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civic engagement

Meet your neighbour: encouraging active communities in Singapore

December 30, 2014January 27, 2019 | thinkingcity

Jan Lim and Mizah Rahman of Participate in Design, a non-profit organisation based in Singapore, shed light on their work to help neighbourhoods and institutions design community-owned spaces and solutions

Portraits from the Dear Neighbour project. Photographs: Zi Song Lim
Portraits from the Dear Neighbour project. Photographs: Zi Song Lim

Singapore is a city-state of 5.4 million people, with an area that is less than half the size of London. More than 80% of the population reside in high-rise, high-density public housing. Local neighbourhoods of public housing are known as the ‘Heartlands’; they have been a central feature of Singaporean public life where people develop their social relationships and where cultural activities such as Malay weddings and Chinese wakes take place in void deck spaces (the open spaces under public housing blocks).

Despite living in close proximity to one another, most people hardly know or interact with their neighbours beyond a cursory ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. The issue of neighbourliness and sense of community becomes all the more important in high-rise and high-density living, so we wanted to see if we could help grow this.

Working in partnership with the local community club, and inspired by the Inside Out Project, we conceived of the Dear Neighbour project as an experiment to see if we could encourage more people to pause and reflect on the roles that they play in their neighbourhoods, and how others around them may have made small or big differences in their lives. What we wanted to know was: who would people thank if they had to acknowledge the individuals who have contributed to making their neighbourhood a better place to live in?

Dear Neighbour project, June 2014. Photograph: JJ of Sidexside Pictures
Dear Neighbour project, June 2014. Photograph: JJ of Sidexside Pictures

Over the course of a day, we collected about 180 portraits in the MacPherson neighbourhood, each of which captures an individual with a chalkboard stating the person he or she would like to acknowledge. Most people struggled a little when asked to think about someone within their neighbourhood whom they were grateful to; some were surprised that they do not know the names of their immediate neighbours. Some offered their thanks to the neighbourhood cleaners; others, the local drinks vendor. One person was grateful to the nearby senior citizens’ home for taking care of his granduncle.

All these portraits contributed towards the creation of a large-scale art installation that we later put up on the facade of one of the housing blocks, forming a visual statement and reminder of the quiet and often invisible people who play positive roles in the community.

Dear Neighbour installation. Photograph: MacPherson Community Club
Dear Neighbour installation. Photograph: MacPherson Community Club

This experiment is part of a larger research-in-action project called BetterSG (Better Singapore), where the goal is to develop a participatory design framework that is appropriate for the social, cultural and political context of the city. Participatory design means designing with people, and not just for people – an approach that can be adopted in developing public spaces, products, building, technology, and art – to create outcomes that are well-used and loved by the communities affected. But what we have learnt is that before we can even begin to involve people in creating solutions for themselves and their community, great efforts need to be made towards building relationships and connecting strangers, especially in the fast-paced, urban environment that we are living in. Dear Neighbour is one tool to start achieving that.

All photographs courtesy of Participate In Design and all rights reserved.

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Text your way to a better city

November 11, 2012January 27, 2019 | thinkingcity

Can digital sharing platforms help improve your neighbourhood?

by Francesca Perry

Over in the US, a new project called Textizen is presenting an accessible and contemporary method for citizen participation. Posters in Philadelphia ask yes or no questions related to urban planning issues and decisions, to which people respond via text. The feedback apparently does go to City Hall and has an impact on planning policy. It’s an interesting and quick way to get people thinking and involved in their cities, especially in an age where most shy away from or have little time for more traditional methods of civic engagement like workshops and forums. However, the process of multiple independent voices takes away the critical value of great community engagement, which is discussion, compromise and reaching conclusions together. That’s not to say Textizen should be undermined as a survey method, which it’s clearly effective at, just that to government, public participation in urban planning should always be more than ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers.

There is an interesting piece from Engaging Cities where other technologies for civic participation are discussed, including Neighborland, which seems to move more into the realm of empowering communities and individuals to make a positive impact and effect change in their area: it aims to be a creative and enjoyable way to get people thinking about their cities and their neighbourhoods, giving inspiration and help that fosters collaborative development. The public shares ideas about how to make their cities better, then the proposed projects or changes gather support, and discussion follows which leads to action. It seems that, from their ‘accomplishments’ page, things have been achieved through the process, albeit potentially few and far between. But civic engagement in urban planning is difficult: I know first-hand the systems in place that make it unfeasible for grassroots demands to take priority. It also goes without saying that giving a voice to the community does not mean the community will agree on a way forward.

But the most important thing is to maximise these opportunities, facilitate these discussions so that just sometimes they might break through, develop and effect positive change. It’s easy for communities to become cynical about their role in such processes but it is always better to have the public involved than not at all. We might not be able to turn every office complex into a park, but the interstitial opportunities – and sometimes the big ones – are there to be seized.

Our own homegrown organisation The Civic Crowd aims for a similar process to Neighborland: suggest a change, gather support, act – though the great thing about this digital platform is that it maps its content, so you can see immediately what is happening near to you, what you can get involved in and what your neighbours are fighting for.

It’s plain to see that these are processes that don’t purely exist within urban development, but in politics too. Perhaps the ‘Occupy’ movement made many realise that it is possible to garner support and act to make positive change across multiple realms. Whether the change happens or not is still in the hands of complex systems of varying fairness. But in this case, to show we care for our city, that we think about how to improve our urban lives and make our voice heard, using the helping hand of technology, makes the future of urban living a little more hopeful.

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