WHAT IF PEOPLE HELPED BUILD THE SOLUTION?

SOMETHING WE LEARNED FROM BAYVIEW.

One of the most interesting things we've learned since we started having these conversations about Madison came from Zoe.

She told us to look at Bayview.

If you've driven past the Triangle near Regent and West Washington, you've probably noticed it. The redevelopment created new apartments and townhomes, gardens, gathering spaces, public art and a new community center.

But what interested us wasn't just what they built.

It was how they built it.

THEY ASKED THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE.

Bayview spent years working with the residents who already called the community home.

People weren't simply shown a finished plan and asked what they thought. They helped shape it.

Meetings were translated. Child care was provided. Resident leaders were paid to participate. People were interviewed in their preferred languages. And residents influenced everything from gardens and gathering spaces to larger windows, colors and features inside their homes.

Their ideas became part of the finished community.

That got us thinking about something much bigger than housing.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMETHING BECOMES OURS?

Imagine someone gives you a beautiful garden.

Everything is finished. The plants are in. The paths are built. Someone else decided where everything should go.

Now imagine you helped create it.

You chose some of the plants. You helped decide where the paths went. Maybe your kids painted something that's now part of it.

Both gardens might be equally beautiful.

But would they mean the same thing to you?

There's research suggesting that when people participate in shaping their environment, it can strengthen feelings of ownership, agency and connection.

And maybe that's part of what Bayview got right.

PARTICIPATION MAY BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.

Government often thinks about public participation as something that happens after an idea already exists.

Here's the proposal.
Here's the plan.
Tell us what you think.

But Bayview makes us wonder what happens when participation begins earlier.

The people living with a problem often know things about it that the people designing the solution don't.

And when people help create something, there's another possibility:

They stop being only recipients of a solution and become participants in creating it.

That's a very different relationship.

WHAT ELSE COULD WE BUILD THIS WAY?

We started looking at Bayview as an example of affordable housing.

We ended up thinking about ownership—not necessarily financial ownership, but ownership of a neighborhood, a solution and what happens next.

What if neighborhoods helped shape their public spaces?