New Orleans class update: Community and Leadership

This is what now feels like the belated report back on my class trip to New Orleans. I dropped an archi­tec­ture class, Archi­tec­ture and Social Prac­tice, in favor of a class called Urban Inter­ven­tions: New Orleans. This Par­sons class, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a class at Milano, the urban pol­icy and man­age­ment school at The New School, works on a com­pe­ti­tion entry for Chase’s Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Com­pe­ti­tion. The New School has par­tic­i­pated in the com­pe­ti­tion for I think 8 years, win­ning awards in 5 of those years.

The com­pe­ti­tion is usu­ally based in New York, with schools part­ner­ing with NGOs to develop urban design projects. This year and next year, the com­pe­ti­tion is focus­ing on New Orleans. I was awfully excited about the oppor­tu­nity to work on a New Orleans based project. I was in New Orleans two years ago, just 6 months after Kat­rina. I was dev­as­tated to see the state of the city and the despon­dency of the peo­ple. At the same time, I was greatly inspired by the resilience and per­sis­tence of many peo­ple to improve the sit­u­a­tion and carve out the space they needed and deserved. I also had the exit­ing oppor­tu­nity to work with some skilled, fierce women like Jacque Soohen of Big Noise Films and Jen­nifer Whit­ney for­merly of The Infer­nal Noise Brigade and Notes from Nowhere and now an inde­pen­dent writer and medic. Work­ing along side these women and receiv­ing their help and encour­age­ment was uniquely val­i­dat­ing. I wanted to revisit aspects of this expe­ri­ence as well as con­tribute to the just recon­struc­tion of the city. There is so much work to do.

The class is part­nered with an NGO to design and cre­ate a financ­ing plan for a medium den­sity, mixed income-housing com­plex. The site is by the river, very close to the planned River­front Vision devel­op­ments. Nav­i­gat­ing this class and the project has been com­pli­cated. The Par­sons class is a mix of archi­tec­ture, com­mu­ni­ca­tion design, and design man­age­ment stu­dents. I am the anom­aly com­ing from the design and tech­nol­ogy end with a lib­eral arts mind­set. I was moti­vated to work on doc­u­ment­ing the com­mu­nity and get­ting com­mu­nity feed­back. We were informed early on in the class that the NGO part­ner was not will­ing to help us do this, even though it is a very impor­tant piece of the com­pe­ti­tion, not to men­tion any devel­op­ment in gen­eral. This was a huge red flag for me. On the one hand, I thought that maybe the NGO was buffer­ing the com­mu­nity from the ques­tion­ing of out­siders. On the other hand, I doubted that the NGO had the com­mu­nity rela­tions and buy in needed to make the project hap­pen properly.

Here as I write, I feel my hands tied. I worry about what I say and how this might get me in trou­ble be that with the class, with the NGO part­ner, or with the com­pe­ti­tion. We went down to New Orleans two weeks ago with the same feel­ing. Both the Milano class and the Par­sons class felt con­fused about what we could say to whom. It was evi­dent that the NGO was edgy about who we talked to and what infor­ma­tion we shared about the project. This reluc­tance trans­ferred to the group.  Look­ing back, I real­ize that I dragged my feet in prepar­ing for the trip. I have good con­nec­tions. I can get infor­ma­tion about what is hap­pen­ing in the com­mu­nity and what the community’s needs and expec­ta­tions are. I did not set myself up to do this work. Ini­tially, I beat myself up about this. I told myself I was being dis­or­ga­nized, irre­spon­si­ble, and uneth­i­cal. As I sur­vey where we are and how the field work went, it’s evi­dent to me that my sub­con­scious drag on gath­er­ing com­mu­nity input had more to do with know­ing that there were other con­cerns about com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the group about the project before we could effec­tively han­dle this kind of com­mu­nity input.

The Site Visit

We did get a lot of impor­tant work done in New Orleans. We vis­ited the site. We met with coun­cil­men, plan­ners, com­mu­nity orga­niz­ers, and clergy. We even met with Ed Blakely.

We came to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what the NGO expects and the chal­lenges they are fac­ing. We also strength­ened the dynam­ics of the group, a com­mon result of trips. Just spend­ing more time with peo­ple when you aren’t explic­itly work­ing makes a huge dif­fer­ence in dynamics.

I spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time with the Milano stu­dents because I went down with them on Thurs­day while the rest of the Par­sons class went down on Fri­day. I was relieved to hang out with them. Their end of things is being run more like a group project. A very intense group project. On the Par­sons side, the class is run like an under­grad­u­ate class. This is con­fus­ing for project man­age­ment because the teach­ers have the dual goals of cre­at­ing a learn­ing expe­ri­ence and deliv­er­ing the needed com­po­nent for the project. In my expe­ri­ence, I have a hard time slow­ing back down into an aca­d­e­mic learn­ing process (as dif­fer­ent from expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing) when there is a project on the table, espe­cially one with real world ram­i­fi­ca­tions. I am fur­ther con­fused when the two objec­tives of the class, learn­ing and win­ning, become inter­twined. They aren’t quite con­ducive in my mind. The pro­fes­sors know this and are doing their best to man­age it. I was glad to hang out on the Milano side where that doesn’t need to be man­aged because the focus is explic­itly on the com­pe­ti­tion. I liked the momen­tum and focus, even if it was tem­pered by an anx­i­ety passed down from the NGO.

“The per­son who can most accu­rately describe real­ity with­out lay­ing blame will emerge the leader, weather des­ig­nated or not.” — Edwin Friedman