Because of this commitment, a Los Angeles project required simultaneous translation in three languages. In Michigan, a project steering committee included 170 people because the community didn t feel that 100 participants could adequately represent all constituencies. The representatives then identify the community s assets in six areas physical, social, educational, cultural, economic, and organizational and learn how to hook them together. When citizens, teachers, shop owners, students, and others work together to integrate these assets in innovative new ways, they reinvent the concept of community. It s the same kind of participatory team-based planning ideas that have been developed through corporate structures in the last 30 years, Bingler comments.
Local participants do most of the legwork to locate the community s resources.
It s about controlled, healthy chaos, comments the cutting-edge architect. In the end, it s about relationships between people, places, and things, and constantly evaluating the best way of maximizing those relationships. Learning is an integrated part of life, not something isolated at some school site with a chain-link fence around it, he says. Naturally, students love the idea. In this process, they re treated with enormous respect and are deeply involved in developing and implementing ideas.