It is a group of people of different professions, including architects, landscape architects, social workers, and people with backgrounds in sociology, education, and communication. They come to the neighborhood where you live, and after full consultation with the residents, they start to transform your community to make it a better and more livable place.
They are not the architectural decoration companies invited by various companies, nor the government-designated old city renovation construction team, but a new industry that is emerging in the country's major big cities: community building. In a way, this is not a business model, but a community governance model.
In a village in the city in Shenzhen's Longhua District, there is a place where a family uses a yard to pile up debris and parking. According to the children's ideas, the team of sketch builders designed it as a public children's playground. The hostess of the house was very supportive, but the man did not agree to open their yard. And every time I see the construction team, this man basically does not give any good looks.
In the design workshop attended by the children, a child named "Weiwei" of the residents came up with many feasible creative solutions. Therefore, the construction team consulted with the local government and changed the original name of the park to "Sugar Water Park" to "Weiwei Park". The local government agreed. In this way, through the "exclusive title", they successfully persuaded the host to park the car elsewhere, open the courtyard wall, and become a public activity space.
Yard before the renovation
The yard was transformed into a children's playground
But when it was time to lay the colored floor, the man suddenly refused to let him continue to do it. Fortunately, they met "activists among the inhabitants". The hostess said, "Come, give it to me, and I'll get him." "The hostess took the man to the movie. They didn't come back until two o'clock in the morning, and before that, the colored floor was paved.
The man did not say anything more, and his attitude changed greatly, becoming an active defender. Later, he would twist when he saw that the lights in the village were broken; the colored ground was dirty during the day and washed at night; and every time he saw the community builders, he would smile and greet him...
"What we do is communicate and coordinate between people in residential areas, campuses, businesses, and office areas." Fan Haoyang, co-founder of Clover Church, pointed out that community building is a link work between people and people, through resource linking, so that a bunch of people serve another bunch of people to meet their needs.
This reflects the essential difference between community building and traditional community planning. Traditional planning focuses on top-down resource allocation, achieving results such as where to set up swimming pools and kindergartens. Community building pays more attention to the process, focusing on the establishment of relationships between people and people in the process of resource allocation, so that residents can participate more in community activities, so that they have a greater sense of ownership and discourse.
Residents made many suggestions for the renovation plan proposed by the construction team
"There's a key word in community building called 'empowerment,' empowering the public." Huang Binling, the founder of Sketch Construction, pointed out, "We work with the government and residents to find problematic sites or idle corner spaces in the community. As for how to transform this space and how to develop the community, it is up to the residents to decide. 'The people order food, the government pays', which reflects the government's concept of change. ”
Due to the concept of "co-construction, co-governance and sharing", the needs of grass-roots social governance, the support of local governments, and the participation of more and more startups and social organizations, community building has officially started in China. At present, the projects are mainly concentrated in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and other cities.
Over the past five years, Clover has directly supported the creation of 200 community gardens in Shanghai, and if you add the gardens they have built after training, empowerment or residents' self-study courses, it has exceeded 900. Fan Haoyang said: "In the past two years, many people in Shanghai have understood this matter, and many people are doing this." This year, the Guangxi Nanning Municipal Housing and Construction Bureau commissioned them to create 1,000 community gardens.
Shenzhen has also been at the forefront of community building. In 2020, the Shenzhen Longhua District Civil Affairs Bureau took the initiative to invite Sketch Construction to the local urban village to do community construction; the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Urban Management and Comprehensive Law Enforcement also launched the "Co-construction of Gardens" plan, building 120 co-construction gardens every year, allowing residents and third-party institutions to participate in the design, construction and maintenance. So far, Sketch Construction has done dozens of construction projects in Shenzhen.
Shenzhen Luohu Gaojia Garden Community co-built garden
Around 2016, domestic community building began to show a "spark of sparks", and some teams appeared in various places.
Clover Hall was founded in 2016. At the time, Fan Haoyang was the founder of a landscape design company in Shanghai, but decided to transform. He and Liu Yuelai of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University, wei Min, a college classmate, and others jointly initiated the "Four-Leaf Clover Hall", taking the community garden as the starting point to start community building.
Up to now, Fan Haoyang has contacted dozens of teams that do community building, and most of them have the identity of social organizations.
The construction team works with the residents to build the garden
"At that time, I thought how good it would be if this thing could be turned into a career." Unexpectedly, it is really realized now. Huang Binling said. He and his partner Yuan Zhenyu have been building on the Peking University campus since 2015. After graduating from the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture of Peking University, they still want to change the world around them with actions, so they founded "Sketch Construction" together in July 2019, and attracted nearly 30 young people to join.
Before 2020, Summer and her team were doing community building in Japan. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 2014 with a major in public policy, she started community building with alumni who graduated from Harvard University's Architectural Design program. The epidemic has made it difficult to carry out work abroad, and domestic residents are becoming more and more community-conscious. So they returned to China and set up an educational institution in Shanghai, IFX Academy, to continue doing this.
Now, more and more people are involved in community building. They are graduates from landscape architecture, children's education, sociology, anthropology and other majors, social workers, media people, architects, scholars and other groups, as well as housewives and retirees. It can be said that the current threshold is relatively low. But we also see a trend in it – a trade is taking shape.
"The industry is not yet mature, but the polarization is quite obvious. Some teams are very professional and may have been working in the field for years since they were in school; others are just interested and willing to get involved. Summer pointed out that there is no mature "community builder" training path.
Sketch to create a job posting on its public account
"People say, 'I'm a community builder,' but rarely say, 'I'm a community builder.'" Fan Haoyang said, "I sometimes wonder if there will be such a profession in the future." Because there is a real market demand, now not only the government, but also many enterprises have this demand. For example, allowing employees to build the company roof or office space together is equivalent to a team building, which can improve the atmosphere of the company. But the areas involved in community building are too broad, and space issues are only one aspect. So it's still a conundrum. ”
With market demand, the supply of talents is still a problem. To do community building, you must draw pictures, do design, and deal with people; you must do planning, do activities, write pushes; you must also be able to farm, screw, brick... Everything must be a little better, but there is a shortage of such comprehensive talents in society. Huang Binling said: "We don't expect job seekers to come in and do this, but he must have a strong learning ability and be able to quickly enter the state." ”
"We have to show the spirit of selling insurance." Huang Binling laughed at himself. The team had worked on a construction project in Beijing, and the opposition from the residents was strong at the time, and the relevant personnel demolished the illegal construction of their home. "The first time we went, we were scolded and ran away. Later, I went to mix with them again and again, and then I slowly did a good job of communication. ”
Summer's team took students to Qingshan Village in Hangzhou to explore the needs of construction. Regarding how to mine the demand, how to implement the project, how to produce results, the construction team will have some tools, such as focus discussion method, simulation negotiation game. But she also said, "It's not like you can learn this set of tools to do a great job of community building." We still need to accumulate a lot of experience, even social experience, in order to become a mature practitioner. ”
The Summer team walked into Aoyama Village
Qingshan Village is like a paradise, and the infrastructure is also perfect, attracting many young people to go. Water conservationists, art designers, living, opening studios... The local government is happy to see the young people, but the old villagers feel aggrieved. "When I also participated in the construction of the village, the reservoir and the road, why does everyone now think that Qingshan Village was built by these new arrivals?"
There is a problem of the integration of new and old villagers, and there must be an intermediate role to be a bridge, promote communication between the two sides, understand and accept each other. This requires practitioners to have these qualities: the most basic empathy, strong communication, comprehension and analysis skills, logical thinking, creativity and problem-solving skills.
"Our solution doesn't have to satisfy everyone, but at least it takes care of everyone's needs." Summer pointed out that to do community building, it is necessary to first understand what the interests of each role in the community are, and then give feasible solutions, and then through co-ordination and coordination, let the residents achieve common goals with actions.
She also said that creating an outsider's identity to go to the community, how to describe problems and solutions, how to persuade residents to accept proposals, etc. all require skills. Huang Binling added: "It is not so much about techniques and methods, but rather about using a sincere heart and down-to-earth action to change the world and influence others." ”
The first year after the establishment of sketch construction was very difficult, the members' salaries were 2,000 yuan; after the transformation of Clover Church from design to community building, the team's income also declined. "People who do community building get paid far less than the value they create. With the country's emphasis on grass-roots social governance and the urgent need for society, the prospects for social construction are bright. Huang Binling sighed that fortunately, there are many people who continue to help them, and they have slowly found a development path.
Many people who do community building have not yet come out of the stage of fully fighting and generating electricity with love, but the team of sketch construction emphasizes sustainability, consciously finds the rules and methods of operation, and eventually achieves expansion by copying and promoting their own model.
So now, they have been able to give salaries that are no less than those of the landscape architecture industry. Huang Binling said, "It is not necessary to be able to buy a house in Shenzhen or Beijing right away, but at least let everyone's efforts get a relatively proportional return." In addition to drawing and designing, we also go to 'grind the skin' of one house after another, realize it together, manage operations... A lot of little things about mother-in-law and mother-in-law. ”
The main cost of building a team is in human expenditure and its sustainable development, but it is inseparable from the government's blood transfusion or support. For example, sketch construction mainly connects with government projects; Clover Hall has business such as government projects, brand cooperation, planning and design, parent-child activities, etc., and the income is relatively balanced; IFX Academy leads students to do community building in various places in the form of course practice.
Wei Min, co-founder of Clover Hall, conducted on-site teaching on ecological environment design
Fan Haoyang said: "It is not enough to rely on local government funds, and a project may not have much profit, but it takes a lot of time and resources to do." If there is a lot of funding, then there must be a lot of teams doing it. Why aren't there hundreds or thousands of teams doing it right now? It must be underfunded. ”
According to the information released by the "Planning China" public account, the community renovation projects in Respect for the Elderly Estate in Lane 693, Xinhua Road, Shanghai totaled more than 2 million, of which 1.1 million were government funds, and the rest came from enterprises and society. The money looks like it's okay, but most of it's hardware investment, and it's unknown how much it will be able to be used for software community building services.
Fan Haoyang also said, "If social organizations are strong and influential enough, then they should be able to find foundations to raise funds, or find enterprises to sponsor." It is also a sustainable approach. ”
Author 丨 boo
Responsible editor 丨 Zhou Zhou & ErShui
Typesetting Editor 丨skr
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