Prompt 2

Leading up to the event I thought the turn out from the community would be around twenty or so people. Holding the event on a Sunday with a Saints game at the same time just seemed like a bad choice, but between LSU and the Saints it is very difficult to find a weekend that both teams are not playing. Turnout was much better than I expected and although some people came, took some food and then proceeded to go about their business a very good number stayed and talked to us about their short term and long term concerns that the community faces.

            The primary concerns of the people that I talked to were that development of the community and the surrounding areas would focus on bringing in people of a higher socioeconomic status then them and in doing so they feared that they would become ostracized and forced out of the community which their families have grown up and lived in for decades. Any design that we propose to the community should focus on aiding current residents as much, if not more so, than then bringing in new residents of higher socioeconomic status into the community. Community members also expressed a desire for more and improved programs for children. However, after Sam Sanders of Mid City Redevelopment talked to us he informed us that there already exist a number of programs for children in the area. We simply need to inform the community about the existence of these programs.

            In the future I think that we can introduce more things for the people to do at the community outreach event so instead of just having food and the boards we can have activities for adults and children to do in order to draw more community members to the event. Ideally the people who go to the event would invite and get more people to come and share their stories.