Community doodling??

Throughout this course I have been ranting in my blogs about the concepts we have learned and always looking at the negative aspects of them such as the problems associated with the Canadian healthcare system. As this is my last blog, I will demonstrate to you that I’m not THAT fussy and I will address an issue I learned about this week with a positive outlook.

In this week of this course we learned about healthy human development. Healthy human development is not achieved if people eat their vegetables everyday but rather many aspects of their everyday lives including their quality of life. Quality of life means for a person to have not only a healthy well being but also the well being of their societies.

An interesting concept that was discussed in class that reflects quality of life is the community design charette. I’ve never heard of this before but what happens is that members of the community get together and actually construct an image of what they want their communities to look like. They actually draw what they want to change in their community, for example, if in the community there is a certain landscape that consists of an empty green space, the members of the community can draw a park in that area to make this space useful to the members of the community.

I think this an amazing idea! I mean members of the community can actually say, or shall I say draw, what they want in their community. I think this is a great way for the people of the community to have their voices heard. Also, actually having a physical representation (that people can look at) that shows exactly what will be changed is more effective for members of the community so they can know exactly what will happen rather than have a written document on a paper that may not be descriptive and therefore people might not fully understand it and accept it.

When creating community design charettes, different members work on different aspects such as housing, infrastructure, neighbourhoods, and transportation. These different categories are a balance of social, cultural, and residential needs that synergistically affect quality of life. These charettes also provide a great representation of the community since the community members are the ones who dictate the changes that need to be made in their communities. As Jane Jacobs said in the clip watched in seminar, people are living sedentary lifestyles today. If communities make efforts to provide more access to parks, sidewalks, bike routes, supermarkets, etc., members of the community can perhaps have an increased quality of life and ultimately healthy development.

As Jane Jacobs said: "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."