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Providence, RI

appropriate 

architecture

2009

Operating under the basic premise that the most effective development strategies build off of the collective wisdom of existing people and organizations on the ground, this study attempts to re-conceptualize the practice of community development by giving formal dimension to existing, local activities within derelict urban neighborhoods through the deployment of actionable, modestly scaled urban interventions designed to help cultivate new, more palpable ideals of community, self-reliance, and participation. By appropriating existing community activities in the built environment, a new urban presence is introduced in ways that expand the boundaries of our common understanding of the ordinary and routine, and that make the ordinary more recognizable and accessible by disturbing the customary order of these activities in the interest of more enduring change.

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Born of a broader, more conceptual interest in the appropriation of marginalized activities and communities in developing cities, this investigation became increasingly focused on understanding the socio-urban effects of property and activity appropriation in the revitalization of derelict First World communities. Working in collaboration with the Southside Community Land Trust, a non-profit community organizing and property management company in South Providence RI, this project sought to initiate a more immediate, grass-roots form of urban revitalization by stoking a more appreciable sense of community and neighborhood pride in South Providence by designing and building a  series of urban community gardens that would host a variety of community ordained activities, while formally advertising the desire within the community for more substantive and immediate socio-urban change.

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