Recent trends in community design:

the eminence of participation

Zeynep Toker, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, California State
University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8259,
USA

This paper reports a recent study asking current community design practitioners
to identify the most influential people and key issue leaders in the community
design field and to define the concept itself. The results of the study show that in
addition to the continuing concepts such as participation, there are new concepts
such as new urbanism and sustainability which are now associated with
community design. The most important conclusion, however, is that community
design field is in fact in search of new perspectives.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: collaborative design, design practice, decision making,

user participation, new urbanism

I
n 1969, Sherry R. Arnstein opened the discussion on redistribution of
power in her famous article ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’ with
this sentence: ‘The idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spin-
ach: no one is against it in principle because it is good for you’ (p.216). Today,
I believe this observation remains relevant in the light of increasing popular-
isation of the term community design in the fields of architecture, urban design
and planning. Many approaches (e.g. new urbanism and sustainability) and
many practitioners have now adopted the term to use it as a catch phrase.
Some (e.g. Comerio, 1984; Hester, 1996; Curry, 2000b) have criticised recent
community design practices for their lack of reference to the original princi-
ples, such as advocating low-income and politically disadvantaged groups
within a voluntary organisational structure. The purpose of this paper is to un-
veil the new face of community design as it is understood and practiced among
its recent practitioners.

Four decades ago, community design stood for an alternative style of practice
based on the idea that professional technical knowledge without moral and
political content is often inadequate (Comerio, 1984). In the broadest sense,
community design has been identified as a movement ‘discovering how to
Corresponding author:
Z. Toker make it possible for people to be involved in shaping and managing their
zeynep.toker@csun. environment’ (Sanoff, 2000: i). However, representation of these ideas
edu has changed during the four decades of practice in terms of the ideals and
www.elsevier.com/locate/destud
0142-694X $ - see front matter Design Studies 28 (2007) 309e323
doi:10.1016/j.destud.2007.02.008 309
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain
 achievements, and has become more diverse than ever. Increasing use of com-
munity design as a catch phrase especially requires attention. Therefore, cur-
rent practices of community design have become not only different
compared to initial ones, but also diverse and open to misinterpretation.

Since the last study asking community design practitioners about their
personal approaches, values and understandings were completed in 1984 by
Randolph Hester (and published in 1990), it is important to identify the new
concepts community design practitioners have integrated into their practices
in the last two decades.

In order to explore current practices of community design, I asked several

community design practitioners to define the concept, to identify the most in-
fluential people and key issue leaders in the field, and to list references associ-
ated with these people. This paper reviews the definitions of community design
in literature and historical evolution of its practices, and reports the definitions
and most influential people and references provided by 15 recent practitioners.
The conclusion section points out to possible future trends in community
design field.

1 Definition of community design

Community design movement, related practices, and its definition have been
rooted in different parts of the world with unique characteristics. Conse-
quently, definitions and use of the term ‘community design’ in the literature
are paradoxical.

Several attempts have been made to overcome the obscurity of terminology in

this field. For example, Sanoff (2000: ix) states that the term ‘community design’
is an umbrella term covering community planning, community architecture, so-
cial architecture, community development, and community participation, all of
which emphasise the involvement of local people in social and physical develop-
ment of the environment they are living in. Similarly, Francis (1983: 14) defines
‘community design’ as a concept receiving different labels such as participatory
design, social architecture, social design and architecture for people.

However, Wates and Knevitt (1987: 17) state that the term ‘community archi-
tecture’ embraces community planning, community design, community devel-
opment and other forms of community technical aid. For them, community
architecture is the name used in the UK, while social architecture is used for
the same concept in the United States. For Hatch (1984: 7), ‘social architec-
ture’ aims to create critical consciousness among citizens. Furthermore,
Hamdi (1991: 75) claims that ‘community participation’ is the term covering
all the scales and techniques, which refer to the processes involving profes-
sionals, families, community groups, and government officials in shaping the
environment.

310 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 3 May 2007

 In addition to the terminology problem, how much participation of whom is
expected in community design has also been receiving diverse comments. Dif-
ferent approaches and continuums have been proposed to clarify the roles of
different groups participating in decision-making processes for shaping the
physical environment.

Shirvani (1985) for example identifies two types of approaches in the overall
scheme: facilitator approaches and political activist roles. Wulz (1986), on
the other hand, presents a continuum (Continuum 2 in Figure 1) composed
of seven stages of participation ranging between full autonomy of the profes-
sionals and the full autonomy of the users. By combining these two categori-
sations and adding other definitions in the literature, another continuum can
be constructed (Continuum 1 in Figure 1). On one end, there is the facilitator
approach. According to Shirvani (1985), facilitator approach uses participa-
tory methods for both problem definition and design solution generation
through design assistance techniques. Sanoff (2000: 38) defines facilitation as
‘a means of bringing people together to determine what they wish to do and
helping them find ways to work together in deciding how to do it’.

The facilitator approach, as Shirvani (1985) and Sanoff (2000) define, covers
the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh stages of Wulz’s participation continuum,
which are dialogue, alternative, co-decision, and self-decision. The dialogue
is based on informal conversations between the architect and the users. The
alternative participation gives the local residents the chance to choose among
the alternatives prepared by the architect in a fixed frame. The participation
as co-decision aims at achieving direct and active involvement of users through
the whole design process. The participation scale is full in the seventh stage,
self-decision, in which the user controls the whole design and construction pro-
cesses (Wulz, 1986).

In the facilitator approach, the aim is to make the users aware of the alterna-
tives by using different techniques such as rating mechanisms, training and use
of graphic communication, and use of various simulation techniques. The ex-
tent that architect is involved, in facilitator approach, varies according to the
specific situations. This definition of the facilitator approach also matches with
Hatch’s (1984) social architecture definition. He claims that social architecture

Figure 1 Two continuums of different roles of professionals in community design

Recent trends in community design 311

 is in-between. It avoids the idealistic utopias and encourages the generation of
alternatives by using the information received from the user.

Beyond the facilitator approach is the advocacy approach. Shirvani (1985) ex-
plains the political activist role as the advocacy, in which the aim is to organise,
and politically activate disadvantaged groups in society in order to involve
them in the planning process. Similarly, Hester (1990) defines characteristics
of community design as empowerment of destitute citizens for helping them
to get a fair share of community goods and services, assistance in litigation
that addresses any number of environmental inequalities, and participation
of lay citizens in the design process. With a parallel emphasis on helping dis-
advantaged and destitute groups in the society, Shiffman (1984) explains the
practice of the community design as maximising opportunities and range of
choices, particularly for low-and moderate-income people.

If one end is defined with facilitation and beyond that with advocacy, the other
end of this continuum is the lack of those; the first three stages in Wulz’s con-
tinuum (Continuum 2 in Figure 1): representation, questionnaire, and region-
alism. In the representation architecture, the architect reflects his/her personal
and subjective interpretation of the user. In questionnaire architecture, the con-
cern is the general characteristics of an anonymous user. The third stage, re-
gionalism, puts an emphasis on the historical and cultural heritages of the
specific localities and collects data from the local population about inhabi-
tants’ preferences on architectural expression, symbols, forms, and spatial be-
haviour (Wulz, 1986). At this end, participation dissolves as the professional
expertise dominates.

It is difficult to distil one way of describing what exactly is done as the practice of
community design, in the literature. Although involving people in the decision-
making process for shaping their environment is the common theme, advocating
politically powerless or specifically low-income groups can only fit into one end of
a broad continuum. Different expectations and descriptions of community design
can be followed in its historical development as its focus has shifted on that
continuum.

2 Early practices of community design

In the United Sates, community-based struggles of the 1960s were related to
the civil rights movement, the rise of women’s liberation, and the challenges
of alternative cultures. The social momentum of the Civil Rights Act (1957),
the innovations of Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas Program (initiated in
1960) were influential on the rapid change. The experiences provided by the
Economic Opportunity Act in Community Action Agencies following the
Act’s passage in 1964, and the stimulus of the Office of Neighborhood Devel-
opment enhanced the economic development role of grassroots organisations
(Shiffman, 1984; Curry, 2000b; Sanoff, 2000). Realising the social unrest of the

312 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 3 May 2007

 time, in the United States, the government provided necessary legislation to
involve people in the processes of decision-making. Thus, national legislation
following the civil rights era required widespread participation at the local
level (Hester, 1996).

Although legislation was there to support the existing social movements, these
social movements remained unorganised until the formation of social reform,
known as the War on Poverty, and legitimisation by the provision of the Com-
munity Action Program. With these federal programmes of the 1960s, people,
outside the professions were allowed to make decisions about the planning and
financing (Sanoff, 2000). With the Model Cities Program of 1967e1973, citi-
zens were given the right to participate in policy making (Hamdi, 1991; Hester,
1996). This programme was activated by the Demonstration Cities and Metro-
politan Development Act of 1966. The act authorised grants and technical as-
sistance to help communities to participate in the planning and implementation
processes (Rice, 1979). Later on, even though the neighbourhood units of these
grassroots organisations emerged, they did not share common goals. There-
fore, their achievements were limited. However, Alinsky model of community
organisation emerged as an effort to organise urban protests (Castells, 1983).

Saul Alinsky was a sociologist, who started his career as a neighbourhood or-
ganiser (Castells, 1983). According to Alinsky (1972) his agenda was based on
the belief that people have the desire to change the world. In order to achieve
this aim the only way was to be organised. For him, the power of the poor and
the disadvantaged lies in their standing and organisational capacity. ‘Alinsky
believed in pluralism, government accountability, local autonomy and wide-
spread citizen participation’ (Sanoff, 2000: 2).

The most important weakness of the Alinsky-inspired community organisa-

tions was that in some instances community control was not achieved because
they could not be multi-ethnic. When they were multi-ethnic, the interests of
different ethnic groups were at odds with each other. Moreover, most of these
organisations were not able to achieve community control. Instead, they were
absorbed into the management programmes, they were supposed to control.
However, these organisations successfully represented the diversity of neigh-
bourhood interests (Castells, 1983; Sanoff, 2000).

While Alinsky model was dealing directly working with communities, Davidoff
questioned the planning practices, which failed to provide the formulation of
alternatives by the interest groups that will eventually be affected by the com-
pleted plans. He argued that the grassroots movements proved the necessity
of planning practices to involve all groups in society, particularly low-
income families to discuss the political and social values (Davidoff, 1965).
Being a planner and a lawyer, he challenged planners to become advocates

Recent trends in community design 313

 of participatory democracy in order to overcome poverty and racism
(Sanoff, 2000).

Community design centres emerged in the United States as the staging ground
for design and planning professionals, who were influenced by Davidoff’s ad-
vocacy model of planning and were questioning conventional practices of their
own professions (Sanoff, 2000). Practitioners who aimed at fighting against
urban redevelopment and advocating for the rights of poor citizens established
community design centres. These design centres aimed at providing planning,
architecture and development services to emerging civic organisations or
established community-based development corporations (Sanoff, 2000).

Services provided by community design centres are specified by Mikesell

(1976) as architectural services to people and organisations that cannot afford
to pay the high fees normally required. Community design centres have intro-
duced low-income people to the practical benefits of good architecture and
planning (Dean, 1976). The aim was to help low-income communities gain
more control of their own resources (Sachner, 1983). Therefore, the initial
practices of community design were based on the advocacy approaches and
they originated from the grassroots movements of the time. They represented
the statements of designers and planners, who were against conventional prac-
tices and intended to help disadvantaged groups to control their future.

The first community design centre in the United States was one of the pioneer-
ing implementations of the advocacy approach. Architectural Renewal Com-
mittee in Harlem in 1964 fought a proposal of freeway passing through
Manhattan (Sanoff, 2000). However, in the following decades, community de-
sign centres have evolved. The phases that community design centres have
gone through are very demonstrative of how community design practices
evolved in general. Two phases can be identified for community design centres:
until late 1970s e the idealistic phase, and after that until late 1980s e the
entrepreneurial phase.

During the idealistic phase, in an effort to help low-income people define their
own planning goals and effectively present them to city hall, community design
centres became advocacy groups, providing professional and technical sup-
port, including information, management know-how and design assistance.
They provided, free of charge, a wide array of services, ranging from helping
individuals cope with the local red tape and economic problems of remodelling
a house to creating plans and designs for developing an entire neighbourhood;
from designing a rural health clinic to recycling a city library (AOD, 1976).

Towards the late 1970s, community design practices had gradually become less
idealistic and more pragmatic due to the new political climate, which turned
out to be more conservative and reluctant in terms of funding (Comerio,

314 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 3 May 2007

 1984). Community design centres were almost forced to replace their political
model of empowerment by an economic one (Comerio, 1984) due to the eco-
nomic pressure of the 1980s (Sachner, 1983). Therefore, many of the commu-
nity design centres became private practices, others disappeared, and some are
occasionally ‘reactivated’ to deal with a crisis (Curry, 2000a). The whole pro-
cess became less academic (Sachner, 1983). The typical university affiliated de-
sign centre of the idealistic phase provided general planning and preliminary
design services. By contrast, the community design agencies of the entrepre-
neurial phase took one problem and finalised it in an entrepreneurial manner
(Comerio, 1984). As a result, ‘funding for planning, social activism and advo-
cacy became increasingly scarce and led to an increasing focus on financing
projects at the expense of broad community revitalisation goals’ (Curry,
2000a). The shifting focus of community design practices away from advocacy
had become evident.

In 1984, Randolph T. Hester conducted a national survey and asked the pur-
pose of community design to several of its practitioners. Despite the change in
the character of the practice, community designers of the time still ranked em-
powering the disadvantaged as the primary purpose. It was followed by im-
proving environments for the deprived, designing for user’s needs, and
achieving environmental justice by making communities economically viable
(Hester, 1990), all of which are parallel to the characteristics of the early com-
munity design practices.

Almost two decades later, in the light of the fact that community design con-
cept has been increasingly popularised among the proponents of new urban-
ism, in a sense that cannot be further away from advocacy, it is reasonable
now, if not imperative to ask community designers define the concept.

3 Research on recent trends in community design

This study was designed with the ultimate purpose of identifying the recent
trends and changing approaches in the community design field. Statements
regarding the current community design practices were compared to the initial
principles of community design; and a reference list of the major publications
in the field, which have also been the most influential ones, was compiled.

Considering that transformation was inevitable in the course of four decades,

the purpose was to explore the current definition of community design, the key
figures and the most influential literature in the field. The main questions of
this study were:

- Who are the key influences in the community design field?

- What is the current definition of community design?

Recent trends in community design 315

 Since the aim was to gather the ideas of the practitioners, lists of community
designers were compiled. Practicing architects and planners, who have been
noted in the community design related conferences, books, directories, and
WEB Sites were listed. Out of these sources, a list of practitioners was com-
piled according to their current association with the field of community design.
This list contains 114 currently practicing professionals of architecture and
planning in the community design field (Table 1). Then, the ones who have
e-mail addresses (62) and fax numbers (17) currently available were identified
as potential respondents.

Although the list of practitioners who were contacted includes practitioners

from different countries, their representativeness was not sought in terms of
their geographic locations. Since the original lists were acquired from interna-
tional gatherings and directories, it was inevitable to include practitioners
from different countries. Therefore, rather than the geographic representative-
ness of the group of practitioners in this final list, the fact that they are still
practicing community design e and sometimes internationally too e was
the most important criterion for them to be included in this list.

Table 1 List of currently practicing professionals of architecture and planning in community design field with
available e-mail addresses and fax numbers

Abbey, Bruce Anderson, Annette Arens, Ed Bainbridge, Robert W.

Bell, Bryan Bilello, Joseph L. Blake, Sheri Bohem, Bill
Borgenicht, Roger Brower, Sidney Bryant, Rudy Busser, Robert
Cameron, Mark Carp, John Carpenter, William Castello,
Chaffers, Jim Chalfoun, N. V. Chapin, David Childress, Perry
Comerio, Mary Creighton, Max Criss, Shannon Crissman, Jim
Curry, Rex Curry, Terrence Fr. Daas, Duraid De Vere, Don
Del Rio, Vicente Durack, Ruth Elizabeth, Lynne Erlandson, Todd
Fama, Joe Farley, Diane Feldman, Roberta Findlay, Bob
Ford, Frank Francis, Mark Frankel, Susan Frederick, Jane
Fredrickson, Mark, P. Gamble, David Gibbs, Jody Gilbert, Carol
Glasser, David Evan Gleason, Jan Goerhert, Reinhard Goltsman, Susan
Griffin, Jim Gureckas, Vytenis Habraken, N. John Hack, Gary
Hamdi, Nabeel Hanlon, Don Harrison, John H. Harrison, Sally
Hasell, Mary Joyce Hatch, Richard Haverland, Michael Hayashi, Yasuyoshi
Hermanuz, Ghislaine Horelli, Lissa Host-Jablonski, Lou Hsia, Chu-Joe
Huang, Bill John, Richard St. Joiner, Duncan Koyabe, Ikuko
Larrick, Steve Lambert, Brent Ledford, Tim Levine, Jeffrey
Linn, Karl Malinowski, Lerome J. McClure, Wendy McCoy, Bill
McIntosh, John McIntyre, Lionel C. McNulty, Rose Medlock, Bob
Miller, Lim Maurice Moore, James Moore, Robin Morrish, William
Mullahey, Romana Murphy, Ruth Nardi, Norberto Oberdorfer, Jeff
O’Hanlon, Liam Plattus, Allan Pride-Wells Michaele Pyatok, Michael
Romice, Ombretta Russell, Frank Russell, Francis Sammons, Thomas
Sanoff, Henry Schuman, Tony Schwartz, Bob Shiffman, Ron
Skabelund, Lee Smith, T. Michael Spear, John K. Sullivan, Brian
Swann, Michael M. Trawick, Jack Truex, Scott Tsoukala, Kriaki
Turner, Chuck Wates, Nick West, Troy Wilcox, Peter R.
Woolford, Paul Yoklic, Martin

316 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 3 May 2007

 A self-administered questionnaire, which was composed of three open-ended
questions, was prepared for e-mail and fax formats. The questions were
open-ended in order to avoid insertion of pre-conceived notions. Moreover,
the questionnaire was self-administered without a concern that the questions
could be misunderstood, since the respondents were practitioners in their fields
and therefore questions were within their expertise areas. Furthermore, ques-
tions were tested by fellow researchers, who were knowledgeable about com-
munity design practices.

These community design practitioners were asked how they define their prac-
tices and whom they identify as the most influential people in the field with ref-
erences to their publications. Regarding the possibility that people may
identify the most influential person and key issue leaders differently, they
were asked separately in the first two questions. Moreover, in order to achieve
more specific information about the most influential person and the key issue
leaders, the relevant references of these people were asked. In the third ques-
tion, the respondents were asked to define community design according to
their own perspective of the concept.

3.1 Data analysis and findings

Out of 114 identified community design practitioners, 62 respondents were
contacted via e-mail, 15 of which answered all three questions; and 17 respon-
dents were contacted via fax none of which responded. Out of 15 respondents
who answered all three questions (approximately 24% of the e-mail respon-
dents and 19% of all the respondents), most were directors of community de-
sign centres, some of them were involved in community design practices
privately in addition to an academic career, and a few of them worked only
in private practice.

Analysing the answers of the first two questions: (1) the most frequently men-
tioned key issue leaders and most influential people were listed, (2) the books
and articles stated to be written by the most influential people or key issue
leaders of the community design field were listed. For the third question, (3)
content analysis of the responses revealed key concepts to define community
design.

(1) The most frequently identified key issue leader in community design field
was Henry Sanoff, who was followed by Rex Curry and Michael Pyatok.
The third group included Christopher Alexander, Andres Duany and
Peter Calthrope. Finally, Sam Mockbee, Randall Arendt and Elizabeth
Plater-Zyberk were in the fourth group. The notable aspect of the third
and fourth groups is that three of them (Andres Duany, Peter Calthrope
and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk) are associated with new urbanism as the
founders and strong proponents of that trend. Considering the long stand-
ing critique of new urbanism regarding its spatial determinism disguised as

Recent trends in community design 317

 community design (e.g. Harvey, 1997; Hayden, 2002), any association
between new urbanism and community design remains debatable.
It is also notable that some of the respondents identified concentrations
within the community design field to list the most influential people.
For example, one respondent identified five areas of concentration in com-
munity design: community participation, architecture, city planning, pol-
icy making, and livable communities. Another respondent categorised the
community design practitioners in three groups: new urbanist designers,
participatory designers and planners, and theorists on environmental psy-
chology and community form. Although some of the community design
centre directors were mentioned as key issue leaders (such as Rex Curry
and Michael Pyatok), the fact that some respondents identified these cat-
egories hints not only the shift of focus away from advocacy and commu-
nity design centres, but also the diversity of recent community design
practices.
(2) Parallel to the tendencies in identifying the most influential people in the
field, the list of publications mentioned by the respondents includes refer-
ences to new urbanism (such as Calthorpe and Duany) in addition to pub-
lications in the field of sustainability (such as McHarg) (Table 2). The
association between community design and both new urbanism and sus-
tainability also suggests presence of new trends in community design
practices.
(3) However, respondents’ definitions of community design are more in line
with the original purpose of community design. A content analysis of
the definitions revealed that although the practice has changed, the defini-
tions of ideal way of practicing community design still remains close to the
original principles.

As one of the qualitative data analysis methods, content analysis is a way of

analysing verbal or visual data by grouping and categorising them according
to coding frames, which are derived theoretically to reflect the purpose of
the research. In a data set, every text (or visual) unit must fit a code, many
of which constitute a coding frame (Bauer, 2000). In this study, based on the
data set, the codes are identified as participation, needs, involvement of local
people, empowering people, public realm, and sustainability (in decreasing
order of count).

The most frequently emphasised concept by the respondents was participation.

David Gamble and Mark Francis mentioned that community design is a partici-
patory process, which operates through public meetings and workshops. Nabeel
Hamdi stated that it is people’s taking part and influencing the decisions affecting
their physical environment. Robert Bainbridge and Joseph Bilello mentioned
the importance of shared visions and values in this participatory process. Further-
more, Yasuyoshi Hayashi and Ombretta Romice emphasised the importance
of partnership and cooperation between residents of the community and

318 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 3 May 2007

Table 2 List of publications stated to be written by the most influential people or key issue leaders in the
community design field

Alexander, Christopher A Pattern Language Alexander, Christopher Community and Privacy

Arendt, Randall Rural by Design
Bell, Bryan (Design Works)
Curry, Rex Pratt Institute and the Association for
Community Design http://communitydesign.org.
intranets.com, PICCED (Pratt)
Duany, Andres New Urbanism Manuals
Forester, John (1989). Planning in the Face of Power.
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles,
New York.
Gibson, Tony (who devised Planning For Real and
whose work can be found at the Neighbourhood
Initiative Foundation)
Hester, Randy Community Design Primer. Ridge
Times Press. 1990
McHarg, Ian Design With Nature
Moorish, Bill (University of Minnesota Center- for
the American Landscape is a key player.)
Pyatok, Michael Good Neighbors: Affordable Family
Housing, McGraw Hill 1997
Sanoff, Henry (1992). Integrating programming,
evaluation and participation I design. A theory Z
approach. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Averbury, USA.
Sanoff, Henry (1990) Participatory Design. Theory and
Techniques. North Carolina State University,
North Carolina.
Sanoff, Henry (1995) Creating environments for Young
Children. North Carolina State University,
North Carolina.
Towers, Graham (1995) Building Democracy. Community
Architecture in the Inner Cities. UCL Press, London.
Turner, John Freedom To Build
Whyte, William The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Bacon, Elinor R. Hope VI Manuals
Calthorpe, Peter The Next American Metropolis
Davis (1995) The Architecture of Affordable Housing.
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Feldman, Roberta (coming out with a website that
catalogues community projects)
Forester, John (1999). The Deliberative Practitioner.
Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes. The
MIT Press, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA.
Gindroz, Ray New Urbanism Manuals
Jacobs, Jane The Life and Death of Great American
Cities
Mockbee, Sam (Auburn Rural Studio)
Neary, S. J., Symes, M. S. and Brown, F. E. (1994)
The Urban Experience. A People- Environment
Perspective. St Esmondsbury Press, Suffolk.
Pyatok, Michael (FAIA, Pyatok Associates,
Oakland CA)
Sanoff, Henry The experience of community action
in an Australian town. In Neary (1994), p.109e122.
Sanoff, Henry (1991) Visual Research Methods in
Design. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
Sanoff, Henry (2000) Community Participation
Methods in Design and Planning. John Wiley and
Sons. Inc. New York.
Turner, John Housing By People
Wates, Nick (2000) Community Planning: How people
can shape their cities, towns and villages in any part
of the world. Earthscan

professionals. The necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration was stated by

David Gamble. Similarly, Jeffrey Levine explained that it is a process, in which
architectural and planning solutions are created for the community.

On the other hand, needs was another common concept respondents referred
to for defining community design. Bryan Bell, Robert Busser and Don Hanlon
mentioned the importance of respecting the needs of people, which is defined
by the people, in community design. Don Hanlon clarified one of the charac-
teristics of community design as providing architectural design services for
people who need but cannot afford them.

Involvement of local people in the process was mentioned as another character-

istic for community design. Nabeel Hamdi, Don Hanlon, Robert Bainbridge,

Recent trends in community design 319

 Jeffrey Levine and Peter Wilcox agreed on the importance of local people’s
input. Community design was defined to be a process aiming at empowering
people by David Gamble, Nabeel Hamdi and Ombretta Romice.

Community design was explained through its relations to the design of public
realm by Robert Bainbridge. In addition to this statement, David Glasser men-
tioned its relation to the civic life and to embracing sociological, economic,
legal and physical aspects of life.

Sustainability was defined as one of the major characteristics of community de-

sign. David Glasser, Yasuyoshi Hayashi and Peter Wilcox emphasised sustain-
ability in terms of both environment and community.

Overall, to define community design the respondents referred to the original

characteristics of the concept in addition to sustainability and public realm
concepts, which are new to the community design field. However, more inter-
esting aspect is the difference in ranking of similar concepts in Hester’s study of
1984 by community design practitioners. According to his study, the highest
number of his respondents identified the purpose of community design as
empowering people, followed by improving environments for deprived, needs,
environmental justice, educating about environmental politics, and providing
housing choices for the poor (Hester, 1990). The difference between these two
studies almost two decades apart might also be interpreted as the reflection of
new trends in the field. For example, empowering people and concern for the
economically disadvantaged groups are the two obvious and overriding con-
cepts in 1984 study. However, in this study the overriding concern is neither.
The new trend is towards focusing on participation with decreasing emphasis
on disadvantaged groups and empowerment.

3.2 Results and discussion

The list of most influential people and key issue leaders in the field and the list
of related literature support the idea that new urbanism is now very much seen
as a part of community design field. Considering the criticisms directed to-
wards new urbanism, this association is at odds with the original characteris-
tics of community design, which included advocacy and empowerment.

Similarly, although the content analysis of the definitions of community design

reveals that the practitioners still refer to the original characteristics of com-
munity design, such as participation, needs and empowerment, in addition
to new concepts, such as sustainability and public realm, the focus has shifted
from disadvantaged groups and empowerment.

It is important to point out that community design has become a popular term
among the proponents of new urbanism, although in practice none of the orig-
inal principles of community design are embraced. Harvey (1997) questions

320 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 3 May 2007

 the very concept of community in new urbanist developments since in these de-
velopments the image of a small town character with a proper community for
affluent residents is advertised without actually building a community. Due to
the spatial determinism embedded in new urbanism based on the assumption
that proper design will ‘save’ American cities and provide a new moral order,
the neighbourhood becomes equivalent to the community in new urbanism
(Harvey, 1997).

Parallel with the findings of this study, Harrison (1998: 15) claims, ‘A new
partnership emerged between environmentalists and urbanists that was helpful
in redefining the notions of ‘‘site’’ and ‘‘user’’ that recognised the interdepen-
dency of diverse locations and socioeconomic groups.’ She mentions the cur-
rent emerging emphasis on humanist issues under the rubric of sustainability
even though it is still less visible.

Considering the findings of this study, the new trends in community design
field seem to be emerging according to the new fashions in city planning and
architecture. However, since the number of respondents in this study and their
representativeness are limited, generalisation is not the purpose here. It is
rather to point out the possible emerging trends in the field.

4 Conclusion
Despite the diversion from the initial ideals, the role of contemporary practices
of community design in the fields of architecture and city planning cannot be
overlooked. It still is the alternative way reminding the social responsibility to
the practitioners in those disciplines. This study, however, points to the fact
that the current practitioners of the field are looking for new grounds for their
practices, such as sustainability and new urbanism. Some of the terms, which
are used by the respondents in their definitions, are new to the community de-
sign field. There may be several reasons for these variations in the field.

Either as a result of changing social structures or because of the compatibility

of new concentrations in the built environment disciplines to the concept of
user involvement, the original conceptualisation of community design is less
favourable now than it was four decades ago. Hester (1996) criticises some
aspects of the current community design practices comparing them with the
initial ones. According to Hester (1996), the current practices of community
design are examples of diversion from the initial ideals because they are con-
centrated on surviving in the system, although their initial aims were based
on rebelling against the system. Moreover, contrary to the triggering events
of community design movement, current practices are focusing on the groups,
which are not politically disadvantaged. He also argues that the revolutionary
character of community design movement is lost as it is used as another tool in
the system serving for the regulation rather than inspiring citizens to look for
their rights (Hester, 1996).

Recent trends in community design 321

 These criticisms echo the reasons why new urbanism cannot be a part of com-
munity design field, if community design is to carry on with its original ideals.
However, Harrison (1998), for example, exemplifies the ways to adapt commu-
nity design concept within the sustainability concentration by emphasising
interdependency.

The new practices, as they influence the definition, are based on different ideals
than the previous ones. The important aspect of this metamorphosis is that it
provides adaptability to the concept since new disciplines are introduced to the
field in the process. Therefore, it is noteworthy to realise the new potentials in
the community design field, which are embedded in the various implementa-
tion processes within different concentrations in the built environment
disciplines.

However, there should also be a cautionary note regarding the adaptability of

the concept, which makes it open to misuse. The practices of community de-
sign as they embraced the original ideals four decades ago have obviously
been long gone. It is inevitable for a practice type to shift its focus and change
in order to survive in the conditions of economic and social systems. The
influences of new fashions in city planning and architecture on community
design field are also inescapable. Then, for future practices in the field, the
main caution should be against tokenism.

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