Planning WITH not FOR the Community
Universities as teaching institutions have the responsibility for preparing students for their work life after their academic studies, helping them to understand the strengths and weaknesses of communities, neighborhoods and society. Developing a specific form of education fitting for the demands of society is one aim of “community-based learning”. During my research about community-based-learning-class from the Technion, I examined its capability to increase the understanding of the importance of planning with communities. Six students from Technions Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, which took the Social Hub class "Planning with the Community" were interviewed about their experience. All of the students showed an increased awareness of what it means to substantially understand the needs of a neighborhood or the community they worked with and where the difference is between working FOR and WITH the community.
Alex mentioned that for him some things were different such as working with an anthropologist:
“Definitely more involved and more motivated. But I don’t know if it is like the content, also the content, it’s the mixture of the format of the class very personally eventually, because we had a ratio of teachers to students was very high, we had 12 students. It was more like a debate; it was like a round table, all sitting in a group, it wasn’t like a lecture, so the setting you have teacher that […] or in the studio where you have like instructions, you present your material and you get criticism for it. But that was more like an open discussion debate. And they bring sometimes outside lectures that give us more inside. And also the fact that it was more likes a personal involvement, because we meet the community, we communicate with them”.
Another important experience Anais made, was to be aware of the usage of language as an architect while talking to non-architects:
“It’s not a usual thing to study to explain some architectural drawings to women that have never seen a technical drawing before. So, we had to find some tools in order to make it possible for them to participate in the process of thinking about the project. And also in order to make them feel that they are doing, not only we come and show them this and this. So, we really made our effort in order to combine these primitive tools with what we have learned in the faculty… and I think it worked out”
I asked Elad what was most characterist for this class from the Social Hub and he explained me:
"It will sound banal. It’s planning WITH people and not for the people. Planning for the people is one thing which sounds very socially, very humanically. But still, there is a quite big difference between planning for the people and with the people… and hearing what they want and not come from your professional opinion and it was a great change in me to understand this point."
here the link to the whole paper: