Using Innovative Survey Mapping to Foster Community in a Diverse Neighborhood
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Date
2019-04
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ohio State University. Office of Outreach and Engagement
Abstract
Building and sustaining a sense of community and authentic connections in a diverse, mixed-income neighbor-hood requires intentional efforts to create social capital. We will draw on the experience of Ohio State and multiple community partners in the Weinland Park neighborhood of Columbus. Ohio State's Kirwan Institute conducted a neighborhood survey in 2016 that included innovative mapping techniques to identify clusters of residents and to illustrate their differing attitudes and experiences. The maps showed how African-American and white residents perceive "safe" and "unsafe" areas of the neighborhood differently. Civic leaders are using the principles of equitable and inclusive civic engagement to share the survey results as one tool to foster understanding and acceptance among neighbors.
Description
Building and sustaining a sense of community and authentic connections in a diverse, mixed-income neighborhood requires intentional efforts to create social capital. Too often, people's habits form community around racial and economic similarities. These learned behaviors can be unlearned, and diversity can been seen as a source of strength. This presentation will describe innovative survey and mapping techniques that identify clusters of residents and illustrate their differing attitudes and experiences. Civic leaders then can use the principles of equitable and inclusive civic engagement to share the survey results as one tool to foster understanding and acceptance. The Weinland Park neighborhood of Columbus has evolved from an area with the city's highest violent crime rate and highest concentration of project-based Section 8 housing into a true mixed-income, mixed-race neighborhood. Since 2010, the Weinland Park Collaborative (WPC) has cultivated that evolution and empowered the residents through a place-based and people-centered approach to investment and support. The WPC is a partnership involving a number of units from Ohio State, the Weinland Park Community Civic Association, The Columbus Foundation, and more than a dozen other public, nonprofit and private entities. A baseline survey of residents in 2010 provided a valuable "snapshot" of neighborhood conditions that guided WPC's investments. Ohio State's Kirwan Institute conducted a follow-up survey in 2016 that not only documented the changes in Weinland Park, but the survey gave voices to multiple clusters of residents who make up this diverse neighborhood. In addition, applying innovative mapping techniques, the survey literally illustrated how African American and white residents perceive "safe" and "unsafe" areas of the neighborhood differently. While Weinland Park is one neighborhood geographically, it is not necessarily one community. The 2016 survey has helped neighborhood leaders and WPC members understand the challenge of creating a diverse community where people connect across barriers of income, education, race and gender. They are using the innovative survey and principles of equitable and inclusive civic engagement to transform Weinland Park into, as one observer suggested, "a safe place where people can come together and leave their status behind." As social capital is continuously built, new connections between people will unlock their capacities for growth, well-being, and benevolence. In turn, these connections will generate strong attachments to communities and sustain them as better places to live for everyone.
AUTHOR AFFILIATION: Stephen Sterrett, consultant, Weinland Park Collaborative; Matthew Martin, community research and grants management officer, The Columbus Foundation; Kip Holley, research associate, Ohio State Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
AUTHOR AFFILIATION: Stephen Sterrett, consultant, Weinland Park Collaborative; Matthew Martin, community research and grants management officer, The Columbus Foundation; Kip Holley, research associate, Ohio State Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Keywords
surveys, social capital, community, diversity
Citation
Engaged Scholars, v. 7 (2019).