From Constituency Analysis, through REAP to Tess: A Life History of Engaged Methods

Setha Low, GC CUNY

As an anthropologist working within a landscape architecture and regional planning program I was asked to develop methods and methodologies that would improve data collection on the social meanings, cultural values and power dynamics to complement other forms of site analysis on design and planning sites. In collaboration with my colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania including Anne Spirn, Robert Hanna and Laurie Olin I created what I called a “constituency analysis” to be used as a tool for eliciting community needs and desires and then integrating these preferences into the programming process. Over time, however, it seems that more comprehensive ethnographic methods were needed to evaluate a site in a way that did not predetermine what the researcher would find. Traditional ethnographic fieldwork was an obvious solution, but not possible within the short timeframe of planning and design decision-making. In response I turned to Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedure (REAP) methodologies that were effective in assessing large parks, beaches and ongoing public space planning projects where understanding the users and ongoing conflicts were central to both the functioning of these places as well as providing accurate and ecologically valid assessments of the cultural and social lives of users and non-users. More recently I have become involved in work on social justice and public space for UN Habitat. Attending the World Urban Forum I found young architects, activists and planners who wanted a very simple way to use ethnography to evaluate the new public spaces that they were creating. This third kind of ethnographic methodology is the Toolkit for the Ethnographic Study of Space (TESS). The TESS is just beginning to be tested, but if it works, will offer a user-friendly way to assess the cultural tensions, sense of place, recognition and representation (or lack of it) in a public space.