University, city and residents engage at Ponderosa event
This spring more than 40 CU ǸԹ students and faculty sought solutions to preserve ǸԹ’s Ponderosa Mobile Home Park as it transitions to a more resilient model of affordable housing. The diverse 68-unit community has a long history of infrastructure issues, including impacts from the 2013 flood and challenges in providing utilities, health and safety services.
On April 27,approximately 60city staff, Ponderosa community members and CU ǸԹ students and faculty, attended the event, “Lessons from Ponderosa Mobile Home Park,” sponsored byMetroLab, a CU ǸԹ-city of ǸԹ collaboration, applying university research to key urban design, technology and management challenges.
“Because the university is seen as a neutral party and we don't have a stake in the project, residents feel comfortable to say what’s on their minds, and we can gather useful information,” says Brian Muller, director of the Community Engagement, Design and Research (CEDaR) Center.
The event began with an introduction by Muller and KurtFirnhaber, city of ǸԹ’s deputy director of housing, which was followed by a choice of a gallery walk or "community conversations.” Participants interacted with students who presented their site/housing designs for Ponderosa (from Praxis class) and held mini workshops to test prototypes for community engagement techniques (from Inclusive Community Design class). Every 10 minutes, the gallery walk would break for a presentation from one of the CU partners including, Environmental Design Praxis Studio (Neal Evers and SethWilberding); Inclusive Community Design (Bruce Goldstein); ǸԹ Affordable Housing Research Initiative (BAHRI) (JenniferFluri); Sustainable Community Development Clinic (Deborah Cantrell) and Growing Up ǸԹ (AriaDellepiane, NiaEfeoglu, Catherine Hill and SaraTaketatsu).
A subsequent discussion of how Ponderosa community’s experience could inform organization and design of affordable housing in ǸԹ was based on work by students from the Program in Environmental Design, the University of Colorado Law School, ǸԹ Affordable Housing Research Initiative (BAHRI), Growing Up ǸԹ (GUB) and the neighborhood.
Closing thoughts included the desire for more cross fertilization for design/social sciences disciplines; more interactions with city at the beginning to help the university align its goals with the city’s goals and establishing timelines in advance.