guide collection
Whether you're looking to tackle a certain issue, gain new skills, or build capacity to do work in your community, this collection of guides and instructions covers a wide range of topics from different organizations, all with the aim of making positive changes in communities.
[bc] has worked with the Texas Organizing Project (TOP) to create resources for individuals to learn about specific issues including flooding, the disaster recovery process, housing and gentrification. We hope that these "Modules" will help people provide informed feedback at community meetings, support community organizing efforts, and empower them to have engaged conversations with local officials and experts.
Produced by youarethecity, an urban design practice run by Kaja Kühl in NYC, the guide is aimed at individuals and community groups wanting to remediate toxic soil on vacant lots in their neighborhood.
The Ghana Think Tank's most recent project, American Riad, is a 3 year project that will transform formerly abandoned homes in Detroit’s North End into 8 homes with a shared courtyard. The project concept came from a Moroccan Think Tank working to develop solutions to what they described as the United States’s “problem of social isolation”. Ghana Think Tank co-founder, John Ewing, recalled the feedback from the Moroccan group “They said to us you need to stop this obsession with the single family homes...instead you need housing more like ours: That's communal housing around a common courtyard with a single entrance, then you will have community.“
A User's Guide to Demanding the Impossible argues that art is more than expression—it is a tool for transformation. Through creativity, collective action, and imagination, ordinary people can challenge existing systems, reshape public spaces, and turn bold ideas into meaningful social change by acting in the present.
ne of New York City’s largest volunteer projects has been working for over a decade to make the city brighter one daffodil bulb at a time. Since 2001 New Yorkers for Parks (NY4P) has been planting daffodils every fall and watching them grow in the spring. As of 2017 the project has distributed more than a half a million bulbs citywide and partnered with the NYC Housing Authority and city schools to engage more than 100,000 students and volunteers.
Active Design: Guide for Community Groups shows how thoughtful design can create healthier, safer, and more connected neighborhoods by improving public spaces and empowering residents to advocate for community-driven change.
The Market Octavia Living Alleys Toolkit demonstrates how underutilized alleys can be transformed into vibrant public spaces that prioritize people over traffic. Through community-led design, these shared streets become safer, greener, and more connected, supporting walking, cycling, gathering, and neighborhood identity.
The Mayor’s Guide to Public Life is an inspiration and how-to guide for city leaders throughout the globe. Based upon a series of interviews with mayors and designers, the guide proposes 5 strategies: Measure, Invite, Do, Evolve and Formalize. With these strategies in-hand, municipalities will have the inspiration and framework needed to build more accessible and inclusive public spaces.
The global initiative of Jane's Walk is inspired by activist and urban studies scholar, Jane Jacobs. In her practice Jacobs emphasized that cities should be shaped by the residents that occupy them and Jane’s Walks provide opportunities for people to tell the stories of the spaces where they live, work and play while also building new relationships within their communities.
In 2015 the WalkBoston published a report on low cost pedestrian improvements entitled Pedestrian Infrastructure: Strategies for Improving Pedestrian Safety Through Low-Cost Traffic Calming. The report focuses on traffic calming strategies that can be implemented quickly and at a low cost by an individual, organization or municipality.
A Consensus Handbook is a manual created by the UK Social Justice and Environmental Activism Worker Co-op, Seeds for Change, that provides tools and techniques for cooperative decision making processes.
Trained as an Urban Planner, designer and visual artist Candy Chang has been making art in the public sphere since 2006. In 2009 she collaborated with the Center for Urban Pedagogy and the Street Vendor Project to make a poster pamphlet that explained the complex regulatory system for street vendors in New York City. The project includes a history of street vending in New York, interviews with street vendors and policy reform recommendations.
The Citizen’s Guide to Urban Design is a four section resource guide, commissioned by the Foundation of Louisiana in 2012, intended to guide the general public on how to play an active role in the design of their neighborhoods, communities, and cities.
Authored in the 1970s by New York City's community garden group Green Guerillas as a guide to combatting urban decay, "seed green-aids" are cheap and easy to deploy, and yield unpredictable, but potentially beautiful, results.
Food is, and always has been, something that brings people together. It’s an opportunity to share ideas, to meet new people, to learn new things, and to have some fun. There are so many different initiatives that have food as integral part of community building, here are just a few examples of people and projects that inspire us to think creatively about the importance of a meal.
In 2008, Hurricane Dolly made landfall in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley causing widespread flooding and sustained winds of over 120mph. The Texas Natural Disaster Housing Reconstruction Committee assembled a plan to design a statewide rapidly deployable replacement housing system for victims of federally declared natural disasters. RAPIDO is [bc]'s response to the state’s initiative, addressing issues of social equity, rapid deployment, and constructability.
A Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) report completed by [bc] for AVANCE-Dallas. To help AVANCE-Dallas expand their early childhood operation, [bc] provided a set of recommendations to guide future growth in areas of need. This report draws from a number of national, state, and local data to identify and contextualize issues affecting AVANCE-Dallas’ strategic decision-making.
Since 2013 [bc] has facilitated the design and construction of 22 unique Little Free Libraries/Libros Libres. Inspired by Little Free Libraries, the Dallas based Libros Libres program has brought together local artists, designers, and community leaders to design and build a range of public outdoor book exchanges.
Using kites and balloons to take aerial photos and create maps of your neighborhood is a great way to start documenting and understanding a place.
There are countless options for what to do on PARK(ing) DAY. Playtime, workshops, communal meals, naps - these are just a few examples of what people have come up with. A parking space seems small but its transformation through programming and design can have a huge impact on the life of a public street.
The one step ramps built by volunteers for the Stop Gap Foundation are a temporary, attention grabbing, portable solution to the challenges created by the ubiquitous one step found at the entryway to shops and businesses.
This publication explores the relationship of racial segregation in the city of Dallas and the development of the city's park system, over the past 100 years.
This publication tells the story of the first year, 2013-14, of buildingcommunityWORKSHOP's collaboration with Big Thought and the Dallas Public Library on Little Free Libraries/Libros Libres, a literacy and community design initiative in Dallas, Texas.
[bc] Project Guides are series of short publications that describe the what, how, and why of buildingcommunityWORKSHOP’s People Organizing Place planning tools
A short, practical guide to planning, designing and hosting a PARK(ing) DAY event, a yearly occurrence on the third Thursday of September, when people across the globe temporarily transform a metered parking space into a small public space or park.
A set of 8 guides to getting a community based project completed, designed by the Detroit Community Design Collaborative, a Michigan based non-profit architecture and urban design firm.
Neighborhood Stories is a [bc] initiative to strengthen awareness of the neighborhood in our city, celebrate the diverse places that give it character and texture, and create a platform for active dialogue about its history and future.
Part of Camp Crescent, a two day festival exploring and celebrating the history of Grays Ferry Crescent, 400 Years of History with Cardboard is an project by Public Workshop of cardboard models that represent often forgotten local histories of events, buildings, people, and infrastructure.
We have developed a series of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) that utilize the RAPIDO CORE as a base building and explore different outdoor design layouts that allow for adaptation and flexibility of placement in multiple lot configurations.