Events News

Public Interest Design: Training Program

There is a growing sector in the field of architecture known as Public Interest Design documented in exhibits such as MoMA’s Small Scale, Big Change and publications like Design Like You Give Damn. The projects in this sector are unlike traditional practice in critical ways but are an area of great potential for the future of the profession.

The Public Interest Design Institute® will provide training to architecture and other design professionals in public interest design with in-depth study over two days on methods of how design can address the critical issues faced by communities. Training in public interest design is a way of enhancing an existing design practice and learning skills to become pro-actively engaged in community-based design.

The Harvard Case Method will be used to learn from examples. These case studies and best practices will be presented and discussed by leaders in the field. The curriculum will be formed around the Social Economic Environmental Design® (SEED) metric, a set of standards that outlines the process and principles of this growing approach to design. SEED goes beyond green design with a “triple bottom line” approach that includes the social and economic as well as the environmental. The SEED process takes a holistic, creative approach to design driven by community needs. This process provides a step-by-step aid for those who want to undertake public interest design.

Continuing education credits will be given as required of professionals by the American Institute of Architects as well as a certification in the SEED process.

Learning objectives will address:

• Finding new clients
• Learning about new fee sources and structures
• Understanding public interest design and how is it re-shaping the design professions
• Pro-actively finding a public interest design project
• Using a step-by-step process of working with a community as a design partner
• Leveraging other partners and assets to address project challenges
• Maximizing a project’s positive impact on a community
• Measuring social, economic, and environmental impact on communities

The Academic Leader of each session is Bryan Bell, the founder of Design Corps, founder of the Public Interest Design Institute, and a co-founder of SEED. Bell has supervised the Structures for Inclusion lecture series for ten years which presents best practices in community-based design. He has published two collections of essays on the topic, Bell has lectured and taught at numerous schools including the Rural Studio with Samuel Mockbee. He has received an AIA National Honor Award in Collaborative Practice. His work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale and the Cooper Hewitt Museum Triennial. He was a Harvard Loeb Fellow in 2010-11 and a co-recipient of the 2011 AIA Latrobe Prize which is focused on public interest design. Other speakers will be national leaders of this emerging field.

Upcoming Institutes:

Yale University - January 13-14, 2012

California College of Arts – February 11-12, 2012

University of Texas – March 22-23, 2012

University of Cincinnati – April 13-14, 2012

Find out more at: http://publicinterestdesign.com

The Public Interest Design Institute series is made possible through the Surdna Foundation.

[UN]RESTRICTED ACCESS: From Gaddafi's Compound to Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, International Architecture Competition Launches to Re-purpose Closed,  Abandoned and Decommissioning Military Sites

The 2011 Open Architecture Challenge : http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/competitions/challenge/2011

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Architecture for Humanity has launched the 2011 Open Architecture Challenge: [UN]RESTRICTED ACCESS, asking architects and designers to partner with community groups across the world and develop innovative solutions to re-envision closed, abandoned and decommissioning military sites. The six-month competition requires designers to work with the communities surrounding these former places of conflict to transform hostile and oftentimes painful locations, into civic spaces built for the public good.

Dotting the global landscape, decommissioned military installations leave their mark. They are symbols of triumph, pride, pain and the unforeseen consequences of military aggression. These abandoned structures and ghost towns disrupt neighborhoods and split entire communities.

While these sites are often laid to waste, Architecture for Humanity sees these as an opportunity of global proportion. In the US alone we will spend billions of dollars of taxpayers funds to do environmental remediation on the 12 millions square feet of US military space scheduled to close this year. Can we use this opportunity to bring
economic stability to areas deserted by closed bases?

Globally we see opportunity at every site. Can we re-envision the 750,000+ abandoned bunkers that pepper the Albanian landscape? Is there a second life for the recently bombed Libyan military strongholds? Can we use environmental diplomacy to use re-imagined Guantanamo Bay Detention Center? Is there a way to turn abandoned bases in Afghanistan into places of learning?

The 2011 Open Architecture Challenge will seek to provide solutions to these unanswered questions and will re-envision the future of decommissioned military space. This is an open call to action – and the first of its kind. Architecture for Humanity will ask the global design and construction community to identify retired military installations in their own backyard, to collaborate with local stakeholders, and to reclaim these spaces for social, economic, and environmental good.

If a team does not live near a decommissioned site we have selected sites in Afghanistan, Cuba, Libya and the United States.

"This is an incredible opportunity to transform places of defense into spaces of public good", noted Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity "Through this competition we have the opportunity to create strong anchors in communities that will generate thousands of jobs and bring economic stability to those who surround these sites."

In partnership with Google SketchUp and Google Earth, designers are able to present their ideas in the most impressive form no matter their location or economic capacity.

The design competition will be judged by an international, inter-disciplinary panel of experts in various fields, such as experts in base realignment processing, real estate and building professionals, former world leaders, and members of communities that have experienced a base closure or demilitarized site.

The resulting entries will be available and accessible to all on the Open Architecture Network (www.openarchitecturenetwork.org).


About The Open Architecture Challenge

The Challenge is hosted once every two years on the Open Architecture Network, an open-source community developed by Architecture for Humanity. To date more than 1,200 design teams from 64 countries have competed in these challenges. Support from sponsors and implementing partners funds the construction of selected designs. All of the designs are shared freely via the Open Architecture Network and made available for future use.

For more information or to register, please visit:
http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/competitions/challenge/2011


Competition Partners:
Architecture For Humanity is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings design services to communities in need.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

In the midst of an economic downturn, crumbling city infrastructure and technological advances that are changing the way we communicate, learn, and work together, governments, institutions and individuals are beginning to collaborate in innovative ways. Almost daily, relationships are being redrawn – between organizations, between individuals, between disciplines – informed by new networks, challenges and opportunities.

 Architectural organizations, community design centers, and design educators are not immune to these changes and are in the midst of a critical realignment, evaluating and reflecting on our specific and unique creative energies and strengths. Using these current conditions as a catalyst for change, many are fundamentally rethinking and redesigning how we conceive, present and partner in our work not only to survive these difficult times but to do more and do better. The very best are embracing these challenges to have a greater impact, reach wider audiences and create compelling programs that empower people to work together on the design decisions that shape and impact our city.

The Association for Community Design is partnering with the Association of Architecture Organizations and its Architecture + Design Education Network to bring you DESIGN IN ACTION 2011, taking place this fall in Philadelphia from October 9-11. We’re coming together for an investigation and celebration of the most ingenious new partnerships, informative failures, emergent approaches, practical wisdom and exemplary projects that embrace the power of the collective creative community. We invite you to be an active part of the knowledge sharing.

WHO SHOULD SUBMIT?

Board, Staff and Volunteers of Community Design Centers and Architecture Centers; Foundation Heads and Program Officers; Designers; Neighborhood Organizers; Policy Wonks; Technologists; Design Educators; Guerrilla Gardeners; Scientists; Community Health Experts; Design Researchers – and everyone in between! We want you to share your very best ideas, most significant challenges and exemplary projects regarding the intersection of community, collaboration and design.

HOW?

Choose one of the following formats for sharing or exploring your work or ideas.

PRESENTATION

You may choose to share your work or idea in a short (6 minutes) or long (15 minutes) format but we encourage you to focus either on storytelling or delivering concise actionable lessons. [Sessions will be between 1 to 1.5 hours. Feel free to propose a small group of presenters, or we will consider how your ideas plugs into other promising submissions.]

WORKSHOP/GROUP LEARNING ACTIVITY

Do you have an idea, skill or method that is best modeled rather than talked about? Maybe you have a ‘wicked problem’ or idea related to collaboration that you would like to get a diverse group of really smart people to help you explore? Perhaps the best manner of explaining an innovative example of design and collaboration is taking us there? Do you have an activity that helps us experience firsthand what a radical collaboration feels like? [Participatory Workshops will be between 1 and 1.5 hours. A Mobile Workshop should not exceed 3 hours.]

WHAT?

Proposals for presentations and workshops/group learning activities on collaboration should fall within one of the following themes (but topics can address any number of organizational aspects from board engagement to program development to youth education to research driving your work):

New Partnerships

What nontraditional partnerships have you pioneered to accomplish and expand your mission? How did this relationship occur, how is it being maintained and what are the results?

Instructive Failures

Some of our most poignant learning moments occur when we fall flat on our faces. What disastrous – or that wasn’t supposed to happen! – collaborative experience and lessons learned can you share with conference attendees to help everyone avoid similar mistakes? Don’t worry, we’re a friendly bunch!

Emergent Approaches

What fundamental assumptions are you testing and rethinking to foster better collaboration for greater impact? What new tools, methods and ideas are just over the horizon – perhaps in an unrelated discipline or still in the laboratory – that will change the way we work together to accomplish great things?

Exemplary Projects

Sometimes the best indicator of exemplary collaboration is an exemplary end product. Show us your very best project and then reverse engineer it for attendees, so that we can all learn from your success.

Practical Wisdom

People have been collaborating since the beginning of time. What are tried and true lessons for better collaboration that you use every day in your work?

SUBMISSION FORMAT

In 300 words or less, please describe how you would like to share or explore an exemplary idea, project or possibility involving collaboration as it relates to community and design. Please be sure to specify the following:

• 1.       List both how and what you would like to share or explore.
• 2.       Why you think this is important learning for our audience, or perhaps even why this now.
• 3.       Contact info and resume or short bio.
• 4.       Email your submission to events@communitydesign.org.

DEADLINE:

All submissions are due by June 1, 2011. Applicants will be notified by June 30th. Interested participants are encouraged to submit proposals before the deadline. All participants in sessions – including local panelists – are required to register for the conference.

NOTE: UPCOMING ADDITION TO THIS CALL FOR PROPOSALS

EXHIBIT: Scheduled to coincide with the ACD/AAO/A+DEN Conference is an exhibition that seeks to highlight the work of architects, landscape architects, designers, nonprofits, city programs, and other organizations that Strengthen Neighborhoods Through Design. The exhibit is organized by the Community Design Collaborative and will be held at the Center for Architecture in Philadelphia. Stay tuned for a Call for Submissions by May 15.

OVERVIEW
The Community Design Collaborative is hosting an exhibition titled Leverage: Strengthening Neighborhoods through Design in the Fall 2011 as part of our Urban Energy initiative. This exhibition will offer design firms, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and others the opportunity to highlight their best practices in community design throughout the country.

Leading examples of community design in Philadelphia and inspiring approaches from other American cities will be on display from October 1 through October 23, 2011 at the Center for Architecture in Philadelphia. The exhibition opening party will be held Wednesday, October 5, 2011. Come celebrate with us!

Leverage: Strengthening Neighborhoods through Design will coincide with the launch of a special 20th Anniversary publication of the same name and the DESIGN IN ACTION 2011 Conference a joint conference of Association for Community Design / Association of Architecture Organizations / Architecture + Design Education Network to be held in Philadelphia. It will also be the Collaborative's featured contribution for Design Philadelphia 2011, the largest city-wide design festival in the nation.

The Collaborative is seeking entries for the exhibition. Entrants can submit either an exemplary project or program. Submissions of all project types and scales are encouraged: large and small, built and unbuilt, interior and exterior, new construction, adaptive reuse, and preservation. Submissions of programs (workshops, design charrettes, tours, exhibitions, etc.) should include a visual representation.

ELIGIBILITY
Eligible projects include sites and/or programs that promote best practices in community design, participatory design, pro bono service, and public interest architecture.

CRITERIA
Submissions for this exhibition will be reviewed and selected by a panel of diverse experts who will be looking for the projects to:

SUBMISSION and SELECTION

Step 1:	Entrants must complete and return an Intent to Submit form with a pdf image, a project description and a $100 Non-Members or $75 Members (ACD, AAO, AIA, Collaborative volunteer active since 2001) registration fee (for each entry) by July 1, 2011. Each entrant may enter up to two submissions.
Step 2:	Entrants will be notified if accepted into the show by August 1, 2011.
Step 3:	If selected, the entrants are responsible for the printing and delivery of a 40"x40" mounted display board and a final pdf image by September 15, 2011. ARC Philadelphia has graciously offered a printing discount to our selected applicants.

Please click here to register and submit your entry.

Save The Date!

Promoting Economic Development through Regional
Cooperation, Planning, and Development
2011 Planners Network National Conference,
May 18 -21, 2011, The University of Memphis

Highlights:

• National Speakers on Progressive Strategies for Rebuilding Our Economy
• 18 Community-Based, Resident-Led Planning Charettes in TN, AK, and MS
• View and Meet the Producers of the Award-Winning “I Am A Man” – a film exploring the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike and Join of Discussion of Contemporary Labor Rights
• Enjoy an Evening of Music, Dance, and Discussion on the Role of Culture in Economic Development at the STAX Museum of American Soul Music (Just Think: Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, Booker T and the MGs, Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, and Isaac Hayes)
• Tours of the National Civil Rights Museum, Kayaking on the Wolf River, Visits to  SUN Music, and Graceland!

For More Info:  www.memphis.edu/plannersnetwork/

via Arch Daily
report By Kelly Minner

Sponsored by Social Economic Environmental Design (SEED) and Design Corps in support with Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Enterprise Foundation and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the eleventh annual “Structures for Inclusion (SFI 10 + 1)” conference will be held in Chicago on the 25th – 27th of March 2011.

“SFI 10 + 1″ will unite activists, designers, funders and policy makers as change agents to address the most pressing design challenges of the world today, challenging participants to integrate positive change design in their own practices. Going above and beyond the green design movement the “SFI 10 + 1″ will confront design processes to consider the broader social and economic well-being of communities and cities.

Opening the conference on March 25th will be keynote speaker Patrick Tighe of Tighe Architects.  The conferences keynotes, panels, and workshops will also include the participation of  Tom Fischer Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, Andrew Freear Director of Rural Studio, and Sergio Palleroni of BaSiC Initiative, Trung Le of CANNON Design, Christine Gaspar of Center for Urban Pedagogy, Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC, and Michael Zaretsky Co-author of New Directions in Sustainable Design.

The SEED Design Awards, an international competition highlighting Public Interest Design, will be integrated in the “SFI 10 + 1″ as the winning recipients, featured after the break, will partake as key proponents in the conference experience.

More information about the “SFI 10 + 1″ conference can be found at their official website.

The six SEED Award Winners are:

• Café 524 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Congo Street Initiative Dallas, Texas
• Studio H Bertie County, North Carolina
• Growing Home Chicago, Illinois
• Inspiration Kitchen East Garfield Park Chicago, Illinois
• St. Joseph Rebuild Center New Orleans, Louisiana

These projects demonstrate how design is playing a role in addressing the most critical issues around the globe today: job creation, hunger, education, disaster relief, and the environment. Jurors were very impressed with the rigor and level of community engagement displayed by the submissions, and decided to recognize an additional six Honorable Mentions.

Juror Monica Chadha said:
We truly enjoyed the high caliber of entries. The winning submissions showcase not only how to work collaboratively but also how to create sustaining work by engaging all of the constituents. These projects are having high impact with an economy of means: much more is being done with much less. The projects show that the community/designer teams are aligned with the SEED vision to create a socially, economically and environmentally healthy community for all.

The Honorable Mention recipients are:

• Butaro District Hospital in Butaro, Rwanda
• Girubuntu Primary School in Butaro, Rwanda
• Lydia Street Alley Flat in Austin, Texas
• Rehabilitation of Bhaldi Village in Bhuj India
• Roche Health Center in Roche, Tanzania
• Student Organic Farm in Clemson, South Carolina

Each project had to go through the critical SEED application to ensure that the community was involved in setting the goals for the project and in developing the design solution.

Minner , Kelly . "Structures for Inclusion Conference" 25 Feb 2011. ArchDaily. Accessed 08 Apr 2011. <http://www.archdaily.com/112698>

Courtesy of Brandy Brooks, Association for Community Design

On the 22-24 of September a group of architects, developers, and activist got together to discuss affordable housing development and how to create change in the field. Originally published on http://katherinerw.com/ after being asked if she would write about her time at the conference, Brandy offered these thoughts.

When you call your event the “Architecture for Change Summit,” I think you set a pretty high bar for a) what’s going to be in it and b) what’s going to come out of it. By and large, I think the organizers at University of Illinois at Chicago did a pretty stellar job with the fi rst part, and laid some good groundwork for the second.

Sponsored by the City Design Center at UIC, the summit boasted a pretty impressive list of speakers. What convinced me to attend was the number of my personal community design heroes and friends that I’d get to see – Maurice Cox, former mayor of Charlottesville and outgoing NEA Director of Design; Bryan Bell of Design Corps and Structures for Inclusion; and Dan Pitera, executive director of the Detroit Collaborative
Design Center, to name just a few. What rewarded me for attending were the  conversations and ideas across the sessions that prodded us question our basic  assumptions about our responsibility as professionals to challenge and change the world around us.

Although I’ve certainly heard of Teddy Cruz, this was the first time I’d ever heard him speak, and I can’t believe I missed out all this time. I’m fascinated by the kind of micro-grained urbanism that he’s exploring in his research and projects, and I think it’s a wonderful counter to our current love aff air with assembling giant parcels for a single development entity in the name of “transformative development.” There’s nothing particularly transformative about keeping large parcels of land in the hands of large corporations; on the other hand, allowing individual actors and small groups to build interdependent small-scale economies on smaller parcels of land offers a radical new set of opportunities for community building and self-sufficiency. (Estudio Teddy Cruz)

Dan Pitera is in the vanguard of the cosmic campaign to convince me to move to Detroit, and I love it. I can’t say enough about how inspired I am by the Detroit Collaborative Design Center’s innovative approaches to neighborhood revitalization in the city; their recent work using arts as a catalyst for drawing attention and renewed identity to various areas of the city goes far beyond the typical “arts as an economic engine” kind of project. DCDC and its partners are using the history of disinvestment in land and buildings across the city as an opportunity to take bold, innovate steps toward a new kind of physical landscape – whether in a project that transforms a whole street into a public arts gallery, or a tiny house that encourages us to rethink how much space we really need to live well and comfortably. I was also challenged by the conversation about communities in Detroit that are becoming more self-sufficient in terms of providing their own local services and economy: do we end up empowering communities by allowing them to meet their needs on their own, or isolating them from participation in the wider economy and civic life? It’s not a question you can fully address in 90 minutes, but Dan wasn’t afraid to acknowledge the concern or admit that no one quite knows the answer.

Back when I was a young’un in AIAS, I went to the FORUM in Cincinnati , and took a fantastic tour that I still remember through the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. So when
Tom Dutton from Miami University’s Center for Community Engagement in  Over-the-Rhine started talking about their DesignBuild Studio and their Residency Program, I was all ears for his update. In a word, I think CCE’s education change strategy might be described as “immersion”: whether on a project or a semester basis, setting students right in the thick of the community and its struggle for social, economic and environmental justice. Students make interventions large and small in the buildings and spaces of the neighborhood; but at the same time, the neighborhood makes its own interventions in the hearts and minds of students, bringing them face-to-face with the dynamics of power and privilege at work in our society and with the real people behind the term “underserved community.” It’s worth noting that the program doesn’t just recruit designers, but also students from a variety of majors at Miami University , such as social work and education. Multidisciplinary, immersive, engaged, transformative … that’s the kind of education I wish we all were getting!

If you don’t know Sherry Ahrentzen, you should. She’s the associate director for research at the Stardust Center for Affordable Housing & the Family at Arizona State University, and she’s bringing the concept of action research squarely into the center of architectural practice. Action research, you say? I wouldn’t have known the term either, had I not gotten to study it last year as part of my Master in Public Administration coursework; in general, we don’t talk nearly enough about research as a critical component or architectural practice andeducation. But action research isn’t just the passive study and analysis of a situation; as the name implies, it is an engaged
feedback process where researchers partner with community organizations in a cycle of data collection and analysis that informs on-the-ground activity that then refi nes the ongoing research efforts. From energy efficiency monitoring to affordable housing preservation, this partnership enables community organizations to develop more informed strategies for neighborhood interventions – and it enables the creation of a tremendous body of knowledge about wise practices and critical issues in the field. Since one of my major initiatives at the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence is improving the accessibility and usability of our own knowledge base and then connecting it up to other knowledge centers in the fi eld, this was probably my favorite “aha” moment of the conference. It was also my favorite interdisciplinary moment; I realized that we’re all wrestling with the same kinds of conversations in my two fields of study (architecture and public administration), and the moment is ripe for creating a bridge to share knowledge across discipline silos.

Each of the four speakers – and many others at the conference I don’t have room to name – presented huge perspective shifts in the way that we could think about development, revitalization, education and practice. Right now, we’re still thinking of these examples as “alternatives” at the fringe of the field. But I like the way Casius Pealer put it: we need to stop talking about “alternative practice,” and start validating and accepting these ideas as part of the mainstream options for the design field. Casius is an architecture graduate who chose to blend design with law, and now uses both in his work on aff ordable housing; as he points out, no one tells a lawyer that they’re going into “alternative practice” if they choose to work in legal aid or do pro bono through their fi rm. These options have become part of the norm (and in the case of pro bono service, part of the ABA Code of Ethics requirements) for how lawyers can choose
to use their training, and its about time we bring a similar culture into the design professions.

The summit hasn’t changed architecture – yet. But it offered some clear examples of the ways that architecture is beginning to change, and provided an exceptional venue for challenging all of our notions about what designers can do and be.

This summary was originally published in four parts, the first of which may be found at: http://katherinerw.com/2010/10/13/guest-post-architecture-for-change-pt-1/

Sustainable Landscape, Sustainable Community: Reflections on the 7th Pacific Rim Participatory Community Design Conference- Awaji, Japan

Courtesy of Shu-Mei Huang, Doctoral Candidate in Built Environment, College of Built Environments, University of Washington

Three years after its last meeting in Quanzhou, China, members of the Pacific Rim Community Design Network gathered again in Japan in September, 2010. Thanks to Awaji Landscape Planning and Horticulture Academy (ALPHA), more than 150 faculty, students, and practitioners from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, China, USA, Sri Lanka and Indonesia participated in the conversation regarding “Sustainable Landscape, Sustainable Community” on Awaji-shima, a beautiful island that is re-identifying itself as a land for sustainable and slow life in the midst of reconstruction and redevelopment after the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.

The first theme is “green community building” with cases of engaging local people in horticulture and farming collectively and thereby building the community. John K.C. Liu suggests that notions of “green” and “community” cannot be separated, that is, an ecological and sustainable process of place making cannot be achieved without community building. Cases shared by participants support this view, such as  community garden in Taipei and Seattle, “open garden” in Awaji, greening projects in Seoul, and “Satoyama” (community forest) in Japan. More than considering greening or urban farming in its conventional sense, this kind of practices also involves issues of aging community, food system, health, etc.

Landscape practice that touches our “heart and soul” is another theme. Community designers and workers should not avoid working with myth and belief, which are actually a fundamental part of a meaningful life as Randy Hester reminds us. Capable professionals find more promising ways to inclusive design by not giving up communicating with every possible being related to its practice. The commitment brings about a mutual beneficial process to both the people and the nature. The specific initiative of horticultural therapy developed in ALPHA is one such case showing how nature heals people as people heal nature. Similarly, we also learn that it is very important to pursue beyond felt-good design on small scale, by working toward activist ecology that links issues across scales, local knowledge, and conservation biology.

The network recognizes politics of community and landscape. With machizukuri as an inspiring example showing the necessary political aspect of community participation in city planning and place making, community design for democracy is re-affirmed as an ongoing process that acquires great attention to power and social inclusion. Cases about aboriginal people in Taiwan and the homeless in Japan demonstrate possibilities of empowering marginal social groups in design by and for themselves. Oftentimes community designers learn much more from working with them.

As usual, the conference ended in Professor Yasuhiro Endoh’s keywords that represented the ethos of the exchange, from which he presented lifescapes as a result of seven initials from seven observations at the conference. By lifescapes he means the healthy environment that nurtures community empowerment and a body-mind-spirit framework for considering participation and sustainability. Diverse lifescapes require a reciprocal and recombinant process and transformative spaces like ENGAWA. With that we know community design is never closed. For next time, we hope to see more communities we work with participating in the networking speaking for themselves. It will be an exercise of making the networking itself a lifescape.

Access the Pacific Rim Participatory Community Design Network on the Web: http://faculty.washington.edu/jhou/pacrim.htm;
and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group. php?gid=160680570612513

The conference, hosted by the Department of City and Regional Planning and the College of Environmental Design (CED) at the University of California, Berkeley, June 16-20, 2010, united more than 450 planners, architects, designers, urban activists, educators, journalists, policymakers, academics, students, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds across North America. All shared a passion for social, economic, and environmental justice, and were committed to exchanging their experiences and visions for robust civic engagement, innovative planning, and inclusive community building.

This year the Association for Community Design joined with Architects/ Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility and the Planners Network expanding the dialogue in both scope and scale for our national conference. It provided a great forum for members of all organizations involved to share thoughts and perspectives coming from our own practices and communities.

In addition to the many excellent panel discussions and paper sessions, there were a series of Mobile Workshops throughout the greater Bay Area highlighting the work of local community design efforts that were highly successful in showing how we
do the work of community design from a variety of different perspectives and scales.

Great thanks go to our partners at the Planners Network which facilitated a large amount of the conference, doing the heavy lifting along with support from both ADPSR and ACD. The word of mouth outside the three organizations was great and a there was a great deal of local participation.

With the success of the conference and the great conversations that came from the cross-mingling of the diff erent circles of community planning and design all three organizations were interested in doing something similar every couple of years to continue expanding the conversation within our larger community of practice.

Access the record of the conference at: http://justmetropolis.org/home