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