Weaving the Urban Network

This article appeared first in Research News, a publication of the University of Michigan.

by Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA

Weaving, one of the ancient arts, makes use of many different threads to create something larger, stronger, more useful, more durable, and more beautiful than any individual string.

Weavings begin as ideas. They take physical form as threads of the woof are woven in-and-out, over-and-under the threads of the warp that provide the underlying structure on the loom.

UM architecture professor Sharon Sutton is weaving a network of inner city children, parents, teachers, administrators, architecture specialists, and others in urban areas to improve learning by gaining a sense of control over the environment in which they live and work.

For some fifteen years, Sutton has been threading this loom as she developed a process that uses the built environment -- urban elementary schools -- to stimulate community participation in the schools. Fourth, fifth, and sixth graders are the woof threads in this weaving, as they study their school environment, plan a project for enhancing their neighborhood, and then get others involved to help them carry out the plan.

This fall Sutton distributed a curriculum package, called the Urban Network, that provides teachers and principals with a guide to the process she has developed and piloted over the years, to about 40 sites from New York City, Atlanta, and Miami, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Detroit, and Chicago, to the West Coast's Watsonville, California.

Understanding Your Neighborhood is the first half of the yearlong course. Children concentrate on design concepts and activities for assessing the immediate environment near the school, in particular the building, the playground, and the blocks directly adjacent to the school. The children learn what comprises a neighborhood -- its landmarks, public spaces, residential buildings, circulation systems, landscapes, and people.

The architecture concepts have tie-ins to math, science, social studies, and language arts. Through observing, surveying, model building, and other hands-on activities, students consider what makes a neighborhood or city a nice place to live and how such area might be improved.

In the second semester, Enhancing Your Neighborhood, the students tackle a community problem or select a project that celebrates a positive aspect of their school. "The idea is to help children and adults understand the concepts involved in designing a city and to apply the principles locally in their own neighborhoods. They work as a team using architecture, environmental design, or advocacy to improve the quality of their local environment," says Sutton.

The emphasis is on learning through purposeful, hands-on activities with an intergenerational, community involvement, says Sutton. Students develop interpersonal skills, including the ability to negotiate, arrive at consensus, assume responsibility, and follow directions. Because participants work collectively, they practice being leaders as well as followers.

In the ideal process, the principal brings together a broad community of parents, teachers, area residents, and older students. The school may tap local architectural and landscaping firms or design schools for design assistance. Businesses may be called upon to donate materials or publicity, and volunteers of all ages can provide labor. "Kids are the catalyst and grown-ups help out," Sutton says.

Children like to select projects related to the playground, she says, and some classes have made play equipment or painted murals. One school built a musical climbing gym. The structure contained percussion instruments such as wind chimes, gongs, and drums. Another year that same school put together a street museum of neighborhood history.

Street fairs, recycling days, and other forms of advocacy may be undertaken by schools without access to the design help necessary for construction or landscaping projects, Sutton says.

A Chicago school very successfully established an ongoing collaboration between area store owners and students to do something about dogs that were allowed to roam about the neighborhood, leaving messes behind. After studying their school neighborhood, the students selected a problem. Then they identified potential solutions, evaluated their options, and finally decided on a strategy: creating posters that highlight the problem and enlisting store owners to display the posters.

In the Urban Network curriculum packages distributed this fall, Sutton provided a videotape that demonstrates projects other students have carried out and the process they went through to accomplish their projects. It also features Detroit students talking about cities as both good and bad places to live.

"The primary purpose of the videotape is to show urban minority children engaging in incredibly creative and purposeful work," Sutton says. "It's an antidote for the image of failure that many of these children carry around."

Trained as a psychologist, musician, and architect, Sutton hopes that by making learning less abstract, the process may help improve learning, especially for inner city children. Sutton says the key to the Urban Network curriculum is cooperation and teamwork. Early on, students discover that environmental projects are too large for any lone person to undertake. Through the Urban Network, each student can find a way to be a successful contributor in a serious, long-term project, doing important work on behalf of others, she says.

Teachers Learning The Process

Its a rainy, cold Thursday evening in early October when 33 elementary school teachers, architecture instructors, and a few administrators converge on the UM Art and Architecture Building in Ann Arbor for a teacher-in-residence weekend that will telescope the two-semester process into three intensive days. Sutton has designed the weekend to expose the participants to group-process skills and sharing of ideas that the teachers will need to implement Urban Network projects in their own schools. From their stories emerges a picture of what urban teachers face every day.

Perhaps your memory of elementary school is of a brick-faced building with inviting classrooms. Children didn't always sit quietly at their desks, but they were intent on learning. If Dick, Jane, and Sally couldn't read or do fractions, then Mrs. Jones stayed after school to help them. Twice a day you went outside for recess to release pent-up energy.

Parents were busy, but not too tired to help their children with their homework. They saw the teacher as their ally in developing a self-confident, competent young citizen prepared to cope with the world of tomorrow.

A nice picture but now mostly a fantasy. Though elementary schools were never perhaps as rosy as memory makes them, today's reality is startling. Many urban schools are hampered by a lack of basic materials such as up-to-date textbooks, a lack of time to help students, and unsafe neighborhoods. In some places, the school day starts at 9 AM. The day includes only ten minutes of non-instructional time and twenty minutes for lunch. The kids have to be out of the school by 2 PM so that the smaller children can be whisked off school grounds before the older children arrive to recruit them for drug dealing.

A teacher at the workshop recounts the story of the morning the children were lined up, ready to go into the school. Suddenly, an alert principal made a quick decision to take them inside through an alternative route because she had spotted a situation across the street likely to result in a shooting.

No longer do teachers in inner city public schools stay after class tidying up the classroom or giving an extra boost in reading -- to do so would be dangerous to their physical being. The dash to the city bus across the way requires street smarts.

Nor are students' home environments conducive to learning. "Some of my students have no permanent place to live," says one young teacher from the Chicago public schools. "And on one visit to the home of a student, I discovered the furniture consisted of the mattresses they slept on, a table, and three chairs. No wonder her homework doesn't get done."

However, the circumstances of their children's lives do not hold these teachers back. "When I first began teaching," she continues, "I saw all my students' limitations -- this child can't read, that child never completes her homework. Now I see their possibilities -- this child is very good at expressing herself verbally, this child is very attentive to the needs of others in the class."

In fact, all these teachers-in-residence show a desire to push beyond limitations and follow many paths to their common goal -- the development of their students. The teachers place little faith in talk of national standards that dominated President George Bush's education summit, held only a few days before this workshop. Instead, they want to concentrate on generating self-esteem in their children. "Even children with material possessions may lack the self-esteem they need to learn," one teacher stresses.

The animated dedication of the teachers carries through the intense weekend. Early Friday morning, teachers begin sharing ideas on how to create networks by establishing linkages with design schools, architecture firms, and other local resources. Experienced teachers warn the novices to be sure to invite people with special skills to work with the class as "partners," rather than as "experts" to tell the class what to do.

The workshop's next session deals with fundraising. One teacher points out that she receives only $28 from her school for a year's worth of class supplies, so any project undertaken by "urban networkers" must deal with the question of finances.

Sutton then explains how fundraising can be part of the learning experience. Children exercise their math skills by estimating the amount of materials needed, pricing them, and figuring out the bill. They exercise their social skills by crafting ways to generate the funds. Some schools have sold children's artwork to raise money; others have sponsored school fairs. As schools demonstrate their resourcefulness, contributions from local residents often increase.

Then, much as their children will start their work with the Urban Network, teachers learn architecture and planning concepts. Next the teachers briefly discuss the final step in the yearlong process -- celebrating their accomplishments. It is equally as important as planning and building, Sutton says. In the highly regarded Suzuki music training method the first thing the children learn is how to bow. Children need to know it is okay to accept success, she says.

Model Building

Friday afternoon, the teachers embark on their first hands-on activity. In small groups, they build models of their vision of the city of the future. They dive into the paper, glue, cardboard, fabric, glitter, and all manner of other materials -- even the leftovers from lunch, when several groups discover the lettuce makes good bushes and the orange peels are perfect for small boats.

There is much give and take as the huddles of teachers get a workable design up and running. For one group this takes the form of several ideas all being worked on at once and finally blended into a coherent, three-dimensional whole.

Some group members worry about reality. Where will energy for houses and businesses come from? How will the city dispose of wastes? Others dream up fantastic concoctions, glossing over the potential physical and technological impediments.

When the creations are complete, each group explains their imaginary city to the other groups, making up a "history" for the future city, and discussing the people who live there.

Most striking are the commonalties among the designs. They say a lot about what people like in livable spaces -- water, nature, strolling areas, cafés.

Afterward, Sutton leads a discussion to help the teachers recognize elements of the group process that the students will use. She is not unmindful of the problems. "Kids fight. Teams are hard," she says. She shares some of the tricks of veteran teachers for building good teams.

Sutton teaches the group the word "reiteration," explaining that design projects, like many things, require many iterations or drafts. Too often children think doing a project once is enough and do not recognize the value of revision. A little freeform idea generation leads to some research, which leads to more ideas and refinement, which leads to some more work, and so forth.

She recognizes the value of engaging the students early on with a hands-on activity, but points out that the same activity can be repeated. The initial burst of energy gets the students involved; then they can reflect on their creation and revise it.

The Neighborhood Walk

Saturday morning dawns bright and chilly as the teachers begin a key exercise in the workshop -- a walk through a Detroit neighborhood. The city of Detroit, unlike New York City or, to a lesser extent, Chicago, shows its heritage as the automobile capital of the country. The avenues are large and broad. Even the downtown buildings are most approachable by car. There are few towering high rises. On Saturday morning, the streets are all but deserted.

The neighborhood in Detroit Sutton chooses for this experience is called Island View, just west of Belle Isle in the Detroit River. Sutton's college architecture students have worked with this neighborhood. Today's task is to survey the neighborhood, taking note of the people, buildings, landmarks, public gathering spaces, and conflicts in neighborhood use.

The group begins at the Messiah Episcopal Church for an orientation to the area. At the church, a constant stream of traffic comes and goes as people move in and out, taking food to elderly residents who live nearby. A minister, who is now the executive director of the church's development corporation, explains to the visitors the church's work in the neighborhood. Island View is home to an area of retired autoworkers and younger, unemployed people. Over half of the residents have annual incomes under $10,000; a third live below the poverty level.

Just blocks away, homes are being bought up by wealthier people, displacing the local inhabitants. In 1976, the church formed a corporation to save existing housing, construct new low-income housing, and promote citizen involvement through cooperatively-managed property. The church also operates a day care center, an elementary school, and a youth program.

Before their stroll, a Detroit teacher-in-residence participant recommends city safety tips -- keep gold chains out of sight and so forth. The teachers set forth in little groups to wander about the area with a map and large pads on which to record observations. The challenge is to try to present their impressions in a nonverbal form. They are especially alert for conflicts in use -- law-abiding citizens versus drug users, busy streets versus pedestrians, increasing gentrification versus the need for low-income housing.

Scattered among a few run-down two-story houses are several clusters of well kept homes. Some houses are frame, others are brick. All have large porches. Most are more than 75 years old. Several old mansions are being used as group homes or nursing homes.

Many lots are vacant. To Sutton's surprise they had been mowed recently. A consequence of the mayoral campaign, she wonders? The group wanders by a small asphalt basketball court. A man sleeps on an old car seat at the edge of the court.

People on the streets are cordial, though it is cold and few are about. Some eye the group suspiciously from upstairs porches. Sutton explains to the onlookers that this is a group of teachers, and that dissolves some of the natural suspicion of strangers walking around the neighborhood recording things. The group is racially mixed, which also helps put some residents at ease.

The one bustling corner of the Island View neighborhood houses a dry cleaning business. A constant stream of cars pull up. People dash in to get their cleaning and then drive off.

A rather forlorn looking school -- an Urban Network participant called Bellevue Elementary School -- sits amid several vacant properties. A burned building sags dangerously on an adjacent corner. The teachers, appalled at the open site, comment on what magnets such buildings are to curious children.

Later everyone reconvenes at the Messiah Episcopal Church to compare impressions. Many of the out-of-towners think this neighborhood looks glorious compared with the cities they come from. The blight is not particularly overwhelming to the one-time stroller, but people who live in the neighborhood recount the difficulties in getting abandoned, fire-ravaged buildings boarded up or torn down, in keeping the garbage collected, the streets well lit, and the vacant property mowed. There is a shortage of jobs for the young people and a shortage of services for the old.

Now the task for the teachers is to pretend they are fourth-graders at the elementary school in the Island View neighborhood and think about what they saw and what improvements they might devise for the neighborhood. The teachers observe that the neighborhood seems to suffer from a lack of sense of community and from a perception that the neighborhood is worse than it is.

Eventually, they state the problem: "How can our school be a center for making connections -- historical, political, intergenerational, and social -- so that we children can 'clothe the emperor?' " -- a reference to the tale of the emperor's new clothes and shorthand for the need to change people's perception of their neighborhood.

Having put the problem into words, the group now wrestles with what they are going to do about it. The teachers discuss how to help children feel power to control or affect their environment. If children want to make change, how do they imagine something they may never have seen?

The activities proposed range from simple tasks that could be accomplished with relatively little outside help to major efforts that would require taking on the city bureaucracy.

Everyone has ideas for the school, including painting a "welcome" sign for the playground and brightening up the window sills with brightly-colored paint. The vacant land nearby might eventually be turned into a neighborhood park, suggests one group.

Sutton points out common ideas that surface and that teachers might apply in their own schools. One key point is to make connections with existing, ongoing organizations if possible. All the groups view the church, already very active in the neighborhood, as a valuable ally.

Another key idea is to find out "where you're coming from," in other words explore the history of the neighborhood and the cultural background of the community. A Harlem teacher explains how she uses historical exhibits of Harlem that display beautiful buildings and vibrant streets to show her pupils alternatives to the neighborhood they now know.

A third idea addresses the value of neighborhood resources -- in this case, nursing homes. The teachers see the nursing homes as an opportunity for students to learn more about their neighborhood and a way to make real the idea of working on behalf of others.

Bringing It Home To The Classroom

The workshop participants return to Ann Arbor for an afternoon of getting down to the business of how a teacher facing a class Monday morning begins Urban Network activities. What does she or he do? They wrestle with the process of taking the problem statement from this morning's neighborhood walk and turning it into lesson plans.

Uppermost in the minds of the people facilitating this discussion is letting the children play a large role in identifying neighborhood problems and improvement possibilities. Most teachers decide they will begin with a discussion of just what a neighborhood is.

Many think a neighborhood walk at their own schools will be an early activity. One Detroit teacher says she will recruit a male teacher to go along for protection.

The last session in the workshop addresses the issue of evaluation. During the year, Sutton will undertake a formal evaluation of the Urban Network curriculum. One aspect of this will be a comparison of classes in the same schools, one of which has been through the curriculum and one which has not.

While everyone wants to measure how they have made a difference, many teachers find evaluation troubling because of the narrow way in which it is often defined. The teachers also express concern that the evaluation assess team-building skills and self-confidence, not just cognitive tasks such as definitions of words and math skills.

One device for tracing personal development is the journal each student will keep, recording their activities in both writing and drawing. Such journals are a standard technique in design and architecture courses on the college level. They help the student keep track of their evolving ideas and reflect on changes in their attitudes and thinking as well as their designs.

By Sunday, the participants are exhausted but also committed to making the Urban Network a reality. People are thinking about networks larger than their own neighborhoods. Some teachers lay groundwork for exchanges between their schools, if not in person then as pen pals.

As a closing exercise, the group sits in a circle and literally weaves a network of connections with balls of yarn. Like the Native American talking stick, the ball of yarn gives the person who holds it permission to share a thought on the experiences of the last few intense days and on their tasks for the future. It is tossed across the room to the next person who wishes to speak. By the end of the session, many colors cries-cross back and forth filling the circle.

Over the next few months the teachers will put the Urban Network to a stiff test as they urge their classes to learn not only about design, but also come to understand that children collectively have the power to make their neighborhoods a better place to live.

"In the Urban Network, we are not asking children to learn so that they one day, if all goes well, will reach the top of the ladder of success in a corporation or university. We are asking children to learn so that right now they can start contributing to people who are important in their lives," Sutton says.

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About the Author

You can contact Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, 208T Gould Hall Box 355720, The University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-5720. Her e-mail address is: sesut@u.washington.edu.

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© 1990 Research News
Posted with permission of Sharon E. Sutton

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