events as portrayed in place-based narratives still matter to many urban communities of color – they mark the importance of community life and rituals.

A primary threat to place-based narratives is gentrification, a process of city investment and disinvestment. In many communities, gentrification has resulted in displaced communities of color, especially in areas close to urban centers.

In economically challenged areas, city policies and resources designed to revitalize places and attract new development have too often failed to effectively engage local residents in the urban planning process. According to Fullilove and Thompson (2004), this ineffectiveness can result in a wide range of economic and social forces that remove existing people of color from their homes and neighborhoods. The legacies of previous eras, including the Urban Renewal period (also known as “Negro Removal”), remain in the living memory of senior residents of urban communities who feared being dislocated. Thomas (1997) suggests that these memories and fears can prompt adversarial relationships among residents, city officials, and other redevelopment interests. The likelihood of existing residents being displaced from gentrifying communities effectively removes possibilities for place-based narratives to be developed that also would serve as the traces of shared social interactions among residents of communities.

In neighborhoods slated for renewal or gentrification, where long-time residents are facing increased redevelopment pressure, there is a growing demand to document assets and protect community-defined neighborhood characteristics.

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Can mobile technology assist in documenting place-based narratives?

Historically, separate audio, camera, and video technologies (now combined in mobile devices) have been used in community-engagement processes, especially asset mapping. Sanoff (2000) suggests that the asset mapping process extends from advocacy planning and participatory design in the 1960s. Participatory video, a tool used in advocacy planning, gave community members the ability to produce videos documenting particular aspects of a neighborhood or event from their own points of view.

Lunch and Lunch (2006) offer that participatory video is one of many processes that emerged from the advocacy planning era. Participatory video provides insights about community perceptions and attitudes that off-site face-to-face workshop settings cannot (Crampton, 2009; Evans & Foster, 2009). Evans and Foster (2009) suggest that some advantages of participatory-video documentation include a co-authorship as community residents and outside investigators work together, skills development as new methods are learned, and the creation of products that can be used in the future.

Given these precedents, how do results from the use of mobile technologyassisted processes compare to other engagement and asset mapping processes? How can they enhance engaged work with communities of color?

The remainder of this chapter describes an on-site asset mapping process that used mobile technology to document the history of a Black community in Raleigh, North Carolina, facing gentrification. This portion of the chapter also substantiates mobile technology’s ability to enhance the community engagement and design process.

The South Park East Raleigh neighborhood The context of the study was South Park East Raleigh, a historic AfricanAmerican community in North Carolina (Figure 5.2). The study was conducted in spring 2010 in coordination with several concurrent community-empowerment efforts. The South Park East Raleigh Neighborhood Association (SPERNA) Preservation and History Program was the community partner in the work. South Park East Raleigh emerged in the early 20th century on the southeastern edge of downtown Raleigh and is currently a state-designated historic district. The historic district honors the homes, schools, places of worship, work, and recreation used by African-American residents. However, SPERNA’s Preservation and History Program was formed to improve the documentation, interpretation, and protection of the community’s rich heritage in light of the potential

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Figure 5.2 An aerial view of South Park East Raleigh in relationship to Downtown Raleigh and area landmarks. Image credit: Downtown Design Studio, College of Design, NC State University.

threats of gentrifying forces. Using the “Top� Greene Community Center as a base, residents began to collect and archive numerous artifacts ranging from newspapers and yearbook pages to clothing and photography.

As a result of this process, the group understood that many of the stories prompted by the artifacts involved shared elements of social interaction.

And in some cases, there was no evidence in the existing built environment of these traces of symbolic community identity. In addition to responding to tangible and visible community features, SPERNA and other neighborhood partners were interested in revitalization, but only if it responded to the existing symbols of community identity.

SPERNA partnered with the City of Raleigh and with North Carolina State University (NCSU) to create a multidisciplinary and multiyear community vision plan process. Facilitated by community designers through the university’s Downtown Design Studio, the process used vision-planning workshops to identify, analyze, and prioritize community assets, proposed development plans, and public infrastructure enhancement opportunities. The resultant community vision plan would be used to organize resources and policies to revitalize the neighborhood in strategic ways: from enhanced interpretation and tourism infrastructure to guidelines for public realm improvements, site furnishings, and new civic spaces.

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Strategies o f r asset mapping Asset mapping, a significant step in the vision-planning process, was required to identify the key resources community partners considered essential to build from in the visioning plan. Asset mapping occurred in three multidisciplinary arenas, each led by different investigators. Asset mapping facilitated by community designers took place in the evenings in the “Top” Greene Center. This community-design asset mapping process was reliant on maps, aerials, and digital presentations. Some challenges associated with this process included the variables present in asking community partners to recall community characteristics and the abilities of facilitators to accurately translate community feedback. These variables included the ability of participants to read diagrams and verbally articulate issues and willingness to share their perceptions in a group setting.

Additional variables included their ability to recall qualities of places while being away from those places in the off-site workshops.

Concurrent to community designer-led asset mapping process were two additional multidisciplinary asset mapping efforts. One of the additional efforts included a graphic design asset mapping process, which involved archival research and compiling historic photos, maps, and other documents. The process also included gathering artifacts from both community partners and state archives. These activities were invaluable for supplementing what could not be interpreted or observed on site. “Knowledge maps” were completed that consisted of two-sided posters highlighting the key people, places, and events distilled from archival research. The knowledge maps proved useful, and community partners would come to rely on them. In fact, the graphic designers that produced the maps received a community award from SPERNA. However, challenges with this process included difficulties in connecting archival information to present-day onsite situations in this community in Southeast Raleigh. Consequently, few contemporary images or references, especially geographic references linking archival images to actual locations were included in the knowledge maps.

In another concurrent asset mapping process, sociolinguists led 60 openended, one-on-one-interviews with community partners in their homes.

The interviews were video and audio recorded, and transcripts were prepared for each interview. The sociolinguists involved in the process were previously studying how one’s geographic location impacts one’s local dialect in the City of Raleigh as a whole, and they incorporated a focused look at South Park East Raleigh into their study. The interview process was based around loosely framed questions about growing up and living in the community. Interviews documented in the sociolinguist-led process were invaluable to asset mapping because they allowed participants to self-pace

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Recalling and remembering community 89 Table 5.1 Multidisciplinary Asset Mapping Techniques Group off site

One-on-one off site

Individual on site

Pace set by facilitator Assumes ability to read diagrams representing a place Participation subject to group dynamics

Pace set by interviewee Assumes ability to recall signiďŹ cant elements of a place Participation subject to interviewee comfort

Pace set by user Assumes ability to recall places that prompt stories Participation subject to user comfort with mobile technology

the telling of their stories and to be flexible when constructing their narratives. Sociolinguists produced a 60-minute oral history video based on their findings. The video has been featured on local public television as well as shared throughout the community via DVDs. However, similar to the graphic design process, the interview process was conducted off site.

Thus, it was difficult to connect oral histories and interview topics to existing geographic locations; this problem was especially true of specific activities and events attributed to the broader community, but not specifically mapped to geographic locations within the community. The interviewbased asset mapping process provided many benefits as mentioned before, but the difficulty of linking memorable people, places, and events from the past to current spaces remained.

The community design, graphic design, and sociolinguistic asset mapping approaches provided rich and useful narratives. However, each of these off-site approaches presented its own challenges to connecting the stories to actual neighborhood spaces (Table 5.1). This challenge served as the impetus for the Cellphone Diaries study and the following questions: How could mobile technology assist in linking memorable people, places, and events more strongly to the physical spaces in which they occurred?

And could mobile technology create situations in which being present in the actual site prompts stories that may not have been told off site?

Cellphone Diaries NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture designed a mobile technology component dubbed the Cellphone Diaries. Cellphone Diaries had two project objectives: (1) train residents to use smartphone digital

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videos for individual on-site asset mapping and (2) compare the results of individual on-site smartphone-based approaches to other multidisciplinary engagement efforts (community design, graphic design, and sociolinguistic approaches to asset mapping).

Smartphones are equipped with global positioning systems (GPS), and anything documented at a location receives a coordinate that can be used to link the phone to a specific site. This can be done automatically (whenever a smartphone connects to a satellite system, it notes its location) or manually by the person using the device. With a mobile device, a person can take a picture, shoot a video, take a note, and simultaneously mark the specific location of the recording.

Smartphones are equipped with digital video recorders that allow local residents to create participatory videos. The devices provide the ability to compose visual narratives with sound and motion that can enhance the documentation of a place. In contrast with a static image or text, video provides a range of possibilities to viewers wanting to understand the history, value, and memory of a place; for example, narration and recorded action can deepen the understanding of a location and its importance to a community. Additionally, participatory video enables the viewer to experience indirect audio and visual cues associated with a place: the sounds of traffic, the images of kids in a swimming pool, or the colors of the sun rising in a park. Whereas in the past, participatory video was cumbersome – requiring heavy equipment and training – mobile devices with digital recorders are compact, lightweight, and simple to operate.

The City of Raleigh’s activities and plans prompted a shift in the focus of the project. Initially, the project was designed as an asset mapping process for senior African-American residents of South Park East Raleigh, North Carolina, to use smartphones to document places that had meaning throughout their entire neighborhood, that is, to substantiate why their community mattered. However, the City’s proposed relocation of a historic carousel in Chavis Park prompted community protest and the desire to communicate neighborhood place values to prevent the carousel’s removal to another site. SPERNA was interested in overlaying the objectives of Cellphone Diaries with an activist-driven agenda to better document components of place in Chavis Park, and so the focus of the study was shifted to Chavis Park.

Methods Participants in the project (n = 17) were recruited when they participated in the community vision workshop process. All participants in Cellphone Diaries were community residents who also participated in

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the sociolinguistic-led asset mapping process. Project participants were trained in the use of smartphones and loaned identical smartphones to shoot and narrate on-site digital videos of places that had meaning to them in Chavis Park.

A local mobile service provider donated seven smartphones for the study. NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture developed a training protocol for phone use (Figure 5.3). The protocol included testing the phone’s digital video and GPS capabilities, as well as programming the phones with a one-touch video upload feature. Participation in the training protocol was required to use the mobile devices.

Graduate students were trained as tech buddies, assisting participants who had questions and problems operating the smartphone and their video software. Participants were given 1 week to complete their work.

All videos were uploaded to a server and linked to an online map. NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture completed a content analysis on all the videos (n = 58), generating a written transcript and coding the locations, views, and length of each video.

Figure 5.3 Community resident in smartphone training session. Image credit: the author.

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The content analysis revealed several key themes, described in the next section. NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture compared digital video themes with the results from the sociolinguistic-led one-onone home-based interviews as well as the community design-led off-site asset mapping workshops.

Results and analysis In this section, quotes from participants are discussed that provide insights into the significance of Chavis Park, especially relative to the poignant reality of the historic carousel relocation. The park and its carousel were essential to community life in a time before desegregation, and thus they represent the importance of a location that matters to a neighborhood and its residents. The removal and redevelopment of the area would wipe away all vestiges of this once-vibrant area and the memories it evokes. This section provides direct quotes and their implications about what the park was in the memories of the Cellphone Diaries participants, analysis of the park’s present conditions, and the impact of the relocation. All quotes are from the Cellphone Diaries, made by participants when they visited Chavis Park.

The heart of the park “It would be the evening and we were not supposed to come down, but you can imagine these 6-year-old girls, and some boys, too . . . slipping down here and squeezing through the crowd to see the best dancer dance. . . . It was a dancer called Rubber Legs, and he always had a crowd around him . . .”

Speaker’s location: the historic heart of Chavis Park

Immediately over a bridge linking the neighborhood entry to the park lay a critical mass of elements, including the carousel. This area was the heart of the park. The carousel was originally placed under an open-air tent and later was enclosed in a small building. In addition to the carousel, a piccolo (or jukebox), a dance platform, a concession area, an Olympic-sized pool with changing areas, a miniature train, and other amusement structures occupied this space. Billy Eckstine, who made frequent tours to Raleigh with his jazz orchestra, swam in the Chavis Park pool. A local television dance show was recorded on the nearby dance

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Figure 5.4 Community resident using the smartphone to record a self-authored video about the carousel area in the former heart of the park. Image credit: the author.

platform, and the local celebrity “Rubber Legs” was the one to watch on the televised program. The concession and changing areas were places where young people could get internships and part-time work during summer months.

Social and political life in the park “What I remember most about the picnic areas, of course, are the picnics, but most of all people came from rural areas all around, Black people from all over, all different counties and everything would come here to picnic on Sunday.”

Speaker’s location: entry at Chavis Way in Chavis Park

And contrary to the negative connotations of separate Black and White parks, the participants took pride in the unique roles Chavis Park played in the local, regional, and even national African-American community.

Athletic fields at Chavis Park were where many regionally famous football

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and baseball players got their start. Church revivals, picnics, and other social events involving African Americans from across North Carolina were common in the Jim Crow era. National performing acts and tours frequently stopped in Raleigh, South Park East Raleigh, and Chavis Park and considered the neighborhood and park “safe harbor” when moving between Atlanta and Washington, DC. “Right over there, my brother and his friends would meet. . . . They used to train us how to walk at night so we would be safe. They would meet at our house, and then out here in the park. They went on to create SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] over there at Shaw University. But they started out here in Chavis Park.”

Speaker’s location: near the playground in Chavis Park Later, as the Civil Rights Movement came into its own, Chavis Park played a significant role in the development of several national organizations, most notably the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the participatory videos shot within view of nearby Shaw University, two participants recounted the role their brothers played in the informal meetings in the park during which Shaw students would meet that would eventually lead to the creation of one of the premier Civil Rights–era student organizations.

Disruption and dislocation “Ok, we’re at . . . I’m actually facing across the street . . . it was a street – from the merry-go-round . . . and there was an Olympicsized pool there . . . but they’ve made some modifications, some changes. Now this part I don’t really recognize. The playground and all that, it was not there.”

Speaker’s location: the historic entry to Chavis Park

Overall, the videos revealed varying degrees of orientation and disorientation in Chavis Park. For some partners, the Cellphone Diaries project prompted their first critical look at the park in a long time; for some, they had not been to the park since childhood. On-site participatory videos varied in length – in part due to the time it took to explain memories triggered by being in a place, as well as disorientation about the absence of original park features such as the playground or swimming pool. Participants

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actively recorded themselves talking and thinking through the process of orienting themselves in unfamiliar spaces in the park. Participants juxtaposed their recollection of park activities and experiences with what was currently visible.

Indeed, much of the urban fabric surrounding the historic Chavis Park entry has changed. Previously, a street went directly from the neighborhood into the park, and homes with porches and stoops faced the entry. The road was removed, and the entry is now a landscaped footpath. Homes that once faced the entry have been modified so that they no longer face the entry or have been demolished. Archival research and review of an aerial photograph taken in 1959 revealed that the historic neighborhood entry to Chavis Park was a street connected to the intimate grid of the South Park neighborhood. The entry was easily accessible and visible from as far away as Shaw University. After a park renovation in the 1970s, vehicular access was removed from this area of Chavis Park and replaced with a newly constructed entry from nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The boulevard is a large and busy urban artery and is not pedestrian friendly. There are no front doors facing the boulevard. The current pedestrian park entry is a winding path that bears no resemblance to the original neighborhood-oriented entry.

Today, the only remaining structure from the heart of Chavis Park is the carousel (Figure 5.5). There is no trace evidence or interpretation in this area describing the economic, social, and cultural vitality and roles of the place. A large concrete plaza, a play area, and a large parking lot are all that cue users and visitors to use the space.

Archival research revealed that the amusement structures, including the piccolo and the miniature train referenced in many participant videos,

Figure 5.5 An image of an area in Chavis Park identiďŹ ed in Cellphone Diaries as the heart of the park. The existing carousel (right) was in a tent at the time of the park’s founding. Nothing else remains from the original site plan.

Image credit: the author.

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were removed by the city due to dwindling park resources and lack of maintenance. The level of park infrastructure in Chavis Park was seen by the city as a duplication of similar resources in nearby Pullen Park, which was the White counterpart of Chavis Park during the days of Jim Crow. The city decided to maintain Pullen Park as a regional park while transitioning Chavis Park to a neighborhood park. This transition, ironically, was in response to desegregation and a city policy that no longer supported separate but equal Black and White parks.

It’s hard to unders tand “I’m trying to see why they are going to move it [the carousel] cause they said it’s deteriorating down here. Where? And they’re closing down? What are you doing?”

Participant questioning a city staffer at the carousel

Concurrent to the period of the study, participants joined other community residents in resisting a city-authored proposal to relocate the carousel to the edge of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. From the city’s perspective, the move was logical and economically defensible. In its current location, the carousel was “buried” in the community and not visible to the casual passerby. The location hinders its visibility and potential profitability. But from a community point of view, the proposed relocation of the carousel meant the removal of the last evidence of the heart of Chavis Park. At the same time, the carousel at Pullen Park is currently being renovated and remains in the same location it has occupied since Pullen Park’s founding. Above and beyond the financial logic of relocating the carousel at Chavis Park, defending or rethinking the last trace evidence of an essential space there remains a contentious divide between city and community.

Although legal segregation was outlawed several decades ago, South Park East Raleigh residents still do not view themselves as welcomed in historically White parks, like nearby Pullen Park, as they do in Chavis Park. They do not feel included in that place. Participants in the study felt that Chavis Park had received inequitable resources in comparison to Pullen Park. In their opinion, Raleigh is in some ways just as segregated as it ever was. And the lack of recognition of basic inequality, reflected in the inequitable distribution of investments in places like Pullen and Chavis Parks, was evidence of continued challenges.

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The Cellphone Diar y process:An analy sis The project began to introduce community residents to the use of smartphones for individual on-site asset mapping. However, the project also revealed many challenges and issues. Although most of the community partners owned and used cellphones previously, none had smartphones, and none had used the digital video and upload features prior to the study.

Although fully engaged in the training workshops, connected to their tech buddies, and armed with the training brochures, the participants still felt a great deal of confusion. Since the completion of the study, none of the participants report using phones to document their places.

More practice prior to working on active data collection in the park may have improved the process and led to increased usage of mobile devices after the conclusion of the study. Additionally, reviewing and providing feedback on their videos before they were uploaded may have improved the visual quality of the participants’ work. Some of the videos had blurry and difficult-to-see images and inconsistent audio quality. Although useful for documentation purposes, some additional work about how to hold the mobile device steady and how to minimize audio interference in recording could have greatly enhanced video quality.

While creating the on-site videos, individuals commented about how being physically in the park acted as prompts, enriching and extending the length and depth of the place-based narratives. In some cases, seeing a group of trees or a passageway sparked a connection and discussion that did not occur with off-site methods. This prompting was especially valuable in areas lacking trace evidence of any past event or structure.

An unanticipated outcome of the Cellphone Diaries was the enhanced visibility and public access associated with the videos when compared to other engagement efforts. Because the videos were uploaded to YouTube and the maps are available on online, the number of those who can view these products has expanded beyond those that may have not been reached if other techniques were pursued. The videos can be viewed and shared whenever an individual wishes to access them, without the need to contact those that were a part of the process or to have a formal presentation given. The ease of access to the digital video medium, due to it its placement online, has increased exposure and attention to the people and issues in South Park East Raleigh. People who were not initially interested in the community stories became intrigued by the technology, and that became a pathway to understand what was transpiring in the neighborhood. This accessibility widens the possibility for the dissemination of the findings (Figure 5.6).

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Figure 5.6 Screen capture of Google online map linking Cellphone Diaries to locations. Image credit: the author. Map data provided by Google, 2011.

In the case of Cellphone Diaries, the South Park East Raleigh neighborhood issues received increased coverage in local newspaper articles as well as an in-depth public radio talk show interview (Stasio, 2011). The City of Raleigh also curated a gallery show, highlighting a 5-minute digital video compiled from excerpts from the Cellphone Diaries work (City of Raleigh, 2011). Additionally, the online map enables people to construct their own virtual tours of the park prior to visiting and offers opportunities for them to reflect on their park experiences upon returning.

Community participants felt a sense of validation that their place was being described in their own words. Concluding a Cellphone Diaries entry, a long-time neighborhood resident finished her video with the following statement: “I want to end this by saying that it was a positive thing in my life, Chavis Park, and this [Cellphone Diaries] brings back a lot of good memories for me.”

SPERNA recognized Cellphone Diaries and its participants at their annual holiday celebration, and they distribute DVDs about the City of Raleigh gallery show to people interested in learning about the neighborhood’s history. Additionally, Cellphone Diaries has been included, at SPERNA’s request, in a resource list used to inform current Chavis Park

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master plan work, and was presented in a city-sponsored lecture series (Boone, 2011). Questions for future work could delve further: What is the efficacy of this process? Did using mobile technology help attract resources? Change policy? Or effect any change in interpreting the history of the South Park East Raleigh neighborhood?

Conclusions The places where people in the community lived, worked, worshipped, learned, organized, and played sometimes lacked iconic architecture and formally significant built spaces. They did not always fit into the evaluations that canonize historic landmarks and places. However, they mattered to the people living there, and in the case of South Park East Raleigh, they were actively created in the context of segregation and Jim Crow, policies that disenfranchised Black people for generations. In the case of the Cellphone Diaries, this disenfranchisement was most poignantly expressed in the near demise of Chavis Park. But the participatory documentation of community stories can contribute to the valuing of the community’s place-based narratives by the next generations of community residents.

The Cellphone Diaries represent a decentralized on-site asset mapping process utilizing technology that places in the hands of many community participants the ability to better document the history and memories of their neighborhoods. Smartphones democratized the process of community engagement, as they enabled with minimum costs and other challenges the creation of an audio-video archive of a place, neighborhood, and community. With improved training protocols, participants could provide a self-paced and polyvocal interpretation of places via the participatory video method. This method could enhance the community engagement process by offering a non-workshop–based means of providing information for design efforts. These are objectives that are difficult to achieve in workshops and interviews, especially if held off site. Being on site can prompt narratives not possible off site, and the stories can be immediately mapped and made accessible to stakeholders, designers, and planners to enrich community design decision making.

References Boone, Kofi (2011) “Cultural Landscapes and the South Park East Raleigh Community Neighborhood,” Presentation, Raleigh Urban Design Center, March 11, 2011. Retrieved from http://raleigh.granicus.com/MediaPlayer. php?view_id=13&clip_id=2005

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Chapter 5

Recalling and e r membering community – Cellphone Diaries Kofi Boone

Introduction Community design and engagement processes, especially in service-learning projects, rely on methods for eliciting information about communities in off-site (i.e., remote) group settings and not always in the physical locations of the places where physical change or revitalization will occur. Tools and techniques range from discussions and interviews to mapping and the use of design models to visioning exercises intended to gather perceptions of proposed community changes. In many cases, these forms of engagement happen in public meeting and workshop settings. The designers and planners in these settings ask community stakeholders to recall information about a place by providing prompts to encourage constructive community dialogue.

Asset mapping, a process in which communities self-identify their most valuable community characteristics, offers a useful window of recollection about community strengths, with the actual places being off site and removed from the location at which the asset mapping is occurring (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). Many questions arise from the use of this technique. Are the assets being described all of the assets to be considered? Are the “right” people in the room at the time of the mapping exercise, and is this mix of people conducive to open and honest discussion of a community’s strengths? If there is a facilitator, has this individual provided the right prompts (maps, aerial photography, writing, key words) to spark effective community dialogue?

Are there alternatives to traditional asset mapping processes that enable community partners to be more directly involved in the documentation process? The rise in the use of digital media and mobile technology is creating different forms of social interaction. From using mobile technology to access social media to digital photography to mapping, people are

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Figure 5.1 A photomontage representing the simultaneous experience of Chavis Park today and in historical narratives. Image credit: Kiddee Chaeroenpanitkul.

increasingly reliant on devices to navigate and document the lives that they lead in neighborhoods and other places. Access to mobile technology remains uneven in terms of race and class. Although the overall trend in the United States shows an increased access to mobile technology and wireless networks by most, Crawford (2011) argues that there is the “new digital divide,� and it still disenfranchises communities of color, especially African Americans and the poor, by disproportionately limiting their access to the fastest equipment and networks.

However, Smith (2010) uncovered the fact that African Americans are among the fastest-growing users of mobile technology; in fact, they use mobile technology more than White Americans. Additionally, people of color disproportionately use digital photography and videography on mobile devices in coordination with social media websites. The explosive rate of increased use by these groups is tied to an aspect of the digital Divide: residents of communities of color generally lack access to the Internet via desktop and laptop computers and so use mobile devices as their primary Internet access (Smith, 2010). The trend of increasing use is now extending to seniors as well. According to McMurtrey and McGaughey (2010), the elderly, although still underserved by mobile technology, are rapidly gaining access in part due to innovations in mobile health care services, including filling prescriptions and tracking personal health and well-being online.

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While communities of color are enjoying increasing digital community access, they are also facing increasing threats to the physical places in which they live. The literature on the meaning and power of place in community identity is well established (Buttimer & Seamon, 1980; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 2001). Hayden (1997) argues that where one lived, especially in the pre–World War II era, had a tremendous impact on one’s sense of identity and connection with community. In some cases, artifacts of place (buildings, streets, landscapes) served as important shared symbols of community identity (Hayden, 1997). There are many vehicles for cataloging these physical artifacts and protecting them through policy, such as historic designation, cultural landscape inventories, and markers. However, in cases in which significant urban revitalization and other planning processes eviscerated physical evidence of a neighborhood’s history and events – such as July 4 celebrations, church picnics, parades, and dances – fewer tools are available to accurately document and link those “memories” to physical locations. Although lacking physical evidence of their occurrences, the memories of these events as portrayed in place-based narratives still matter to many urban communities of color – they mark the importance of community life and rituals.

A primary threat to place-based narratives is gentrification, a process of city investment and disinvestment. In many communities, gentrification has resulted in displaced communities of color, especially in areas close to urban centers.

In economically challenged areas, city policies and resources designed to revitalize places and attract new development have too often failed to effectively engage local residents in the urban planning process. According to Fullilove and Thompson (2004), this ineffectiveness can result in a wide range of economic and social forces that remove existing people of color from their homes and neighborhoods. The legacies of previous eras, including the Urban Renewal period (also known as “Negro Removal”), remain in the living memory of senior residents of urban communities who feared being dislocated. Thomas (1997) suggests that these memories and fears can prompt adversarial relationships among residents, city officials, and other redevelopment interests. The likelihood of existing residents being displaced from gentrifying communities effectively removes possibilities for place-based narratives to be developed that also would serve as the traces of shared social interactions among residents of communities.

In neighborhoods slated for renewal or gentrification, where long-time residents are facing increased redevelopment pressure, there is a growing demand to document assets and protect community-defined neighborhood characteristics.

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Can mobile technology assist in documenting place-based narratives?

Historically, separate audio, camera, and video technologies (now combined in mobile devices) have been used in community-engagement processes, especially asset mapping. Sanoff (2000) suggests that the asset mapping process extends from advocacy planning and participatory design in the 1960s. Participatory video, a tool used in advocacy planning, gave community members the ability to produce videos documenting particular aspects of a neighborhood or event from their own points of view.

Lunch and Lunch (2006) offer that participatory video is one of many processes that emerged from the advocacy planning era. Participatory video provides insights about community perceptions and attitudes that off-site face-to-face workshop settings cannot (Crampton, 2009; Evans & Foster, 2009). Evans and Foster (2009) suggest that some advantages of participatory-video documentation include a co-authorship as community residents and outside investigators work together, skills development as new methods are learned, and the creation of products that can be used in the future.

Given these precedents, how do results from the use of mobile technologyassisted processes compare to other engagement and asset mapping processes? How can they enhance engaged work with communities of color?

The remainder of this chapter describes an on-site asset mapping process that used mobile technology to document the history of a Black community in Raleigh, North Carolina, facing gentrification. This portion of the chapter also substantiates mobile technology’s ability to enhance the community engagement and design process.

The South Park East Raleigh neighborhood The context of the study was South Park East Raleigh, a historic AfricanAmerican community in North Carolina (Figure 5.2). The study was conducted in spring 2010 in coordination with several concurrent community-empowerment efforts. The South Park East Raleigh Neighborhood Association (SPERNA) Preservation and History Program was the community partner in the work. South Park East Raleigh emerged in the early 20th century on the southeastern edge of downtown Raleigh and is currently a state-designated historic district. The historic district honors the homes, schools, places of worship, work, and recreation used by African-American residents. However, SPERNA’s Preservation and History Program was formed to improve the documentation, interpretation, and protection of the community’s rich heritage in light of the potential

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Figure 5.2 An aerial view of South Park East Raleigh in relationship to Downtown Raleigh and area landmarks. Image credit: Downtown Design Studio, College of Design, NC State University.

threats of gentrifying forces. Using the “Top� Greene Community Center as a base, residents began to collect and archive numerous artifacts ranging from newspapers and yearbook pages to clothing and photography.

As a result of this process, the group understood that many of the stories prompted by the artifacts involved shared elements of social interaction.

And in some cases, there was no evidence in the existing built environment of these traces of symbolic community identity. In addition to responding to tangible and visible community features, SPERNA and other neighborhood partners were interested in revitalization, but only if it responded to the existing symbols of community identity.

SPERNA partnered with the City of Raleigh and with North Carolina State University (NCSU) to create a multidisciplinary and multiyear community vision plan process. Facilitated by community designers through the university’s Downtown Design Studio, the process used vision-planning workshops to identify, analyze, and prioritize community assets, proposed development plans, and public infrastructure enhancement opportunities. The resultant community vision plan would be used to organize resources and policies to revitalize the neighborhood in strategic ways: from enhanced interpretation and tourism infrastructure to guidelines for public realm improvements, site furnishings, and new civic spaces.

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Strategies o f r asset mapping Asset mapping, a significant step in the vision-planning process, was required to identify the key resources community partners considered essential to build from in the visioning plan. Asset mapping occurred in three multidisciplinary arenas, each led by different investigators. Asset mapping facilitated by community designers took place in the evenings in the “Top” Greene Center. This community-design asset mapping process was reliant on maps, aerials, and digital presentations. Some challenges associated with this process included the variables present in asking community partners to recall community characteristics and the abilities of facilitators to accurately translate community feedback. These variables included the ability of participants to read diagrams and verbally articulate issues and willingness to share their perceptions in a group setting.

Additional variables included their ability to recall qualities of places while being away from those places in the off-site workshops.

Concurrent to community designer-led asset mapping process were two additional multidisciplinary asset mapping efforts. One of the additional efforts included a graphic design asset mapping process, which involved archival research and compiling historic photos, maps, and other documents. The process also included gathering artifacts from both community partners and state archives. These activities were invaluable for supplementing what could not be interpreted or observed on site. “Knowledge maps” were completed that consisted of two-sided posters highlighting the key people, places, and events distilled from archival research. The knowledge maps proved useful, and community partners would come to rely on them. In fact, the graphic designers that produced the maps received a community award from SPERNA. However, challenges with this process included difficulties in connecting archival information to present-day onsite situations in this community in Southeast Raleigh. Consequently, few contemporary images or references, especially geographic references linking archival images to actual locations were included in the knowledge maps.

In another concurrent asset mapping process, sociolinguists led 60 openended, one-on-one-interviews with community partners in their homes.

The interviews were video and audio recorded, and transcripts were prepared for each interview. The sociolinguists involved in the process were previously studying how one’s geographic location impacts one’s local dialect in the City of Raleigh as a whole, and they incorporated a focused look at South Park East Raleigh into their study. The interview process was based around loosely framed questions about growing up and living in the community. Interviews documented in the sociolinguist-led process were invaluable to asset mapping because they allowed participants to self-pace

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Recalling and remembering community 89 Table 5.1 Multidisciplinary Asset Mapping Techniques Group off site

One-on-one off site

Individual on site

Pace set by facilitator Assumes ability to read diagrams representing a place Participation subject to group dynamics

Pace set by interviewee Assumes ability to recall signiďŹ cant elements of a place Participation subject to interviewee comfort

Pace set by user Assumes ability to recall places that prompt stories Participation subject to user comfort with mobile technology

the telling of their stories and to be flexible when constructing their narratives. Sociolinguists produced a 60-minute oral history video based on their findings. The video has been featured on local public television as well as shared throughout the community via DVDs. However, similar to the graphic design process, the interview process was conducted off site.

Thus, it was difficult to connect oral histories and interview topics to existing geographic locations; this problem was especially true of specific activities and events attributed to the broader community, but not specifically mapped to geographic locations within the community. The interviewbased asset mapping process provided many benefits as mentioned before, but the difficulty of linking memorable people, places, and events from the past to current spaces remained.

The community design, graphic design, and sociolinguistic asset mapping approaches provided rich and useful narratives. However, each of these off-site approaches presented its own challenges to connecting the stories to actual neighborhood spaces (Table 5.1). This challenge served as the impetus for the Cellphone Diaries study and the following questions: How could mobile technology assist in linking memorable people, places, and events more strongly to the physical spaces in which they occurred?

And could mobile technology create situations in which being present in the actual site prompts stories that may not have been told off site?

Cellphone Diaries NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture designed a mobile technology component dubbed the Cellphone Diaries. Cellphone Diaries had two project objectives: (1) train residents to use smartphone digital

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videos for individual on-site asset mapping and (2) compare the results of individual on-site smartphone-based approaches to other multidisciplinary engagement efforts (community design, graphic design, and sociolinguistic approaches to asset mapping).

Smartphones are equipped with global positioning systems (GPS), and anything documented at a location receives a coordinate that can be used to link the phone to a specific site. This can be done automatically (whenever a smartphone connects to a satellite system, it notes its location) or manually by the person using the device. With a mobile device, a person can take a picture, shoot a video, take a note, and simultaneously mark the specific location of the recording.

Smartphones are equipped with digital video recorders that allow local residents to create participatory videos. The devices provide the ability to compose visual narratives with sound and motion that can enhance the documentation of a place. In contrast with a static image or text, video provides a range of possibilities to viewers wanting to understand the history, value, and memory of a place; for example, narration and recorded action can deepen the understanding of a location and its importance to a community. Additionally, participatory video enables the viewer to experience indirect audio and visual cues associated with a place: the sounds of traffic, the images of kids in a swimming pool, or the colors of the sun rising in a park. Whereas in the past, participatory video was cumbersome – requiring heavy equipment and training – mobile devices with digital recorders are compact, lightweight, and simple to operate.

The City of Raleigh’s activities and plans prompted a shift in the focus of the project. Initially, the project was designed as an asset mapping process for senior African-American residents of South Park East Raleigh, North Carolina, to use smartphones to document places that had meaning throughout their entire neighborhood, that is, to substantiate why their community mattered. However, the City’s proposed relocation of a historic carousel in Chavis Park prompted community protest and the desire to communicate neighborhood place values to prevent the carousel’s removal to another site. SPERNA was interested in overlaying the objectives of Cellphone Diaries with an activist-driven agenda to better document components of place in Chavis Park, and so the focus of the study was shifted to Chavis Park.

Methods Participants in the project (n = 17) were recruited when they participated in the community vision workshop process. All participants in Cellphone Diaries were community residents who also participated in

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the sociolinguistic-led asset mapping process. Project participants were trained in the use of smartphones and loaned identical smartphones to shoot and narrate on-site digital videos of places that had meaning to them in Chavis Park.

A local mobile service provider donated seven smartphones for the study. NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture developed a training protocol for phone use (Figure 5.3). The protocol included testing the phone’s digital video and GPS capabilities, as well as programming the phones with a one-touch video upload feature. Participation in the training protocol was required to use the mobile devices.

Graduate students were trained as tech buddies, assisting participants who had questions and problems operating the smartphone and their video software. Participants were given 1 week to complete their work.

All videos were uploaded to a server and linked to an online map. NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture completed a content analysis on all the videos (n = 58), generating a written transcript and coding the locations, views, and length of each video.

Figure 5.3 Community resident in smartphone training session. Image credit: the author.

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The content analysis revealed several key themes, described in the next section. NCSU faculty and students in landscape architecture compared digital video themes with the results from the sociolinguistic-led one-onone home-based interviews as well as the community design-led off-site asset mapping workshops.

Results and analysis In this section, quotes from participants are discussed that provide insights into the significance of Chavis Park, especially relative to the poignant reality of the historic carousel relocation. The park and its carousel were essential to community life in a time before desegregation, and thus they represent the importance of a location that matters to a neighborhood and its residents. The removal and redevelopment of the area would wipe away all vestiges of this once-vibrant area and the memories it evokes. This section provides direct quotes and their implications about what the park was in the memories of the Cellphone Diaries participants, analysis of the park’s present conditions, and the impact of the relocation. All quotes are from the Cellphone Diaries, made by participants when they visited Chavis Park.

The heart of the park “It would be the evening and we were not supposed to come down, but you can imagine these 6-year-old girls, and some boys, too . . . slipping down here and squeezing through the crowd to see the best dancer dance. . . . It was a dancer called Rubber Legs, and he always had a crowd around him . . .”

Speaker’s location: the historic heart of Chavis Park

Immediately over a bridge linking the neighborhood entry to the park lay a critical mass of elements, including the carousel. This area was the heart of the park. The carousel was originally placed under an open-air tent and later was enclosed in a small building. In addition to the carousel, a piccolo (or jukebox), a dance platform, a concession area, an Olympic-sized pool with changing areas, a miniature train, and other amusement structures occupied this space. Billy Eckstine, who made frequent tours to Raleigh with his jazz orchestra, swam in the Chavis Park pool. A local television dance show was recorded on the nearby dance

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Figure 5.4 Community resident using the smartphone to record a self-authored video about the carousel area in the former heart of the park. Image credit: the author.

platform, and the local celebrity “Rubber Legs” was the one to watch on the televised program. The concession and changing areas were places where young people could get internships and part-time work during summer months.

Social and political life in the park “What I remember most about the picnic areas, of course, are the picnics, but most of all people came from rural areas all around, Black people from all over, all different counties and everything would come here to picnic on Sunday.”

Speaker’s location: entry at Chavis Way in Chavis Park

And contrary to the negative connotations of separate Black and White parks, the participants took pride in the unique roles Chavis Park played in the local, regional, and even national African-American community.

Athletic fields at Chavis Park were where many regionally famous football

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and baseball players got their start. Church revivals, picnics, and other social events involving African Americans from across North Carolina were common in the Jim Crow era. National performing acts and tours frequently stopped in Raleigh, South Park East Raleigh, and Chavis Park and considered the neighborhood and park “safe harbor” when moving between Atlanta and Washington, DC. “Right over there, my brother and his friends would meet. . . . They used to train us how to walk at night so we would be safe. They would meet at our house, and then out here in the park. They went on to create SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] over there at Shaw University. But they started out here in Chavis Park.”

Speaker’s location: near the playground in Chavis Park Later, as the Civil Rights Movement came into its own, Chavis Park played a significant role in the development of several national organizations, most notably the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the participatory videos shot within view of nearby Shaw University, two participants recounted the role their brothers played in the informal meetings in the park during which Shaw students would meet that would eventually lead to the creation of one of the premier Civil Rights–era student organizations.

Disruption and dislocation “Ok, we’re at . . . I’m actually facing across the street . . . it was a street – from the merry-go-round . . . and there was an Olympicsized pool there . . . but they’ve made some modifications, some changes. Now this part I don’t really recognize. The playground and all that, it was not there.”

Speaker’s location: the historic entry to Chavis Park

Overall, the videos revealed varying degrees of orientation and disorientation in Chavis Park. For some partners, the Cellphone Diaries project prompted their first critical look at the park in a long time; for some, they had not been to the park since childhood. On-site participatory videos varied in length – in part due to the time it took to explain memories triggered by being in a place, as well as disorientation about the absence of original park features such as the playground or swimming pool. Participants

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actively recorded themselves talking and thinking through the process of orienting themselves in unfamiliar spaces in the park. Participants juxtaposed their recollection of park activities and experiences with what was currently visible.

Indeed, much of the urban fabric surrounding the historic Chavis Park entry has changed. Previously, a street went directly from the neighborhood into the park, and homes with porches and stoops faced the entry. The road was removed, and the entry is now a landscaped footpath. Homes that once faced the entry have been modified so that they no longer face the entry or have been demolished. Archival research and review of an aerial photograph taken in 1959 revealed that the historic neighborhood entry to Chavis Park was a street connected to the intimate grid of the South Park neighborhood. The entry was easily accessible and visible from as far away as Shaw University. After a park renovation in the 1970s, vehicular access was removed from this area of Chavis Park and replaced with a newly constructed entry from nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The boulevard is a large and busy urban artery and is not pedestrian friendly. There are no front doors facing the boulevard. The current pedestrian park entry is a winding path that bears no resemblance to the original neighborhood-oriented entry.

Today, the only remaining structure from the heart of Chavis Park is the carousel (Figure 5.5). There is no trace evidence or interpretation in this area describing the economic, social, and cultural vitality and roles of the place. A large concrete plaza, a play area, and a large parking lot are all that cue users and visitors to use the space.

Archival research revealed that the amusement structures, including the piccolo and the miniature train referenced in many participant videos,

Figure 5.5 An image of an area in Chavis Park identiďŹ ed in Cellphone Diaries as the heart of the park. The existing carousel (right) was in a tent at the time of the park’s founding. Nothing else remains from the original site plan.

Image credit: the author.

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were removed by the city due to dwindling park resources and lack of maintenance. The level of park infrastructure in Chavis Park was seen by the city as a duplication of similar resources in nearby Pullen Park, which was the White counterpart of Chavis Park during the days of Jim Crow. The city decided to maintain Pullen Park as a regional park while transitioning Chavis Park to a neighborhood park. This transition, ironically, was in response to desegregation and a city policy that no longer supported separate but equal Black and White parks.

It’s hard to unders tand “I’m trying to see why they are going to move it [the carousel] cause they said it’s deteriorating down here. Where? And they’re closing down? What are you doing?”

Participant questioning a city staffer at the carousel

Concurrent to the period of the study, participants joined other community residents in resisting a city-authored proposal to relocate the carousel to the edge of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. From the city’s perspective, the move was logical and economically defensible. In its current location, the carousel was “buried” in the community and not visible to the casual passerby. The location hinders its visibility and potential profitability. But from a community point of view, the proposed relocation of the carousel meant the removal of the last evidence of the heart of Chavis Park. At the same time, the carousel at Pullen Park is currently being renovated and remains in the same location it has occupied since Pullen Park’s founding. Above and beyond the financial logic of relocating the carousel at Chavis Park, defending or rethinking the last trace evidence of an essential space there remains a contentious divide between city and community.

Although legal segregation was outlawed several decades ago, South Park East Raleigh residents still do not view themselves as welcomed in historically White parks, like nearby Pullen Park, as they do in Chavis Park. They do not feel included in that place. Participants in the study felt that Chavis Park had received inequitable resources in comparison to Pullen Park. In their opinion, Raleigh is in some ways just as segregated as it ever was. And the lack of recognition of basic inequality, reflected in the inequitable distribution of investments in places like Pullen and Chavis Parks, was evidence of continued challenges.

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The Cellphone Diar y process:An analy sis The project began to introduce community residents to the use of smartphones for individual on-site asset mapping. However, the project also revealed many challenges and issues. Although most of the community partners owned and used cellphones previously, none had smartphones, and none had used the digital video and upload features prior to the study.

Although fully engaged in the training workshops, connected to their tech buddies, and armed with the training brochures, the participants still felt a great deal of confusion. Since the completion of the study, none of the participants report using phones to document their places.

More practice prior to working on active data collection in the park may have improved the process and led to increased usage of mobile devices after the conclusion of the study. Additionally, reviewing and providing feedback on their videos before they were uploaded may have improved the visual quality of the participants’ work. Some of the videos had blurry and difficult-to-see images and inconsistent audio quality. Although useful for documentation purposes, some additional work about how to hold the mobile device steady and how to minimize audio interference in recording could have greatly enhanced video quality.

While creating the on-site videos, individuals commented about how being physically in the park acted as prompts, enriching and extending the length and depth of the place-based narratives. In some cases, seeing a group of trees or a passageway sparked a connection and discussion that did not occur with off-site methods. This prompting was especially valuable in areas lacking trace evidence of any past event or structure.

An unanticipated outcome of the Cellphone Diaries was the enhanced visibility and public access associated with the videos when compared to other engagement efforts. Because the videos were uploaded to YouTube and the maps are available on online, the number of those who can view these products has expanded beyond those that may have not been reached if other techniques were pursued. The videos can be viewed and shared whenever an individual wishes to access them, without the need to contact those that were a part of the process or to have a formal presentation given. The ease of access to the digital video medium, due to it its placement online, has increased exposure and attention to the people and issues in South Park East Raleigh. People who were not initially interested in the community stories became intrigued by the technology, and that became a pathway to understand what was transpiring in the neighborhood. This accessibility widens the possibility for the dissemination of the findings (Figure 5.6).

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Figure 5.6 Screen capture of Google online map linking Cellphone Diaries to locations. Image credit: the author. Map data provided by Google, 2011.

In the case of Cellphone Diaries, the South Park East Raleigh neighborhood issues received increased coverage in local newspaper articles as well as an in-depth public radio talk show interview (Stasio, 2011). The City of Raleigh also curated a gallery show, highlighting a 5-minute digital video compiled from excerpts from the Cellphone Diaries work (City of Raleigh, 2011). Additionally, the online map enables people to construct their own virtual tours of the park prior to visiting and offers opportunities for them to reflect on their park experiences upon returning.

Community participants felt a sense of validation that their place was being described in their own words. Concluding a Cellphone Diaries entry, a long-time neighborhood resident finished her video with the following statement: “I want to end this by saying that it was a positive thing in my life, Chavis Park, and this [Cellphone Diaries] brings back a lot of good memories for me.”

SPERNA recognized Cellphone Diaries and its participants at their annual holiday celebration, and they distribute DVDs about the City of Raleigh gallery show to people interested in learning about the neighborhood’s history. Additionally, Cellphone Diaries has been included, at SPERNA’s request, in a resource list used to inform current Chavis Park

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master plan work, and was presented in a city-sponsored lecture series (Boone, 2011). Questions for future work could delve further: What is the efficacy of this process? Did using mobile technology help attract resources? Change policy? Or effect any change in interpreting the history of the South Park East Raleigh neighborhood?

Conclusions The places where people in the community lived, worked, worshipped, learned, organized, and played sometimes lacked iconic architecture and formally significant built spaces. They did not always fit into the evaluations that canonize historic landmarks and places. However, they mattered to the people living there, and in the case of South Park East Raleigh, they were actively created in the context of segregation and Jim Crow, policies that disenfranchised Black people for generations. In the case of the Cellphone Diaries, this disenfranchisement was most poignantly expressed in the near demise of Chavis Park. But the participatory documentation of community stories can contribute to the valuing of the community’s place-based narratives by the next generations of community residents.

The Cellphone Diaries represent a decentralized on-site asset mapping process utilizing technology that places in the hands of many community participants the ability to better document the history and memories of their neighborhoods. Smartphones democratized the process of community engagement, as they enabled with minimum costs and other challenges the creation of an audio-video archive of a place, neighborhood, and community. With improved training protocols, participants could provide a self-paced and polyvocal interpretation of places via the participatory video method. This method could enhance the community engagement process by offering a non-workshop–based means of providing information for design efforts. These are objectives that are difficult to achieve in workshops and interviews, especially if held off site. Being on site can prompt narratives not possible off site, and the stories can be immediately mapped and made accessible to stakeholders, designers, and planners to enrich community design decision making.

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