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.