Wrapping Things Up

What a difference a semester makes. The whole Rules of Engagement process was a learn as you go kind of class. It appeared that we learned what doesn't work last semester and what does work this semester. I and hopefully everyone else felt more involved in the process this semester. There are still many kinks that need to be worked out, but with many discussions and with a lot of help from Harry Crissy this class is definitely moving in the right direction. There is potential for student participation in areas of need such as the towns we participated with. I didn't fully believe at the beginning that we could contribute to the community development process, but it appeared a lot did get accomplished with our assistance. This was an area of study that I knew very little about going in. I would have to say that many of the opinions I had about smaller, rural communities have changed or at least the readings and visits have opened my eyes to deeper investigation of the culture of these communities. That was a large strength of this class in its ability to analyze sensitive topics such as politics and racism in the South, through readings and in viewing it first hand on site visits. I hope this class will continue to be available for future students to take part in, and move toward the objectives that we set out to accomplish.

Final Design Workshop

Prior to the Williston Design Workshop, my only experience with this was the Denmark workshop. The turn out wasn't what I expected. In Denmark we filled 5 tables full of community members, however in Williston we could have filled 1 possibly 2. Though the small turnout, it was good to have the realization that not every workshop will go smoothly and won't always have full support. There were many other events going on in the area, so this may have had something to do with it. The community members that did show up were very informative. The new way of accessing the external and internal problems and strengths proved to be a success. In Denmark we accessed the categories with numbers but no visual connection. In Williston the used of poker chips allowed the community members to visualize how they ranked each category. The community members picked up on the strategy of the exercise and produced strong results and good conversation. It sounded as if there were talks of another attempt at this workshop, yet we won't be there to participate. Hopefully the next attempt will produce more participation with the same quality of results.

Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis(ton)

On March 28^th a group of 4 took a day trip to Williston to participate in a community survey for an eventual community workshop. Personally I don’t know how the town survives because it’s almost impossible to find it. Even gas station attendants working 15 minutes away couldn’t give me sufficient directions into Williston. So after about 4 turn arounds and 5-6 stops in the middle of the road to try to read road signs we finally made it into town.

The downtown strip was a really nice downtown especially the restaurant we ate at for lunch, Meeting on Main. The only downfall of the strip is the railroad bed that cuts the downtown in half. It not only divides the town visually but also provides an enormous obstacle to get from one side of the street to the other. Each of the four of us needed to get a small amount of surveys, mine being the least with 6. Though it was the least amount it very well could have been the toughest to achieve. I couldn’t say I’d walk my area at night alone or even in a group, and after talking to a few of the residents closer to Main Street I’m not the only one. The area I was in charge of was a series of trailer parks that made it a little unsafe because it’s easy to get trapped the farther you travel in the park. There was actually only a couple of instances where an unsafe event occurred, like being surrounded by residents not really wanting me near their homes and making it known to me. Also there was a truck full of gentleman stopping and harassing me on my way walking back toward Main Street. This was only 2 events though; the other residents were very hospitable and interested in what I came there to do. I’m looking forward to the community workshop to see if any of the residents I visited with will come out.

The town has many similarities to Denmark; however there is a lot more money in the town and a lot less drug activity. Hopefully we will get a good group of support at the end of the month. The surveys that I was able to look at were very helpful and a couple of the residents actually talked out all of their answers with me and explained why they answered it the way they did. So for my first survey experience I think it was successful.

March 7^th- Design Day

On Friday we had our design day in Allendale. The design day was divided into 2 groups, the Sugar Hill group and the USC Salk group. I participated with the USC Salk group. We had a large group of Allendale/Fairfax high school students and community members took part in the charrette. It wasn’t like a typical charrette that I was use to because it felt as if we were still discussing problems rather than coming up with solutions. There was a lot of input from the community, but after working with this community now for almost an entire school year, it seems like everything going in circles and no answers are being produced.

Aside from the lack of production, I did gain experience with organizing and running a charrette group with community members. In the training day there were many individual examples of problems that could occur while over seeing the group, but they were presented one by one, it’s a completely different situation when they all occur at once. The whole thing was a series of alternating chaotic and organized moments, which in the end we were able to make sense of it all. I would have just liked to produce more documents from the day though.

Denmark Trip

The second visit to Denmark was much more informative than the first visit. The class drove to both colleges and walked all over the main street area. Its much easier to understand what Harry refers to now after seeing and documenting it. We started off the tour meeting with Jim Harrison and had some killer BBQ sandwiches, then we were off.

Points of interests for me were the Police Station/ Library, the run-down golf course, City Hall, and the overall streetscape of the "main street." With a technical school near by there is a lot of potential for the golf course to receive free help with collaboration with a class. This is done in Charleston with the turf/grass or course management class. This enables students to get a hands on lesson while the course gets much needed help.



I helped with the imagery group and focused on showing the potential with the City Hall and main street. All the changes to photos of these sites were small economical changes that can really enhance the pedestrian experience. The City Hall has potential to be a focal point on the street and a destination spot. Hopefully seeing these images will increase the excitement for change.

Design Day Workshop

The workshop was helpful even with most of the room having already participated in a design charrette. The role playing was entertaining especially since they include the students as the facilitator and scribe. Most of the information was self explanatory, but there were several points that applied to setting up a charrette that will prove to be helpful in the future.

Later in the day we broke up into our town groups and discussed the game plan for Design Day. The Allendale group decided to split into 2 groups (both gateways). I did most of my initial analysis at the USC-Salk gateway so I joined up with that group. We laid out the ground work for what we want to accomplish on March 7th. We all have our separate tasks to do before that date to prepare for the all day Design Day. We really want to promote pedestrian traffic from the campus into town. Its currently automobile oriented with no real streetscape. A driver can actual speed right by the campus and not even know they are entering the main street of Allendale. We'll be working on ways to tie the residential and campus streets to downtown. I'm real interested to see how it turns out.

Sixth District Congressman James Clyburn, the House majority whip, says Dubai World's plans could transform the infamous "Corridor of Shame," which runs along Interstate 95, "into a corridor of fame." The "Corridor of Shame" is an area of largely rural, mostly poor counties that line Interstate 95 through South Carolina.

http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2007/09/09/news/12740339.txt

After the class meeting I found it hard to believe that the schools along this “Corridor of Shame” are as bad as they currently are and nobody is taking charge to develop this area. I came across this article talking about a $700 million logistics hub that may come to this rural area. The result would be around 10,000 jobs, and the total investment could reach $1.2 billion. The scale of this project would be larger than Spartanburg’s BMW and Greenville’s Michelin projects. The interest for developing in this area was due to the close proximity to I-95, I-26, U.S. 301, and rail systems. Also the decrease in manufacturing along the “Corridor of Shame” created a large number of unemployed, which could in turn fill up the possible 10,000 jobs. My main concern was with the quality of education in the area and that the jobs would actually be filled by others further away. So then I started to look into educational developments in the same area.

Reading more about Congressman Clyburn, it appears that he is proposing a lot of investment into Voorhees College. In our class discussions we talk about the importance of educational institutions in towns and Clyburn appears to be taking the initiative to invest in this partnership between Voorhees College and Denmark. Both the articles appeared in September 2007 so they are fairly recent initiatives toward the increase in a higher quality of living in the rural South.