Community Partners in Residence (CPR) Program – Meeting 12

On Tuesday, May 21, 2024, the NSF Center for Smart StreetScapes (CS3) held its twelfth/final Community Partners in Residence (CPR) workshop to conclude the first cohort. The session began with Ester Fuchs presenting a summary document called the ‘Harlem Community Needs Assessment’ created by coding data (presentation discussions, breakout sessions, questions, and surveys) that emerged from all previous CPR working sessions and surveys.  This resulted in 3 categories of focus: 1= General Community Needs; 2 = StreetScape Community Needs; and 3 = Community Engagement & Education Needs.  There were also specific areas of focus within each of the 3 categories using language provided by the CPRs themselves.  While the first 2 focused on areas we expected to emerge in these discussions, ie, public safety, accessibility, sanitation, public health, economic opportunity, etc, this process showed that Community Engagement and Education needs also emerged as an important category/need from the workshop conversations – these included the need for education to understand technology and the research, among this group.  

Andrew Smyth then addressed the group by thanking everyone for their participation and commitment to this project. He noted the challenges inherent in this work, and that this was only the beginning.  The CS3 research team had been given ideas as to the kinds of things they should be thinking about before the CPR component began to help prioritize which challenges needed more focus and time, how to present issues, etc.  This project is ultimately not only about technical issues, it is about rolling research out to the community together, trying to anticipate all the challenges, win over the government, etc. He noted the brainstorming sessions were really useful for the researchers with 4 main unexpected takeaways: 1 – we have a real opportunity for us to celebrate & support the cultural identity & history of Harlem; we can do this with AR/VR, overlaying history, accompanying with music, etc, but we need to drill down specifics and we must; 2 – elements for elderly & people with disabilities to navigate the city, we have researchers focused on this already but we need to do this with more detail and greater clarity about what to work toward and fight off; 3 – CS3 can potentially assist in equitable and effective policing; we can collaborate in this area beyond targeting and profiling, etc; 4 – Street chaos issues, traffic congestion, double parking, delivery bikes, bike lane implementations, bus lanes, etc; these things came up frequently and CS3 should pick an exact collaboration in these areas and run with it to respond well.  This list is not scientific, but seems obvious. He added that CS3 can be helpful in training and educational programs, which is not a streetscape solution that we had previously thought of, but are opportunities that can be given to the community. Lastly, what are the next steps for each CPR?  We thought there might be a CPR alumni group – perhaps stay together in active ways (ie, mentorship), or less active (receiving the CS3 newsletter).  CPRs are CS3’s most in-tune partners at this moment. We have projects coming up this summer with seniors and students and other opportunities to engage, if desired, and CS3 wants to activate more with this group outside of this room. We also discussed an Ad hoc Community Review Board – perhaps a subset of CPRs that would help inform applications and locations for this work to deploy. 

Barbara picked up the discussion by saying that she loves Harlem and feels like Harlem is never fully understood, people on the outside see it but don’t always understand what they are looking at, and so it is important that we can bring this work out of this room.  We have identified needs, learned a lot from scientists, and researchers learned a lot from us, but how do we start matching all this up?  We need to discuss how you all can stay involved.  We don’t want to make assumptions, because right now even you are on the outside looking in, and we need to make sure we can stay connected emotionally, hold onto the knowledge we learned/that the CPRs articulated.  She listed the following questions & suggestions: CS3 develops programs with CPRs and matches organizations with them; institutional knowledge is very valuable -we can form a CPR Council of (former) members to serve as our most knowledgeable resources in the community since we do not want to start over, how do we keep this group engaged – build into NSF structure?; Are there opportunities for this group to interact with Cohort 2 – at their opening reception?; bringing the knowledge to the greater Harlem Community – Harlem is big and cohort 1 is our only Ambassador group so far and we only have 1 Jessica Elliot to voice for the entire East Harlem section, how do we scale?; perhaps we create community engagement evaluators & watchdogs, where Cohort 1 serves as eyes & ears that now has a relationship with CS3 and CS3 trusts them.  

Barbara played a video the 125th St BID & the HOPE Center created about keeping Harlem’s streets clean with neighborhood youth as messengers – it was a fun, social, 1-minute campaign that was a lighter touch with effective outcomes.  It engaged the community beyond people who have degrees and have been recruited into a program, because CS3 also has to also meet the people where they are and where the work gets done. This could be done by activating competitions among youth and inspiring neighborhood people to make communications for CS3. Barbara also discussed ideas for outreach to a 2nd CPR Cohort, noting there should be representatives from community boards in every cohort (same individuals or not), we need to examine discussions around the hot topics and how we can elevate those in discussion with cohort 2 like aging in place, more discussions around business, disabilities, which new groups we should add.  She asked each CPR to state what they want to see happen next.  There was concern expressed about transferring this project to a private company; a question about how CS3 can more deeply engage CPR groups with government partners; discussion about how CS3 plans to message about this project and what may be expected from community boards; the value of consistent & universal talking points for CS3 to provide to CPRs/stakeholders to share in the community; there were numerous references made to the importance of inclusion: of a variety of disability representation – all have different needs and experiences, community based organizations, business, youth, seniors, cultural groups, and multilingual participants.

When polled, every CPR wanted to stay involved going forward.  With that, the meeting concluded with Ester thanking Lynda Hamilton for managing these workshops behind the scenes and creating CPR Certificates of Completion, which Andrew and Barbara presented to each CPR with photos, and a group photo, followed by the closing reception and dinner catered by Dinosaur Barbeque.

CPR workshops are invite-only. If you are interested in attending a workshop or learning more about CS3’s community engagement process, please contact our team at streetscapes@columbia.edu.