Place Changing focuses design, journalism, and activism on one neighborhood at a time to improve communication among stakeholders, foster social, cohesion, and, ultimately, to improve livability. In response, Rivard and Hu launched a project called Place Changing with the support of Overland Partners and The Rivard Report, an online local news media outlet. Rivard and Hu grew concerned that other parts of town face similar health-unfriendly environments, and that relevant stakeholders lack the relationship to discuss making healthy changes to the built environment.
The action group observed that girls and the rest of the neighborhood’s population were missing out on multiple health benefits of physical activity, although the Martinez Street Women’s Center was working to change that. She observed that teen boys were the group most predominately out-and-about in the neighborhood, which led Hu to form a group to investigate the usage of two of the primary parks in the Dignowity Hill neighborhood. She perceived that the local parks were “boys parks,” which led Hu to informally investigate public use of public spaces in the Dignowity Hill neighborhood, including sidewalks and green space. However, compared to the rest of the city, it is a disadvantaged neighborhood with limited functioning public space and surrounded by physical barriers like a freight rail line and industrial uses.Ī young girl mentored by Hu through Big Brothers Big Sisters program recognized the lack of opportunity to recreate outdoors in 2014. They recently moved into the same neighborhood, Dignowity Hill (75.16% Latino), a diverse, up-and-coming neighborhood east of downtown San Antonio, Texas (63.06% Latino). Rivard and Hu are concerned with inequities in the built environment, such as low-quality streetscapes and lack of sidewalks and bike lanes, because these environmental factors influence the real and perceived safety and accessibility of public spaces contributing to health disparities, such as Latino childhood obesity. Nicolas Rivard and Allison Hu, urban designers at the San Antonio architectural firm Overland Partners, have learned over their careers that the built environment (the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for activity including buildings and green space) affects a community’s economy, safety, and physical and social health. Walkability Low in East San Antonio Neighborhood Today, through their recent project, Place Changing, the designers use “design activism” or “participatory design” processes to build urban literacy and equip residents with strategies to continue to get involved in city planning and development projects. The urban designers mobilized and empowered community members to get involved and request walkable streetscape elements, and the city responded by adding street trees, separated sidewalks, and landscaping. Nicolas Rivard and Allison Hu, urban designers in San Antonio and members of Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association, learned about an upcoming street construction project that lacks walkable streetscape elements in their largely Latino neighborhood, and decided to act.
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