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| > Module 3 / How-to Pages > Community Trails | |
PLANNING COMMUNITY TRAILSThis unit describes how children can design a trail to introduce others to aspects of their community which they think are important to see and discuss. Children greatly enjoy field trips but rarely get to establish their own itinerary for these trips. This is a good introductory research project for children because it has a clear end goal and can be done with little or no cost. Walking through the environment is the best way to communicate to anyone about issues related to it. The term "trail" is usually associated in people's minds with nature trails. Certainly this project would work in rural areas but it is equally, if not better, suited to urban settings. These trails need not be passive and boring experiences. Instead, the viewer is invited to become active through dialogue or to even act like a detective on these trails. The trails can become relatively permanent ones or can serve more specific, short-term ends. One particularly useful purpose for trails is to help open a dialogue with planners so that children's ideas are more integral to neighborhood plans. Problem Identification It is useful to focus on a particular theme, such as "economic development potentials", or "environmental pollution" or "sites for alternative plans for the community." The clearest way to introduce children to making a trail is to have them focus on the environment which they know and use every day with a view to sharing this with other children or adults (Go to Problem Identification). Figure 22 shows such a trail made by children. Figure 22: A community trail map can be designed by children to show their everyday play environment.  The scale of the trail need not be of an entire community. In redesigning a schoolyard at Longfellow School in Berkeley, Californian Robin Moore found what he called "scored walks" to be a very effective strategy for gaining input to the design. It helped direct the attention of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and people from the surrounding neighborhood, towards opportunities for improvement to the school site. The scored walk was designed with some thirty "stations" on the school site. It was used as the opening segment of a three-hour community planning workshop. At each station, participants noted likes and dislikes and listed comments about the physical conditions. It took about an hour to complete the circuit. Most of the thirty-five participants worked in pairs, discussing their opinions as they moved from station to station, although each individual made their own record. Back at the workshop meeting, the results of the walk were discussed in small groups and on a wall graphic, which was used as the basis for group discussion on how to proceed in redesigning the schoolyard. Making the trails interactive The "tracker" should be given a set of questions and clues to guide them rather than a specific set of facts about what to look for and what their significance is. The trail is not meant to leave the tracker feeling that they have learned what they were supposed to have learned. It should rather stimulate the desire to investigate further. Different people perceive the environment differently and each of their perspectives is important. Determining the Length of the Trail The age and physical abilities of those who will be using the trail is the most important consideration. The children themselves will be a good judge of what other children would accept. The children also need to consider whether elderly persons will be using the trail. If they are, one possibility is to make alternative loops so that people can leave the trail and return via an equally intersecting route as the main trail. Creating a Rhythm in the Trail Contrasts and surprises are important. Do not take the trail along an obvious route or a beaten path. The trail should rather travel through controversial areas where people may be in conflict with developers or planners over a particular use of a site. A good trail should be designed for versatility of use. The tracker should be able to use the trail at their own level of interest and in the amount of time they wish to spend on it. Nevertheless there will be sections of the trail that are rich and interesting and others that are relatively uninteresting for most of the users of the trail. Encouraging the use of all the senses Aim to focus the attention of the tracker on each of the senses. Build in suggestions to the tracker that at different points they can listen for noises, smell the pleasant as well as the negative parts of the environment and even reach out to touch aesthetically pleasing objects in the built environment. One warning, however, is that because of the desire to touch after a period of months or years a nature oriented trail will become a deserted pathway through an otherwise rich environment! Overviews It is important to have at least one outlook point in a trail. This could be a hill from which a panorama can be offered, or in the case of a town, a tall building that is accessible. Not only does this offer a vantage point for new kinds of information but it can also place the trail in a larger context. Introducing the Users to the Trail Trackers should ideally be briefed on the route beforehand and introduced to symbols used on the map but then allowed to travel independently either alone or in small groups of children. This better allows people to move at their own speed along the trail. Also small groups can have discussions about the issues raised by the trail guide. Small groups or individuals are also more likely to be successful in moving though the natural environment with minimal disturbance of the animal life or through an urban environment with minimal disturbance to the regular activities of the populations they are passing through. Recording the Trail Experience A simple environmental appraisal form can be designed. This is not meant to turn this activity into a quantitative survey. Surveys have been discussed as a distinct method above. The trackers should work in small groups of two or three to fill out these sheets. The purpose of the environmental appraisal sheet is rather to focus a child on certain aspects of the environment. These are useful for stimulating discussion on the environment after the trackers complete the trail. Evaluating and Redesigning the Trail The trail should be frequently revised. Before the close of the discussion it is a good idea to take advantage of the students experience to redesign or supplement the trail for future use. The children themselves may wish to do this and even to transform the trail into something that can be useful for others. They may wish to make a visual and even an audio recording of the interesting environmental sites and the views of people resources along the trail. This might lead them to the creation of various forms of trail guides that can be shared with other children and adults of their community. Resources Eileen Adams (1982). Art and The Built Environment. Harlow: Longman. Ward, Colin and Fyson, Tony. Streetworks. London: Routledge, Kegan-Paul, 1973.
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