Planting Imagination: Community Co-Design 'How-to-Guide'

Abstract

This How-to Guide details how a group of architects, residents, community organizers, and public health researchers embarked on a journey to explore more radical ways of designing, working, and building together. Our aim was to go beyond the usual (and at times disempowering) community consultation methods commonly used in neighbourhood design, to see if we can develop an ethical co-design approach that starts and ends with the local community.

Through a combination of virtual reality (VR) centric visioning sessions and co-design workshops, we worked together to redesign Cecil’s community garden located in Toronto’s Chinatown West. This process helped us build community power to address ‘neighbourhood health’ as a collective resource in the context of COVID-19, and encouraged us to think beyond individualized health outcomes.

This guide is our way of sharing what we learned. We hope to encourage others to design and build in a more authentic and generative way by collaborating with local communities, and be open to bringing together diverse skills, practices, knowledge, and people. We’re excited to see how you might take, build, and make use of our insights in your own work and community. Let’s get started!

本操作指南将详细介绍一群建筑师、居民、社区组织者和公共卫生研究人员如何踏上探索更激进的共同设计、工作和建设方式的旅程。我们的目标是超越社区设计中常用（有时让人感到无能为力）的社区咨询方法，看看我们能否开发一种有道德和以当地社区为起与终点的共同设计方法。

通过以虚拟现实 (VR) 为中心的愿景构想会议和共同设计活动，我们協力改造了位于多伦多西区唐人街思豪社区花园的设计。这过程帮助了我们建立社区力量以呼应在COVID-19背景下将“社区健康”作为集体资源看待，并鼓励我们进行超越个人健康结果的思考。

本指南是我们分享所学的方式。我们希望鼓励其他人通过与当地社区合作来达到更真实，更具创造性的方式进行设计和建造，并接纳将不同的技能、实践、知识和人才汇集在一起​​。我们很期待看到您如何在自己的工作和社区中收取，构建和利用我们的见解。让我们开始吧！