lessons from the tennyson corridor

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Introduction The Tennyson Road or Tennyson Corridor is a three mile long east-west artery in the City of Hayward. The corridor runs through several neighborhoods stretching from Mission Boulevard to Industrial Boulevard. The corridor is predominantly residential in land use with pockets of neighborhood commercial spaces in the form of strip malls. The South Hayward BART station is located at the eastern end of the corridor. Planned development as a land use is seen around the BART station and some business parks. Figure 1. Tennyson Corridor - Hayward, CA

The City of Hayward is the third most ethno-racially and linguistically diverse in American. In a Hayward census tract just north of West Tennyson Road, the one that 1

calculates as California's most diverse, a resident has an 89 percent chance of running into a neighbor who is of a different race or ethnicity. 2

1“Hey, Bay Area: You Really Are Diverse,” KQED, February 17, 2015, https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-most-diverse-in-u-s . 2 “East Bay Tops among California’s Most Diverse Places,” Ella Baker Center, accessed December 4, 2018, https://ellabakercenter.org/in-the-news/people-of-color-and-racism/east-bay-tops-among-californias-most-diverse-places .

https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-most-diverse-in-u-s

https://ellabakercenter.org/in-the-news/people-of-color-and-racism/east-bay-tops-among-californias-most-diverse-places

https://ellabakercenter.org/in-the-news/people-of-color-and-racism/east-bay-tops-among-californias-most-diverse-places

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Demographics Hayward, CA has a population of 154,507 people with a median age of 34.6 and a median household income of $68,138. Between 2015 and 2016 the population of Hayward, CA grew from 152,401 to 154,507, a 1.38% increase and its median household income grew from $65,096 to $68,138, a 4.67% increase. The Tennyson Corridor comprises of two zip codes, 94544 and 94545. The combined population in these two regions is 110,111. The population density, at 7127 people per square mile, is high in the eastern part of the corridor, three times the population density of Alameda County. Figure 2. Zipcodes comprising Tennyson Corridor

The population in the zipcodes is largely Asian and Latino. 46.3% and 29.4% of the population is Latino in the zipcodes 94544 and 94545 respectively. 24.3% and 38.1% of the population is Asian in the two zipcodes. The household size in the region, at 3.4 is higher than the county average of 2.8. This can largely be attributed to the immigrant population in the neighborhoods who tend to have larger family sizes. The region is facing challenges of poverty, with 13.2% of the population living below the poverty line. This rate is 25% higher than the larger San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area. The population is also trailing in educational attainment with only 20.8% people having a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Approximately 42% of the population is foreign born, majorly comprising of Asians and Latin Americans.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Figure 3. Race and Ethnicity

Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan The Tennyson Corridor has been a long neglected area in the City of Hayward. The City has seen all its major investments in the Downtown region. The contrast between the two parts of the City is very stark, which lead the Hayward City Council to direct the staff to create a Vision Plan on April 11, 2017. In June 2017, the City Council adopted the Tennyson Corridor Strategic Initiative. The Vision Plan will capture existing neighborhood assets and cultures as well as community-identified aspirations for improvements to physical and civic infrastructures. In addition, the Vision Plan will include a road map for implementation. The city has created a website for the community as part of the outreach process. The community can add their stories, perceived community assets, and their aspirations for the area. It creates a database of qualitative information about the needs of the community and gives programmatic inputs for the City. The City, to move forward with this vision plan has partnered with Chabot College, the local community college. The students, some of whom are a part of the community, spoke to 200 community members and produced essays to summarize their learnings. The trends emerging from that resulted in opportunity areas for the city. Opportunity Areas

1. Diverse Housing Options | Stable Communities 2. Diverse Transportation Options | Mobile and Linked Communities 3. Dynamic Public Spaces and Amenities | Engaged and Well-Resourced

Communities 4. Green and Resilient Spaces | Healthy and Prepared Communities

LA 242/ CP C261 -

5. Unique Neighborhood Identities | Vibrant and Rooted Communities 6. Environment that Promotes a Sense of Safety | Connected and Involved

Communities 7. Resilient Built Environment | Resilient and Adaptable Communities 8. Active Civic Spaces | Empowered Communities

These opportunity areas look at both investments in place and people. From these our teams chose to focus on an opportunity area each -

1. Dynamic Public Spaces and Amenities | Engaged and Well-Resourced Communities

2. Green and Resilient Spaces | Healthy and Prepared Communities

Till now the City had gathered programmatic input from the community, but for the vision plan they also required physical design interventions, especially in the opportunity areas. Hence our project brief consistent of us working on design interventions along the corridor and get community input on them for the vision plan.

Community Outreach Process Design For a successful community engagement we needed needed to create a roadmap for engagement. The introduction to our project consisted of meetings with the client for project briefing and getting together with the primary community partner, Chabot Community College. We then wanted to conduct additional stakeholder outreach to make our presence felt in the community, build trust and understand their values. This lead us to attend two community event which provided us with valuable feedback. Preparation for the community event involved our assessing the data provided to us and creating conceptual design for the community to respond to during the engagement event.

Figure 4. Community Outreach Process

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Outreach Design The selection of outreach tools considered the result from context analysis and the strength of our team. Context Analysis At the beginning of September, we contacted Mary Thomas, who is working at the Fire Department of City of Hayward, getting the first impression of the Tennyson Corridor and learning the City’s expectation toward our project. Before we visited the site, we searched Census information to get a overall knowledge of races, age structure, and income level of Tennyson Corridor area. On Sept. 28 2018, with Mary’s company, our team took a tour along the Tennyson Corridor and met the Chabot student team at the Chabot College. From the meeting with the Chabot student team, we learned that their faculty encouraged students to participate in the improvement of Tennyson Corridor, and counted this practice in their curriculum. The students were required to interview local community members, record the main issues the interviewees thought need to be improved, and propose several potential solutions. The student team kindly shared their essays with us. According to these 41 essays, we addressed several main issues that could be mitigated or improved through the enhancement of streetscape and open green spaces:

● Food Desert ● Lack of Youth Recreation ● Safety in Night ● Safety of Pedestrian & Bicyclist ● City Beautification

Another significant resource affecting our decision making process is an official document from the City of Hayward, called Tennyson Corridor Strategy Two-year Business Plan (FY 2018 & 2019).

“ The Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan will capture existing neighborhood assets and cultures as well as community-identified aspirations for improvements to physical and civic infrastructures . In addition, the Vision Plan will include a road map for implementation. “

—— Tennyson Corridor Strategy Two-year Business Plan (FY 2018 & 2019)

LA 242/ CP C261 -

This two-year plan report proposed five goals of Tennyson Corridor strategic initiative, followed by interpretation and detailed implementation plan : 3

1. Create a community vision for the corridor 2. Increase pedestrian and bicyclist safety 3. Improve community appearance 4. Foster a cohesive sense of place 5. Increase community resiliency

However, from this report and the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan website, we didn’t find visualization of these strategies besides conceptual descriptions. We understood the difficulty for operators to provide visual products without assistance from a design professional, but we believe visualization of information is necessary to stimulate people’s interest and then collect their feedback. Thus, as a group of students from College of Environmental Design, we decided to take advantage of our professional skills and take a visual preference online survey as our main outreach tool. In addition, we had a pop-up event to conduct the survey on site, and also had a button survey as a supplement to the online survey.

Site Selection + Rendered Images Production Combining issues addressed from Chabot essays, strategy from two-year plan, and our own observation on site, we decided to focus on streetscape along Tennyson Corridor and community parks in surrounding area. Our goal was to make a prototype of the new vision of Tennyson street and community park after improvement.

3 https://www.hayward-ca.gov/your-government/city-council/tennyson-corridor-strategic-initiative

LA 242/ CP C261 -

We sorted all solutions into two categories and defined them as “Safe and Active Street” and “Vibrant Community Park”. To find suitable solution to issues we addressed from context analysis, besides referring to local community’s suggestions, we also searched successful precedents which have similar condition with Tennyson community. Finally we proposed and visualized following solutions:

Safe and Active Street

● Safety of Pedestrian and Bicyclist

○ Sidewalks and Bike Lanes

○ Highly Visible Crosswalks

● Food Desert ○ Mobile Produce

Truck ● City Beautification and

Community Identification ○ Murals of Local

History

Vibrant Community Park

● Food Desert ○ Pop-Up Farmer’s

Market ○ Community

Gardens ○ Urban Orchard

● Recreation for Youth ○ Natural Play

Structures ○ Outdoor Group

Class Space ○ Colorful Games on

Pavement ● Safety in Night

○ Improved Lightin

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Methodology

To begin the project, we evaluated the work accomplished by the 2017 Chabot-City of Hayward-UC Berkeley team. First, we reviewed the essays Chabot students wrote about their vision for the Tennyson Corridor. We then went on a guided site tour of the Tennyson Corridor, led by Mary Thomas from the City of Hayward. Mary’s tour allowed us to identify community assets and potential community partners. To conclude our site visit, we met with the Chabot Community College Team to discuss their vision for our collaboration. Finally we reviewed the Tennyson to determine where our skills as graduate students could complement the previous year’s progress accomplished by the Chabot-City of Hayward-UC Berkeley collaboration.

As a data collection tool, we created a visual preference survey. To create the rendered images to accompany the survey question, we first took photographs of the various areas of interest in Tennyson Park. We then researched precedence images online for our specific subgroup topics, to overlay on our images of Tennyson Park. For the Dynamic Public Spaces and Amenities group (Hayward Group A), they created rendered images of the Safe and Activated Street, which encompassed: Sidewalks and Bike Lanes, Highly Visible Crosswalks, Mobile Produce Trucks, and Murals of Tennyson History. Hayward Group B, focused on Green and Resilient Spaces, to create rendered images of a Vibrant Community Park that incorporated: a Pop-Up Farmer’s Market, Community Gardens, an Urban Orchard, Natural Play Structures, an Outdoor Group Class Space, Colorful Games on the Pavement, and Improved Lighting.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

After creating the rendered images, we developed the accompanying questions to solicit feedback about the renderings using a 5-point Likert scale. Each question in the main portion of the survey asked the respondent, how did the image correspond with their vision for the corridor and gave them ability to leave open-ended feedback about the specific image. There were also demographic questions at the conclusion of the survey, to determine if survey respondents (sample population) represented the demographics of the Tennyson Corridor as a whole. We also created a Spanish version of the online survey, to capture the responses of the predominantly Latinx Tennyson community.

We exhibited the visual preference survey in multiple mediums at our pop-event. While we planned to distribute the survey digitally on iPads or cell phones, our team was also prepared with a print version of the survey. We also created a button survey, as a quick alternative to the digital or print survey. For the button survey, participants deposited their “vote” for their top three renderings in the jar with the accompanying image; there was also a tri-fold print out of the images for respondents to also look at while answering the questions. To conclude the digital visual preference survey and the button survey, we tallied up the responses from the English-Spanish survey and the button “votes” that we collected.

Pop-Up Event

Our team felt that a pop-up event would be very important to administering the visual preference survey. Since the visual preference survey was designed to be simple and clear, it was important that we were there on hand to describe the

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Tennyson Thrives initiative, to explain the images if necessary and to answer any questions that may arise.

Originally scheduled for Sunday, November 11, we decided to postpone the event due to the dangerous air quality from the Camp Fire that was affecting the entire Bay Area. We decided to postpone the event to Saturday, November 17, in the hopes that the air quality would be improved by then. Unfortunately, the air quality had not improved by the 17th, but we had to push on regardless, at that point.

The pop-up was scheduled to be held at the Matt Jimenez Community Center just off the eastern portion of Tennyson Road. After considering holding the event at Glad Tidings Church or another local church to take advantage of built-in Sunday crowd, we were advised that Matt Jimenez Community Center might be a more “neutral” site and could garner a broader swath of the Tennyson population. During a visit to the South Hayward Neighborhood Council meeting in October, we observed the community center to be an active site with a good number of Tennyson residents coming and going and participating in a Pickleball league.

After arriving at Matt Jimenez, we noticed that it was very quiet, even with the poor air quality. We quickly realized that the community center was closed on the weekends and that without the center being open, there was little chance of passerbyers to survey. We then brainstormed about other potential sites to which we could relocate. We considered the Chavez Market, the Walgreens and the Tennyson Square shopping center. We had concerns about a commercial area being private property, which led us to consider Weekes Library and Park. After scouting the site we quickly relocated and were immediately glad we did.

The Weekes Library and Park was a great location, with high traffic to the library and playground and an open wi-fi network we could use to administer the survey. The library was also giving away N95 particulate masks from the City of Hayward Fire Department which brought even more residents by that day. Despite the poor air quality, people were willing to stop and take the survey. The bottled water, candy, tangerines and pizza we offered to incentivize participation were very helpful, especially at drawing families whose children participated in the button survey.

Many participants had not heard of the Tennyson Thrives initiative and were excited to hear about improvements to the neighborhood. We referred them to the

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Tennyson Thrives website and encouraged them to participate with the city’s online features, as well. An unexpected benefit to our survey was the diverse makeup of our team. Our team had members that matched the diverse demographics of the Tennyson corridor’s population which was valuable in making people feel comfortable to stop and take the survey. We were able to get responses from spanish and chinese speaking residents and noticed that Indian and African-American residents gravitated towards the our team members of those ethnic backgrounds. If the Chabot College students were to reproduce the pop-up event with the Visual Preference Survey, this would likely benefit them to an even greater degree.

Our event lasted 4 hours and garnered over forty responses, including the button survey. Below, we will discuss the results in greater detail. Anecdotally, the pop-up event was well-received by community members and we had almost entirely positive interactions with everyone that participated.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Survey Results and Analysis

Sidewalks and Bike Lanes When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. No respondent ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 6 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. Several people left comments on this image. One person said that “Bike lanes seem nice, but people in the area don't use the existing ones.” Another was concerned with the lack of parking in the image. The final comment was to not reduce the width of the driving lane when implementing this vision.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Highly Visible Crosswalks When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. Two respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 6 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. Several people left comments on this image. One said, “The visuals are really nice.” Another thought that the bright colors of the crosswalk could help deter reckless drivers. The final comment was a suggestion that the crosswalks be painted in colors “that most people can see, including people with color blindness.”

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Mobile Produce Truck When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers.The distribution shows a more neutral reaction to this image than to the other visions. Three respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 3 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. This vision was created to address the concerns of the corridor being a food desert. However, neither of the two comments is about this aspect of the vision. The first believed that mobile product trucks “will create more traffic on the road” and it “would be better to have them off Tennyson itself.” The second commenter said, “I like this idea but don’t want to see people gathering on [the] street.”

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Murals of Local History When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. No respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 2 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. This contrasts with the high ranking the vision got from the survey respondents. This could be because of differences in the two populations, as the button survey was mostly children, or it may be that while people liked this idea a lot, it was not their favorite vision. One survey respondent liked the vision because they loved “to take picture of beautiful images on the walls.” Another believed that the murals “may repel graffiti.” Another commenter liked the “color and variety” of the murals shown in the image.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Pop-Up Farmer’s Market

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. Two respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 6 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. This was another vision created to address the food desert problem; it seemed to be much more popular than the mobile produce truck vision. The three people who left comments on the image were all positive, although some had concerns about it generating traffic or trash.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Community Gardens

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. No respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 4 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. The comments left on this image revolve around practical concerns about its implementation. One was concerned that people would “trash it”, but was hopeful that “people would respect the community aspect” of the vision. Another wanted to know how the garden would be irrigated. The last commenter believed that the gardens “should be monitored, so it has an order to it.”

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Urban Orchard

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. One respondent ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 2 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. Two respondents left comments on this vision. One was wanted to know how an urban orchard would be irrigated. The other thought that the idea was “very nice” but was concerned about how much it would cost, saying “[who] is going to pay for all this?”.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Outdoor Group Class Space

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. No respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 2 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. Two people left comments on this image. One believed the space would be good for children. The other was concerned that the vision looked “like a lot of ‘wouldn’t that be nice’, rather than being needed” and was worried it would be too expensive.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Natural Play Structures

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. One respondent ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 10 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. The popularity of this vision may be due to the fact that the majority of the button survey participants were children. One commenter on this image believed it was “good for kids”. Another suggested that there should be more shade for the playground area.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Colorful Games on Pavement

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. No respondents ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 4 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. The only comment left for this image was that “kids will love it”.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Improved Lighting

When shown Figure X, the majority of survey respondents said the it was a good fit for their vision of the community. Graph X shows the distribution of the answers. One respondent ranked this image as a 1 (as not being a good fit). In the button survey, 6 out of 17 people chose this vision as one of their Top 3 images. Two people left contrasting comments on this vision. One said that improved lighting “would help” as “some parts of the community are dark.” The other said that the lighting was “not particularly necessary.” Further investigation is needed to determine whether or not improved lighting is actually necessary for the corridor.

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Survey Demographics

We asked survey respondents for demographic information in order to determine if they were representative of the area. We surveyed 31 people, giving 28 English surveys and 3 Spanish surveys. Figure X shows the home zip code of the survey respondents. Most lived in the zip code that contained the eastern part of the corridor, some lived in the zip code containing the western part of the corridor, and the rest lived in the larger Hayward area. As shown by Graph X, survey respondents were familiar with the Tennyson Corridor. About one-third of the respondents visited the corridor “about every day” and only three respondents had “never” visited the corridor. Nearly half of the respondents identified as Hispanic/Latino when asked about their ethnicity. When asked about race, 25% identified as White, 23% identified as Asian, 7% identified as African American, 13% identified as being of mixed race, 16% identified as being of another race, and the rest did not respond. Over half of the survey respondents were is the 25 to 54 year old age range, 23% were over 55 years old, 13% were between 18 and 24 years old, and 13% were between 12 and 17 years old. None of the respondents were under 12 year

LA 242/ CP C261 -

Lessons, Next Steps, and Recommendations Takeaways From Visual Preference Survey and Community Outreach

In addition to the explicit survey results described above, our team identified several general takeaways from our process of creating and sharing the visual preference survey (VPS) with the Tennyson corridor community. Some of these lessons are extrapolated not only from the survey itself, but also from the variety of anecdotal conversations we shared with community members while implementing the survey at our pop-up event.

An initial takeaway from our experience was the community focus on safety in the Tennyson corridor, and the concern for specific interventions to improve safety conditions in this neighborhood. Many survey participants expressed a desire for improved traffic conditions, better pedestrian and bicycle right-of-way design elements, and above all a prioritization of safety measures for the children of Hayward. Most adults who participated in the survey expressed, in our conversations with them, a general concern for children’s wellbeing. Beyond the implementation of safety measures for the benefit of children, additional child-centric considerations repeatedly came up, such as questions regarding provision of activities, play spaces, and educational opportunities for the youth of the Tennyson corridor. Safety was a primary aspect of this focus on children, and in moving forward with the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan, a specific intention of designing these spaces for child wellness would be recommended by our outreach team.

A second general result of our survey dissemination was the evident preference for natural landscape elements. Several of our proposed ‘visions’ of the VPS fell into this ‘natural’ design realm, including the orchard, the natural play structures, the community garden, etc. Children in particular expressed an attraction to these ‘natural’ options, as was evident by the responses to our button survey. Many of the outdoor spaces in the Tennyson area now are fairly generic landscapes, composed primarily of large, open fields and very traditional plastic and metal play structures, with very little in the way of programmed space. This clear preference from the community, and children in particular, for designed natural recreational opportunities, warrants further consideration as the Vision Plan for the Tennyson corridor is developed in greater detail.

Another theme that repeatedly came up in our interactions was the idea of feasibility, or ‘buildability’, and we encountered a general feeling of skepticism amongst adults that participated in our survey. There were many moments where an individual clearly liked the content of our VPS, as in the orchard idea or the community garden concept, but there was an underlying sentiment that these types

LA 242/ CP C261 -

of interventions would never actually come to be a part of Hayward and the Tennyson corridor neighborhood in particular. Questions such as, “Who will pay for this?” or “How will this be maintained over time?” repeatedly came through in our conversations with Hayward residents at the pop-up event, and this was something that all of us experienced to some degree while delivering the survey by tablet to adults. This is a particularly resonant takeaway to bear in mind because the goal of our survey was to provide a suite of options, both in streetscape scenarios and in park space situations, that intentionally were NOT very expensive or difficult to implement. Feasibility, while not yet explicitly quantified in our analyses, was a primary motivation in our brainstorming and design process for generating potential improvements for the Tennyson corridor. The adults that participated in our survey showed a positive response to many of the VPS options that we shared with them, but questions about functionality and capacity for implementation were lingering elements of our interactions with Hayward residents throughout the pop-up outreach process. This warrants consideration as next steps for continued community engagement are planned in the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan.

Additional Lessons and Challenges

The single greatest lesson our team has taken away from this entire process is the notion that the pop-up dissemination of a VPS is a very feasible and repeatable methodology for garnering substantial community feedback from an outreach campaign. We would highly recommend that the future efforts for outreach in the building of the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan incorporate more pop-up outreach events, and several specific lessons that we learned could, if applied effectively, benefit any future pop-up events held in this community. For one, we found it very beneficial, albeit by unintentional happenstance, to have a diverse, multilingual outreach team. By having a Spanish speaker and Mandarin Chinese speaker in our group, we were able to immediately connect with community members that we may otherwise have struggled to involve in our outreach process, and these individuals were able to successfully participate and complete our VPS via tablet. In addition to creating a Spanish version of the survey itself, having outreach teammates on hand to connect with the diversity of the Tennyson corridor community members was a major benefit to the success of our event and our outreach campaign writ large.

Another general lesson from this experience that we learned is the notion of allocating plenty of time for genuine connection with community members of an outreach endeavor. Establishing and building trust is not something that can happen instantaneously, and quality feedback from these types of outreach campaigns is dependent upon building trust and the establishment of a genuine connection between the outreach team and survey participants. In general, the more time that is devoted to establishing these real community ties and building a

LA 242/ CP C261 -

reputation for trusted community interaction will promote a healthy and informative response. Improved feedback from the outreach effort can then inform an appropriate elaboration of the actual design, in this case the Vision Plan for the Tennyson Thrives corridor. The lesson, as always, is that genuinity wins.

A final takeaway that our team learned is the value in staying flexible and positive in the moment, while conducting an outreach exercise. Our first survey site, for example, at the Matt Jimenez Community Center, was closed on the day of the pop-up event, and we needed to think on our feet to adapt and find a new venue to deliver the VPS at. We were able to quickly relocate to just outside of the neighborhood library adjacent to a park space, and the survey was shared successfully to over 40 Hayward residents because we were able to remain flexible. Positivity can carry a long way, especially when you are interacting with community members in a one-on-one setting, and a generally positive and adaptive mindset allowed our team to adjust to inevitable unforeseen barriers as they emerged.

Next Steps for the Tennyson Corridor Vision Plan - Recommendations

Our team has several recommendations for continued outreach that could potentially be implemented in future efforts for community connection and development to the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan. First and foremost, we have validated the methodology of a VPS delivered at a well-located community pop-up event, and this outreach strategy warrants further utility down the road. Students from the Chabot Community College, whom we partnered with in the initial design of our VPS, have recently received city funding to conduct further outreach via pop-up events, so a legacy of pop-up tactics for community connection has already begun to be established in the Tennyson neighborhood.

A follow-up to the continued dissemination of our VPS via more pop-up events would be to conduct a real feasibility analysis for the potential implementation of any of the proposed ‘visions’ of our VPS. As mentioned above, there was a degree of skepticism broached by Hayward community members as to the ‘buildability’ of some of our proposed interventions, despite the explicit intention of our team to develop a suite of options for the Tennyson Vision Plan that are NOT very expensive or difficult to apply. Nonetheless, a feasibility analysis with quantified metrics (i.e. cost) for the actual construction and implementation of these ‘visions’ is warranted, and would be a great next step for overcoming some of the skepticism that our outreach team encountered. Additionally, by conducting a feasibility analysis, these ‘visions’ would come one step closer to actually being realized in the Tennyson neighborhood.

Our team would also recommend that, once feasibility has been established, that these ‘visions’ are further fleshed out in renderings that are then shared at a

LA 242/ CP C261 -

design charrette with relevant stakeholders and community members. This outreach tactic, which is more ‘downstream’ in an overall process than our initial pop-up event methodology, would allow for the generation of more detailed feedback from the community and the fleshing out of a ‘vision’ for which their is community support, if not consensus.

Lastly, our team would recommend that a goal be established in the execution of the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan for the implementation of pilot projects that build upon the feedback derived from ‘upstream’ outreach tactics including our VPS pop-up and the aforementioned design charette stakeholder meetings. There is no better way to overcome community skepticism as to the ‘buildability’ of a proposed ‘vision’ than to actually build one of them! The pilot project approach could hopefully initiate a legacy of ‘vision implementation’ that could then be carried forward to the improvement of the overall Tennyson corridor as the Vision Plan is executed over time. In this way, our team recommends that our initial outreach efforts in the dissemination of a VPS to the Tennyson community be built upon to establish a legacy of trust and community participation in the implementation of the Tennyson Thrives Vision Plan.

lessons from the tennyson corridor

Documents