ABSTRACT
What can designers, planners, public officials, residents, and others actually do to make neighborhoods and public places more inclusive? In this chapter, we draw on the case studies in Part I to apply ‘Signals for Inclusion’ in practice. First, we describe five outcomes of advancing inclusion: building trust, evincing respect, providing care, expanding agency, and shifting power. We provide a general description and examples of each outcome from across the case studies We then discuss strategic devices to make neighborhoods more equitable along three dimensions: space; communication; and governance. For each dimension we provide a description and discuss a range of approaches, including formal practice and emergent user-generated interventions and behaviors. We conclude with key insights and a discussion of possibilities and limitations of using planning and design interventions as a means of advancing social inclusion.
The aims and strategies used to overcome socio-spatial marginalization and to build inclusive places necessarily vary between contexts. Given this context-sensitivity, the stories and examples included in this book are not—and could never be—comprehensive. It is our aim in this chapter to glean insights on building inclusive places from a range of settings, from a new town in China to California’s mobile home parks, from working class suburbs of Toronto to informal settlements in MedellÃn. Drawing from these varied case studies, we offer takeaways for institutions, organizations, groups, and individuals looking to make positive change in their neighborhoods by building trust, evincing respect, providing care, expanding agency, and shifting power to previously marginalized or disempowered groups.
