Originally appears in the Fall 2007 issue
“What do you think makes your community special?” I asked the group of sixth-grade students sitting in front of me. “What is it about your community that gives you a sense of place?”
“What do you mean?” asked one of the students.
“Well, what do you like about living here? What makes your town different from other places?” I responded. Immediately several students answered, “Our shopping malls. That’s what’s special about our community.”
The look on the teacher’s face was one of surprise and amazement. Obviously, this was not what she had expected. Upon further discussion, we learned that these youth in Peoria, Arizona, derive a sense of place from the visual character of their town — its various shopping centers with their colorful building facades and tropically landscaped parking lots. When I posed the same question to students living in the Upper Peninsula region of Michigan, they identified old mines and open spaces as the features that most characterize their community. In Copper Basin, Tennessee, it was the mile-wide basin created by the mining industry that had once been the livelihood of their community — a basin once so stark that it was visible from outer space, but now lush and green as the result of a reclamation project. Students in Boston identified the city center with its new glass-fronted office buildings nestled among older skyscrapers of brown and red.
Raising students’ awareness of the visual and aesthetic qualities that make their communities unique is at the heart of community-character education. Our first impression of a community is visual. Yet as we approach many towns and cities in North America, we enter the visual realm of Anywhere, passing identical big-box stores, fast food franchises, amusement parks and shopping malls that make every town look like every other town. Community-character education seeks to build an understanding of the impact of this visual environment — the mosaic of visual images of natural and built components that we experience constantly and yet rarely think about.
Our visual environment reflects the design, architecture, art and natural settings that contribute to the character of our communities. It is no less a part of the fabric of our lives than the air we breathe. The visual environment often determines where people want to live or vacation, and it can therefore have a significant impact on the cultural vitality and the economic prosperity of a town. Community-character education programs help students develop an understanding of the connections between the appearance of a community and its environmental, social and economic health. Through these programs, students explore the visual environment in their community and investigate the design tools and resources that can be used to enhance the present environment and shape the community’s future identity. Our communities will continue to grow and change, and community-character education can give young people the knowledge and skills to make informed choices about the manner in which this growth occurs.
Learning to see
The first step in educating students about the visual character of a community is to teach them to see — to look around their community with a critical eye and identify what they like and don’t like about it. Of course, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. Students in the northeast might find old historical buildings and mill ruins charming assets of their community, while those from the west might consider these to be ugly eyesores. When teaching students to look at their community, keep in mind that one’s sense of place is defined by many factors, including the history, growth patterns, cultural heritage and economic base of the region.
Identifying the good, bad and ugly
Once students have learned to recognize their community’s visual characteristics, they can begin to identify those that make the community a unique or special place to visit or live, and those that might be considered visual pollution. Visual pollution refers to those elements that detract from the character of a community. These could be such things as strip malls, inappropriate signage (too large, too numerous, not in character with the buildings), advertising billboards, excessive wires and poles, out-of-context architecture, large parking lots that lack landscaping, communications towers rising above scenic vistas or commercial buildings dwarfing historical sites.
Ask the students what places in the community they like to visit and why they like to visit those places. For instance, they may say that they like to visit the park because they can play there and feed the ducks. Whether it is the park, the local ice cream stand or the mall, discuss what draws them to these places and what these places look like. Have students conduct research to find out if the land these places occupy was always used for the same purpose, and, if not, what was its use before. For example, is the shopping mall located where there used to be a mill, a farm or a swamp? Discuss the impact of these land use changes on the visual character and economics of the community over time. Next, make a list of places that students don’t care to visit within the community and follow with similar questions: Why don’t you like to visit these places? What are their visual characteristics? What have these places been like in the past?
Students can then begin to take an inventory of their community. Are some places visually pleasing? Are there areas where one can easily identify cultural or historical features of the community? How about areas that reveal or celebrate the natural environment? Provide students with cameras or drawing materials and send them out to document the places they like and don’t like within their community. Then have them create a PowerPoint presentation that highlights the good, the bad and the ugly within the community, and share it with other students, community groups or the town council. During the presentation, have the students engage the audience in a visual preference survey by asking them to rate the images on a scale of one to ten. Such surveys are often used to identify features that residents consider to be the community’s assets and to define the visual character they wish to retain or develop.
Planning for change
Students can identify areas of their community where they feel changes are needed to enhance its visual character. Activities could include creating a plan for change and presenting their ideas through a display of photographs and drawings or a PowerPoint presentation. (Tech-savvy students might use image-editing software to show the “before” and “after” views.) For example, students might pick an empty lot in the center of town and create a plan to revitalize it by turning it into a park or community garden, or by building a seniors’ center that blends in with the built environment surrounding it. They could also make a presentation on their community’s character to local agencies, schools and organizations to help educate others about community-character issues in the town. Or classes may choose a more active approach and design and carry out a community service-learning project, such as landscaping the area in front of a public building or strip mall. Students could become involved in public discussions of a current issue in their town, such as whether or not to allow a big-box retailer to build a store, or they could participate in updating a town’s comprehensive plan for growth (check with your city hall for a copy of the most recent plan). Such activities empower students to become active citizens, give them opportunities to use their new skills, and foster a sense of accomplishment and civic pride.
Why should we help the youth of today become more aware of the visual character of their communities? Community-character education builds young people’s appreciation that change and growth, while inevitable, can happen in ways that celebrate rather than degrade the character of their communities. Through civic engagement as students, and later as voting adults, young people can play an important role in creating a vision of how their community should grow and in guiding its visual character, future economic health and environmental sustainability. Building a sense of pride in our communities is important to keeping our culture alive and to making our communities the kinds of places where people want to live, work, visit and play.
The Dunn Foundation’s mission is to promote education that raises public awareness of and appreciation for community appearance and community identity. The foundation identifies organizations that share this mission and strives to connect these organization with students and teachers through publications, workshops, curriculum materials and an interactive website, thereby creating a national network dedicated to promoting a sense of pride in the appearance of our communities. Visit the website <www.dunnfoundation.org> to learn more about the foundation’s ViewFinders Too curriculum on visual character for middle and high school students, as well as related curriculum resources produced by other organizations. The Dunn Foundation offers mini-grants for groups of students interested in implementing a visual character community service project.
To view the photo-rich magazine version, click here.
If you are not already a subscriber, please subscribe to read the full article
Sandra Ryack-Bell is Director of Education for the Dunn Foundation in Newport, Rhode Island. She developed the foundation’s ViewFinders and ViewFinders Too curricula and has been implementing visual character and environmental education programs in communities throughout the United States for over 14 years.