In the world of environmental design, shared space is sometimes called the public realm.
Social workers may talk about the same space in terms of human interface - none of which really matters to the 500-plus people who line up in Calgary to receive their daily bread from the good folks at the Mustard Seed Street Ministry.
At first glance, the fields of environmental design and social work are worlds apart. But the reality of an innovative research project currently under way in downtown Calgary means the two disciplines are finding common ground.
It's all happening on the streets of the near-downtown Victoria Crossing district, where researchers from the two disciplines are looking for ways they can work with local stakeholders to alleviate some of the problems associated with a burgeoning population of homeless Calgarians, says Bev Sandalack, director of the University of Calgary's Urban Lab in the faculty of environmental design (EVDS).
Located on 11 Avenue S.E., the Urban Lab is a U of C research centre that gives faculty and students a chance to work on real-world projects that benefit the community. The lab began working with a neighbour, the Mustard Seed Ministry, about three years ago.
This spring, that relationship benefited from a $40,000 grant offered through the People and Place initiative, a $1-million program launched last spring by the U of C's faculties of EVDS and social work.
Supported in part by the City of Calgary's crime prevention fund, People and Place aims to facilitate sustainable development while focusing on the people who live here - and the spaces they use and share.
Working with people from the faculty of social work has definitely broadened the EVDS approach, says Matt Knapik, one of two EVDS students assigned to the Mustard Seed project.
Knapik, fellow EVDS student Fraser Blyth, professor Sandalack and two profs from social work have spent the last four months taking a hard look at the physical and social issues linked to the Mustard Seed's two main facilities in Victoria Crossing.
Much of their work is complicated by the social realities of the Mustard Seed clientele.
But it's the raw simplicity of the details that took the designers by surprise.
Researchers learned, for example, about the social problems associated with lengthy meal-time lineups along 11 Avenue. "That's an issue for both the business community and the people walking through the area," says Sandalack, who also questions the "dignity" of the process.
Talking to business owners in the area, Knapik and Blyth also learned of the many problems linked to a lack of access to public washrooms. Knapik, who grew up in Calgary, admits he's never really had to think about before.
The practical, problem-solving side of this research is important given Calgary's rapid growth and the current focus on sustainable development, adds Blyth.Today, the Mustard Seed offers programs in emergency and transitional housing, says Del Bannerman, a development officer with the organization.
Over the course of a day, it sometimes serves more than 1,000 lunches and suppers. The ministry also runs a creative centre on Centre Street, just across from its main building, that offers employment training, education and health services.
The immediacy of many of its services aside, "we're really trying to get people off the street for good," says Bannerman.
It's a complicated quest.
From her office in the Kahanoff Centre on Centre Street, Victoria Crossing Business Revitalization Zone (BRZ) executive director Eileen Stan has a bird's-eye view of meal-time lineups and foot traffic between the Mustard Seed's two buildings.
"We certainly recognize that this community will always be welcoming to a wide range of economic stakeholders," says Stan. But with plans to significantly increase residential and office development in the Beltline district, which includes Victoria Crossing, the need to improve the delivery of social service programs is critical.
That concern for a healthy community underlines the basic value of involving designers and social workers in the process of improving the delivery of social services, says Christine Walsh, an assistant professor in the faculty of social work and a researcher on the Mustard Seed project.
In recent months, she's visited 12 shelters in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. One of those shelters, which opened last December, is considered a state-of-the-art facility in terms of its architectural design. To Walsh's surprise, the location of that new building's main doors contributed to major problems with street lineups. The situation was so bad, shelter organizers have been forced to use doors not meant for meal-time entry.
A more collaborative approach to design would have solved that problem before construction began, notes Walsh, who talked to Business Edge recently while on a fact-finding tour of shelters in Eastern Canada and the U.S.
She expects the Mustard Seed project to yield concrete recommendations about ways to better use the Mustard Seed's physical space and to generate a set of best practices about ways to physically configure shelters that aim to meet the needs of a specific population.
Walsh says the study will also challenge prevailing notions about current practices and that's likely to take researchers down important new paths.
Researchers plan to file their report in December and Sandalack predicts interest in the collaborative project will run high among peers in environmental design and social work.
Walsh agrees. She's also convinced Calgary is the right place to do this kind of research because the academic commitment is well supported by "an entrepreneurial commitment and a government-sector commitment, so there are resources to bring to bear to answer some of these questions."
In the end, Walsh adds, "we're only beginning to see the potential for this kind of collaboration."
And that can only spell good news for local businesses - and the folks who depend on the Mustard Seed for their daily bread.
(Joy Gregory can be reached at joy@businessedge.ca)
