Even in the years leading up to this transformative time of intense focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, the lack of diversity in the design professions was obvious and under attack.
“More perspectives on race, color, economics and religion expands design priorities,” wrote Nick Schaden, at the time a UI Engineer for Square in a 2017 article on the Inside Design blog.
In an October 2020 article in Fast Company titled “4 Steps to Design a Better Future After COVID-19,” Bobby C. Martin, Jr., co-founder of graphic design firm Champions Design, responded, “What’s more important is to go beyond empathy and make sure that the people that are creating the work — that are thinking and strategizing — are coming from diverse perspectives.”
As these sentiments took root across multiple industries, they also gained momentum in the building industry. Over the last several years, diversity has had an increasingly important role to play in our thinking about how physical spaces are designed and built. The logic is that more diversity represented among building industry professionals will result in a higher level of empathy for user populations with a diverse set of physical, psychological, cultural or economic realities. This thinking applies whether you are talking about a corporate headquarters, an education or healthcare facility or an urban development. The theory carries particular weight when it’s applied to the built environment for people who typically have little exposure to good design and the associated benefits.
Billed as “the people’s design firm,” Washington, D.C.-based Determined by Design focuses on affordable housing and shelter for marginalized communities — low-income users, often people of color — that might not normally have access to good design, much less a voice in its creation.
The firm’s foundational principle, Design Equity, underscores Founder Kia Weatherspoon’s commitment to elevating the quality of the built environment for everyone.
“Design is not a luxury for a few, it is a standard for all,” said Weatherspoon. Informed by time spent visiting her incarcerated brother in prison, her military career as an Air Force veteran deployed four times in the Middle East following 9/11 and her experience creating high-end hospitality spaces, Weatherspoon has devoted her design and teaching careers (as a professor at the Savannah College of Art & Design) to addressing social and economic inequities through design.
“There is a bias that exists when designing for low-income communities, and predomi- nantly people of color,” Weatherspoon said. “I don’t see demographics. I came from a luxury hospitality and multifamily space, so the only way I know how to design is how I design spaces for everybody else.”
Weatherspoon represents a growing group of socially responsible professionals who are empowering marginalized communities to determine their own spatial destinies. Another is Open Design Collective, an Oklahoma City-based, not-for-profit firm that brings together underrepresented communities and the design and city planning resources necessary to promote social and spatial change.
“Empathy is an important value, especially working in communities that have been harmed,” said Vanessa Morrison, chief executive officer, who co-founded Open Design Collective with her partner Deborah Richards, chief design officer. “Another value that is equally if not more important is shared power.” Morrison pointed out that as profes- sionals in the building industries grapple with how to address patterns of inequity in mar- ginalized communities, translating solutions to actual practice can be elusive.
“One of the best ways we can address those challenges is by working alongside community members and creating space for them to be leaders in the shaping, planning and designing of their physical spaces,” Morrison continued. “Every time we step into a neighborhood we have to lead with that sensitivity. You can’t do that if you’re not working with the people who are most heavily impacted.”
History is rife with examples of urban devel- opment that have caused social and spatial harm. When David Geffen Hall recently celebrated its grand re-opening following a $550 million renovation, Lincoln Center chose to address the questionable history of its site head-on. Once known as San Juan Hill, the neighborhood was home to thousands of Puerto Rican and Black residents and hundreds of small businesses in the 1950s, before controversial urban planner Robert Moses oversaw its destruction to make way for the development of Lincoln Center. The renovated hall reopened last October with a performance of Etienne Charles’ San Juan Hill: A New York Story, an immersive multimedia work that honors the history of the San Juan Hill neighborhood and the indigenous and immigrant communities that populated the land on which Lincoln Center was built.
More recently, we’ve tried to do better. Steven Pedigo, executive director of LBJ Urban Lab and professor of practice at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, said that in urban development, there’s an acute awareness about issues across communities related to development.
“The issues of urban development have become much more front and center, and the public is demanding community engagement,” he said. “Fifteen years ago, community engagement was nice to have. Now it’s a must-have because of our political process.”
One reason for developers, planners and designers to engage communities, he said, is that real estate has moved beyond singular developments to city development, large-scale community development and neighborhood development.
“There are larger implications,” he said. “We’re building out destinations with mixed- use public amenities that are taking advan- tage of public incentive dollars. All of that has required a new level and type of engagement to service the needs of the community.”
Community engagement allows real estate, planning and design professionals to understand the needs and desires of the community, to understand the gaps and to ensure that a development remains a good community partner and a good community anchor.
“Through co-creation, developers can also address fears that come along with gentrification and displacement,” added Pedigo. Though development is not new to com- munity engagement, “the newer facet is the question of how you achieve your community development goals and also your economic development goals in the process.”
In fact, there are very real economic arguments for empowering communities to help determine their own built environments.
“When you start to gather the opinions and desires of a specific community, their cultural identity is going to be expressed through that project,” said Pedigo. “Don’t just do it to check a box. Do it in a way that’s thoughtful and intentional. Second, make a commitment to letting that community engagement influence the project or change its direction.”
The third point, according to Pedigo, is where many developers miss opportunities.
“Communicate impact,” he said. “Be very clear about how that engagement shaped that development and communicate that back to community stakeholders.”
