Leveraging Green Space Usage for Building Meaningful Social Connections in Regent Park

Research indicates a pressing demand for green spaces in urban areas due to their multifaceted ability to enhance both the physical and social environments (Kelly et al., 2022). The physical environment of urban centers within a city often poses a risk when it comes to higher temperatures (Urban Heat Island), as well as filtration issues that can result from the high concentration of concrete (Anderson et al., 2022). Thus, green spaces are integral when it comes to heat mitigation and stormwater filtration (Venkataramanan et al., 2019). Socially, green spaces such as community gardens and parks are used as avenues for gatherings and places where people can connect with each other (Mejia et al., 2020; Oh et al., 2022)

Within this project, we define green spaces as parks, gardens, and open areas, emphasizing their importance for community well-being that can foster connectivity among residents of Regent Park (Kelly et al., 2022; Mejia et al., 2020; Oh et al., 2022). An example of such versatile green spaces is evident in the utilization of community gardens situated on the North Side of the neighbourhood (Elton, 2020). Beyond their primary function of provisioning, residents in this neighbourhood utilize the gardens as venues for social gatherings, where they exchange cultural recipes. Moreover, parks and open green spaces serve as platforms for community events, gatherings, and religious practices. Consequently, our research question, "How can green spaces be used as avenues for cultivating meaningful social connections in Regent Park?" delves into the underlying theme of social cohesion facilitated by green spaces.

Our research employs a mixed-method approach that incorporates spatial analysis (GIS), survey data, and interviews. These methods delve further into the dynamics of green spaces within Regent Park. Initially, we gathered survey responses from residents, aiming to capture their experiences and perceptions of green spaces. Central to our interview process was the question, "What do green spaces mean to you?" This question was followed by survey questions concerning residents' preferences regarding the location of future green spaces. Leveraging both survey and interview data, we conducted a spatial analysis using ArcGIS to present resident preferences. This involved the development of a heat map that visually represents our findings. Furthermore, we conducted a historical analysis, examining imagery dating back to 2003, to trace the evolution of green spaces within the neighbourhood up to 2022, coinciding with its revitalization phase.

Having now sorted, and analyzed our data, our group was tasked with producing a multimedia project that will best showcase our participatory research and design process. With the expansive mixed methods data we collected, we decided to design a website using the web developer tool Wix. We believe that utilizing a website will be the best multimedia tool to depict and tell the story of our project, “The Green Atlas”. Through “The Green Atlas”, we set out to story-tell the change to the aggregated green spaces of Regent Park as the neighbourhood continues to be revitalized until now. Divided into five distinct website pages, our website is a collection of many different media pieces that include short interviews, qualitative data coding & word analysis, mapping, and image use. The first page titled, “Our Green Journey” describes our research question, our purpose for this type of research, and an introduction to “The Green Committee”- Isaac, Mishika, Shameel, and Julie. Next, we have “From Green to Concrete” which discusses the revitalization of Regent Park since 2003, showing how the abundance of natural green areas that were once present were replaced by ‘concrete’ and buildings. Thirdly, we created a page dedicated to presenting our data. This page is called, “The Green Voices of Regent Park”, taking inspiration from Soep & Chávez’s (2010) “point of voice” concept. In addition, the survey data collected is open-access and is hyperlinked on this page. The fourth page, “Mapping the Green” contains a variety of maps created to enrich our survey data and interview findings. Here you will find very personalized maps where each diagram seeks to digitize and map a “green story”. Finally, you will arrive at “A Green Future”, which presents three different types of contemporary green spaces that we believe can be implemented to help with the shortage of green spaces within Regent Park. Through this mixed-methods approach, we employ the art of “participatory storytelling” (Hou, 2023). Hou (2023, p. 4) explains that participatory storytelling “offers pathways for agentic comprehension and adaptive collective sensemaking from which practical and situated knowledge can be mobilized from people’s shared experiences”. Ideally, the collection and employment of these lived experiences of Regent Park’s residents present their story about green spaces within the neighbourhood. It seems that through this website, we have developed a sustained opportunity for knowledge and information exchange which Soep & Chávez (2010) argue is important for change to occur.

Now that our research and design processes have been completed, we developed three specific goals for this project. This three-pronged approach appreciates that this website can become a reference piece, improve & fill the gaps in green space data within Regent Park, and be a source for community participation & social planning. In other words, we see the potential for our project to inform and be a source of inspiration for future green space interventions designed for Regent Park residents. In addition, we envisioned that this website would also be a great reference tool to help enrich the future development of the Social Development Plan (SDP), where green spaces can become a theme of development within the neighbourhood. Lastly, one of the most important objectives of this project was to ensure community participation through community stakeholder engagement. So far, we have been able to achieve these three goals; however, there is always room for improvement. At our exhibition, our table received great feedback from exhibition attendees, agreeing that we can be pioneers in green space development within Regent Park, and bring back the effect and feelings of green spaces that were once foundational to this neighbourhood.

In the beginning, our vision for this project came with different thoughts and ideas on how we would like for it to take shape. Although it was a long and difficult process, we found that the most meaningful aspect of our project was collaborating with residents within Regent Park, and having their thoughts and ideas play a valuable role in our final deliverable. This community engagement included residents to pin areas where they wanted green space, recording video memos of what green space meant to them, and having them visualize a green wall. This data collection and engagement emphasized the importance of addressing community voices within a research and design context. As a result, this taught us to be open to different suggestions and be able to pivot from various ideas that we had. Nevertheless, we learned how to use the strengths that each member had. Our group had members familiar with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and knew how to use software such as ArcGIS. We also had members who were significantly involved within the Regent Park community. Giving those members tasks that allowed them to use those skills enabled us to have several diverse components to the project.

In conclusion, the process of creating our project, "The Green Atlas," was an experience that we all enjoyed. From going through Regent Park 101 classes to the final exhibition, this class gave us a clearer definition of meaningful community collaboration and the impact of centring community voices in our work. Looking ahead, we hope this project can inspire and guide future initiatives relating to green space in Regent Park

Screenshot of the website which can be found under the Projects 2024 tab

The Green Committee members are Julie, Shameel, Issac, and Mishika

References:

Anderson, V.; Gough, W.A.; Zgela, M.; Milosevic, D.; Dunjic, J. (2022). Lowering the Temperature to Increase Heat Equity: A Multi-Scale Evaluation of Nature-Based Solutions in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Atmosphere, 13, 1027. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13071027

Elton, S. (2021). Growing Methods: Developing a Methodology for Identifying Plant Agency and Vegetal Politics in the City. Environmental Humanities, 13(1), 93–112. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8867219

Hou, J. Z. (2023). “Sharing is caring”: Participatory storytelling and community building on social media amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. American Behavioral Scientist, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231164040

Kelly, D., Davern, M., Farahani, L., Higgs, C., & Maller, C. (2022). Urban greening for health and wellbeing in low-income communities: A baseline study in Melbourne, Australia. Cities, 120, 103442-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103442 Mejia, A., Bhattacharya,

M., & Miraglia, J. (2020). Community gardening as a way to build cross-cultural community resilience in intersectionally diverse gardeners: Community-based participatory research and campus-community-partnered proposal. JMIR Research Protocols, 9(10), e21218–e21218. https://doi.org/10.2196/21218

Oh, R. R. Y., Zhang, Y., Nghiem, L. T. P., Chang, C., Tan, C. L. Y., Quazi, S. A., Shanahan, D. F., Lin, B. B., Gaston, K. J., Fuller, R. A., & Carrasco, R. L. (2022). Connection to nature and time spent in gardens predicts social cohesion. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 74, 127655-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127655

Soep, L., & Chavez, V. (2019). Three. Point of Voice. In Drop That Knowledge (pp. 81–102). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520945456-006

Venkataramanan, V., Packman, A. I., Peters, D. R., Lopez, D., McCuskey, D. J., McDonald, R. I., Miller, W. M., & Young, S. L. (2019). A systematic review of the human health and social well-being outcomes of green infrastructure for stormwater and flood management. Journal of Environmental Management, 246, 868–880. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.05.028

Project Chronicles #4

It’s the Green Committee here with another project chronicles. This week has been a very important and crucial week for the development of our project and our data collection. After much planning and changing our project’s iterations during the last few weeks, our team has finally developed a final media project deliverable.

Most importantly, our final deliverable is being informed by the data collection we have started through our mapping feature with our printed out base map of Regent Park and our google form. For the map, we have been asking members of the Regent Park community to pin where they would like to see green spaces added or implemented. Subsequently, to support these pinned locations, our google form is asking members of Regent Park to tell a story about a green space in the area, what these spaces mean to them and some demographic information questions.

To our surprise, our data collection has been quite a success thus far. We have had over 50+ pins added to our mapping board and the trends for new green spaces added are being created. We can report that there has been an increased demand in spaces that have not been revitalized yet but also in places that have been revitalized; the vertical density increase has not accounted for the lack of green space. It’s as though this is a forgotten amenity. In relation to our form, here is what the public has been saying: “Green spaces to me are places which are refreshing for the mind and the soul. Physical and mental freshness”, and have also requested that an “individual garden where people can grow their own food and make the individual contribute to make our community more green”. Our aim is to collect at least twenty survey responses.

We appreciate the ongoing feedback from the Regent Park area and we have been able to see how happy people have been when they are able to participate in our data collection. Everyone wants to pin an area and they all have something to say about the need for green spaces: for play, to better mental health, and for social cohesion!

What was also important from this week is our meeting with Professor Mehta who continues to support our ongoing research and project progress. She has helped us to rework our project to provide a sort of conclusive project that can help guide or enrich our research point. So far, we have decided on picking out three to five areas that were pinned and to show how these spaces can be best fitted with a green space. Sort of like best practices for these areas.

For the next week, we have tasked ourselves to collect more data and to solidify the trends in data points. Stay tuned for next week’s project chronicles and we come near completion! We also hope that you were able to take a look at our pictures below which shows some of the public’s reaction and engagement with our map! Lots of happy faces when it comes to green spaces!

Pictures from some of our community participatory engagement exercises above- here we have residents pinning on a base map where they would like to see new “Green Spaces”.

The Green Committee members are Julie, Shameel, Issac, and Mishika

Trimming The Edges

Although it was unfortunate that we could not move forward with our previous plans to host an event, our goal still aims to bridge the intergenerational gaps in green space knowledge by finding manageable alternatives that highlight a similar nature. This week our group convened to plan out our next steps by figuring out our methods for collecting data and finalizing our main media piece. The biggest challenge that we faced was understanding the limitations and time constraints when it comes to implementing our goals. Nevertheless, our successes resulted from being able to solve these logistical mishaps and come up with a solution that is possible to accomplish in the next two weeks.

For our data collection methodology, we decided to create a Google form that would be supplementary to the interviews that we plan to conduct. During the interviews, we will guide our participants by filling out the form with them as they answer the questions: “What do green spaces mean to you?” and “How do you use green spaces?”. In addition, the form will also include questions that ask some background information on the participant. These questions aim to compile data regarding participants’ age, how long they have lived in Regent, and an optional section on ethnicity. Our main media piece is a map (36x48) of Regent Park encompassing: 1) the development phases; 2) a clear identification of the neighbourhood boundary; 3) common places for residents to gather (i.e. Daniel Spectrum, Aquatic Centre, Regent Park Athletic Grounds, etc.).

The plan for this map is to leave it in Daniel Spectrum throughout the next two weeks, and for people to pin their preferred areas on where they would hope to see green spaces in the neighbourhood. In the final week of our class, we will use this to supplement the data that we collect. In our final exhibition, we will encourage resident attendees to continue and pin specific places on the map where they hope to see green spaces.

We decided that after the class, it was important to immediately execute our plans. This meant that working on our flyers, maps, and interview forms needed to be completed. By giving ourselves these immediate objectives, we were able to complete two-thirds of our tasks, which was to develop the flyer and the map.

For many, green spaces are perceived as integral to community well-being as they hold physical and social values, especially for a neighbourhood like Regent Park. It was fascinating to hear that no one has ever done a project in this class regarding green spaces in the community. Therefore, we believe that this project can guide residents in potentially uncovering new passions and a way that can create a connection between people from different life stages in the neighbourhood.

The Green Committee members are Julie, Shameel, Issac, and Mishika

Project Chronicles No.2

This week the Green Committee met for another wonderful discussion about our final project for our Regent Park Participatory Research Class. Moving along with our collective conversation around the idea of green spaces within Regent Park, we furthered our discussion this week to develop a project concept and to help answer the who, what, why, when, how of our project. In other words, how can we integrate our thought process and transform it into a community engagement project?

Our initial idea surrounded the hosting of an event in collaboration with other Regent Park organizations to sort of replicate an event held last week within the community which involved seed swapping. Unfortunately, our group recognized that the scope of the project is a bit limited due to the lack of extensive time to book, coordinate, advertise, and host such an event. We subsequently continued our discussion on other community engagement options that can be of use to our Green Committee group. We asked the question, “How can we do this?”- interviews? Sticky notes? or visual mapping diagrams?

This brought all of us to a questioning period where we developed a set of guiding research questions that included: “What does green space mean to you?”, “Do you have access to green space?”, and “What are some of the barriers to green space within your community?”. We were also provided with anecdotal stories of green space use and barriers to these common spaces by members of our group which further enriched our discussion and thematic questions involving green spaces. We then set out this week to gather information and answer the research questions presented above. It is kind of like taking on a three pronged approach with how we develop and implement our activity- preliminary analysis, reporting on our findings, and then creation of a design/community engagement intervention.

With that being said, our group was also able to look to different organizations and events to gather some inspiration. For example, we looked at 8 80 Cities, a Toronto community engagement specialist, to see how they create their boards for information collection. We agreed that they have a really great approach to community engagement and we look forward to utilizing their toolkits available to us via their website: see media attached. In addition, our colleague Julie also took us to an event where we were able to meet other community champions and indulge in conversation that helped to add more specificity to our engagement piece. We have concluded that for our idea, we will be creating a type of poster design, information campaign but will solidify this idea at this week’s workshop!

So far, we have been provided with great supportive resources from both our Professor and FOCUS Media group and we look forward to our workshop next week.

8 80 Cities- a leader in community engagement- https://www.880cities.org/

The Green Committee members are Julie, Shameel, Issac, and Mishika

Project Chronicles No.1

The Green Committee comprises four members: Julie, Shameel, Issac and Mishika. As a mix of Regent Park residents and UofT students, we're excited to combine our knowledge and expertise to create a project over the coming weeks.

Within our first few weeks of working in our group, we all realized the importance of green space. Access to public usable green space can affect one's quality of life in many ways, including diet, community and mental wellbeing. That is why our group, the Green Committee, focused on the need for more access to green spaces as our civic engagement topic.

In our sessions, we spoke about how the Regent Park residents have seen the green space landscape transform over the revitalization. There were discussions about how the previous community gardens were large plots of the area used for multiple buildings in the area compared to now when the condo building gardens are small and are only used for those who live in the complex. This brought thoughts about how that can cause a lack of talk and discussion with members from different buildings and areas. We also spent a bit of time discussing what the benefits of green spaces are. We discussed points, including the ability to plant fruits and vegetables. It would also be a place for community members to exchange produce that they grew with other families, creating connections within the community. We also discussed the intergenerational aspect that community gardens can provide. Witnessing a parent or a grandparent talk about their garden and being able to contribute can build and foster generational stories or practices. We also looked at maps created by Issac, which showed various forms of green space in Regent Park. We could see which green spaces were available to all residents within the community, which were limited to a specific condo and which were present but unusable due to construction.

One of our group members, Julie, was able to attend a Black History Month celebration event by the organization Fred Victors. The event had a seed swap portion. During this seed swap event, residents were allowed to exchange seeds, get free seeds, and learn about planting. While not all of the members were able to attend, we were able to see pictures from the community event. Our initial ideas surrounded hosting a community event as a part of our media project, as it would be a way to support cohesion in the community directly.

The urban studies and lived experiences of all our members will inspire and inform this project over the upcoming weeks. We're excited to see the form our project takes and how we can contribute to the discussion of green space in Regent Park.

The Green Committee members are Julie, Shameel, Issac, and Mishika