Defining Community-Led Design
Community-led design is an inclusive design approach where the design development is handled in a collective, community process, instead of being headed by a single person or organization. People who live in that community actively participate in the planning and development of their neighbourhoods to create spaces and projects that satisfy communal needs and desires. This creates solutions that are culturally and functionally unique and inclusive.
Community-led design often involves workshops, meetings, and collaboration, allowing residents to share their ideas, concerns, and preferences with the designers and political leaders.
Understanding Community-Led Design
Community-led design is the opposite of traditional top-down approaches to urban planning and development. People within the community provide the design inputs according to their collective needs. This approach relies on the belief that the people who live and work in a particular area possess specific insights into its needs, challenges, and potential.
Key Principles of Community-Led Design
Communities are culturally and economically diverse, with different experiences, and perspectives. Successful community-led projects require the valuable input of all community members, ensuring inclusivity in the design process. From the project concept stage to the implementation of the design, communities play a vital part in shaping their spaces. This participatory approach generates a sense of ownership and accountability among the people in that particular community, as they become co-creators of these spaces.
Community-led design often considers adaptive reuse and the preservation of existing elements. This helps preserve the historical importance of the neighborhood while bringing innovative changes to the space.
Examples of Community-Led Design
The High Line, New York City, USA.
The High Line is an urban park project designed by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. It is built on a former New York Central freight railroad. The design successfully adds green spaces, public art, and adaptive reuse into an vibrant urban park, while actively involving the community in the decision-making process.
The urban park has a unique character and supports the needs of the surrounding neighborhoods due to community engagement during the design stage.
The Kensington Street, Sydney, Australia.
Kensington Street is a pedestrian laneway, designed through community-led design strategies. The concept for the design included input from residents and local businesses, resulting in a pedestrian-friendly lively area with art installations, outdoor seating, and spaces for events.
Shop frontages spill out into the laneway and generate a space that connects the street and the activities happening there. A formal avenue of trees separates vehicular movements from active building frontages.
It is also a project that generated new traffic on a once-abandoned corner of the city. The new creative spaces have brought in new visitors to the street. The street consists of tiny historic workers’ cottages and lofty industrial warehouses, combined with new structures, rooftop areas, and a series of communal dining courtyards.
The Superkilen Park, Copenhagen:
Superkilen is a half-mile-long urban space situated in one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, Superflex, and Topotek1 as a giant exhibition of a sort of collection of global found objects that come from 60 different nationalities of the people inhabiting the area around the park. Residents from the neighborhoods surrounding the park actively participated in the selection of public furniture, playground equipment, and landscaping for the project, making it a perfect example of community-led design.
Pieces including exercise gear from Muscle Beach LA, sewage drains from Israel, palm trees from China, and neon signs from Qatar and Russia,are present in the park. They are accompanied by a small stainless plate inlaid in the ground describing the object, what it is, and where it is from. The result is a multicultural and community-led public space that celebrates the cultural diversity and inclusivity of the area. A bike path and a pedestrian path run through the entire park, connecting the park to the broader citywide context.
The Superkilen is divided into three color-coded areas – green, black, and red, based on the concept. The red zone is a large, expansive square that serves as an extension to the sports hall adjacent to the park. Recreational and cultural activities take place here. The black zone is the heart of the project and serves as a meeting place and a spot to rest. The green zone addresses the need for landscape and greenery around the area and creates a linear green space with vantage points to all the surrounding areas.
The Impact of Community-Led Design:
Community-led design creates a sense of belonging and social responsibility by involving residents in decision-making processes. Individuals in the community feel a stronger connection to their neighborhood. Diversity and inclusion is taken into account while designing.
Community-led design ensures that the design solutions meet the specific needs of the community that the project serves. The different perspectives brought to the discussion result in solutions that may not have been conceived through traditional top-down methods.
As is with all approaches, community-led design has its challenges too. Ensuring equal participation, managing diverse opinions, and securing adequate resources are common challenges faced during community-led design. Community-led design unlocks the potential of collective intelligence and experiences. This approach leads to a future where residents are not just inhabitants but active architects of their environments.
