Understanding the Community

Perhaps the largest barrier to equitable engagement is excluding certain groups from the design process. Usually, we aren’t excluding these groups intentionally, rather we just don’t realize they're a part of the community we’re working with. And if we don't know who’s a part of the community, we can't tailor our outreach and engagement methods to best serve them.

This section outlines a few methods to get to know the community better. Based on the scale and scope of a specific project, you can select which methods are most appropriate to developing a comprehensive understanding of the community.

Once you've gained a foundational understanding of the community, you'll want to explore in more detail the power dynamics within that community. The tools in the Identifying Stakeholders section can help you explore these complex neighborhood systems and set explicit goals for who you want to engage and why.

Conversations

Your first source of information about the community is the community partner themselves. The partner will have valuable experience, connections, and context to share about the neighborhood, information that you can’t glean just from observation or data alone. Some specific questions to discuss with the partner might include:

Questions

How do you & your organization fit into the context of the community?

How would you describe this community?

Who and what makes up the community?

Is there a history of similar projects, spaces, or development in the community? What can we learn from these examples?

What organizations, individuals, or institutions have the most influence in the community?

Even though our partners are experts on their own community, they still hold a specific perspective that may not be shared by everyone in the neighborhood. It’s our responsibility to think critically about who or what our partners might be missing in their own community, and we can use data, research, and observations to do this.

Using Data

Data can support our understanding of a community by providing definitive quantitative information about who lives there and what resources are available. This data can also be used to identify barriers in a neighborhood such as poor internet connectivity, lack of access to transportation, and language barriers.

The following maps show a range of data about Baltimore City at the Census tract level.

Data & Maps

Research

The most basic research method is a simple Google search. Seeing the most popular articles, organizations, and information about a neighborhood can be very educational. Furthermore, exploring Google Maps can help you visually learn what other organizations and spaces exist in the neighborhood.

You might also try searching on social media for relevant information. Browsing through neighborhood facebook groups, checking out the accounts of local organizations, or searching for a tagged location are all good places to start. Seeing how a space is talked about on social media or in the news can help you get a sense of how it is perceived, how it is used, and who uses it.

Colleagues or local project partners may also have institutional knowledge to share about past and present engagement processes in the neighborhood. This background research can help to uncover existing conflicts and dynamics within the community that may need to be addressed during your project.

Site Visits

Visiting the project site can also supplement what you’ve learned about the community through conversations and data. During a site visit, not only can you observe who’s using the space but also how they’re using it. Site visits can follow a range of formats from casual drop-ins, to walking tours with the partner, to formal observational sessions. Based on the scale and scope of your project, you can decide what the right level of observation is. If you plan to do a series of formal observations, you can look to existing guides on public observation such as the Gehl Public Life Tools.