The age-old question: “Where are you from?” seems simple and curious, but the answer is often far more complicated. Because where is anyone really from? From the place your parents or ancestors migrated or fled? From the many places you have lived in? Or from the place you feel most at home, where you belong? And what does belonging mean? It can be the place from which the sounds or smells are engraved in your memory, where you know the streets and buildings like the palm of your hand. And more importantly, how can design help foster a greater sense of belonging in our cities and communities?
By Kübra Terzi
At WDCD Live Amsterdam 2024, one breakout session explores these questions in depth. Interaction and a sense of belonging are essential elements of this workshop, starting from the very first moments. The participants enter to find a room filled with tables labelled with different words: sensations, emotions, spaces, experiences, ancestry, people and stories. As they walk in, moderator Shay Raviv, design researcher and social designer, asks them to respond to the question: ‘I relate belonging mostly with…’ by taking a seat at the table that best describes their answer.
She explains that even though belonging is a basic need it’s expressed in a different way by each individual, like we’ve just seen in the first exercise. This makes belonging a very complex and hard-to-define concept, one that goes beyond belonging to a certain location or group. Shay proposes a way to define belonging as “a constellation or a construction of relationships, rooted in several types of networks of information that we are a part of and that are constantly forming and changing.”
A sense of belonging is essential for a society because it contributes to its resilience. Shay explains that this is not a new or radical thought but highlights its importance by explaining that social resilience directly impacts the abilities of cities, communities and groups to deal with challenges and different types of crises. But what happens when there is no sense of belonging, when so-called ‘belonging uncertainty’ is present? Can people can affect their relationships to their environment by creating interventions, changing, forming or designing? The simple answer is yes — but as always, we must acknowledge that the effects go both ways, as design can both amplify and diminish a sense of belonging.
“A society where people feel like they belong is a more resilient society.” — Shay Raviv
Shay makes an important point by adding that belonging uncertainty is not limited to people who migrate to a new place and don’t feel like they belong there; anyone can lack a sense of belonging. It can be felt by people who live in the same place for years and even generations, when that place evolves and changes due to social or economic developments or gentrification.
Belonging and the built environment
After Shay’s insights on the theoretical aspects of belonging, the session continues with practical design interventions shared by architect Lyongo Juliana. He starts his presentation by sharing personal details of his background. He shows how he is the living example of how complicated it can be to answer where he is really from and where he belongs. Lyongo was born in the Netherlands, from a Dutch mother and Curaçaoan father, and has lived in many countries and continents. And while he is as much white as Black, his life and experience in the world would have been very different if he was a white man, instead of a Black man. This is an example of how the colonial past has shaped our thinking and created the main narratives in the white and European world.
This experienced difference due to those main narratives is something with which he adds value to his work. His field, architecture, is still lacking diversity and therefore facilitates a group of mainly white people deciding on how to build for a super diverse city as Amsterdam (58% of the people in Amsterdam have a migration background, compared to 26% for the whole of the Netherlands). It’s very important to take diversity into account when designing neighbourhoods and cities, to avoid people deciding for other people how to live their lives, without adding their experience to it. The main question he asks is: How do we design spaces for someone we don’t know? And the answer can’t be found in eliminating prejudices, we all have these mainly for our safety. It’s about being open to different experiences, perspectives and narratives. Lyongo gives a very clear example that applies to designing spaces: “If a place is safe for a woman, it’s safe for a man. But the other way around, it isn’t.”
Leave space to create space
Almost everyone knows how awkward it can be to share an elevator with someone you don’t know. Lyongo explains that this happens in spaces like that because there is no room to interact. In a project he did in Curaçao he took this knowledge and applied it to an urban plan in which he had to connect a social housing area with a middle income area. While everyone expected it would be an impossible task, he started the project by letting the people walk in each other’s existing neighbourhoods first. The most fun and clever part of the social housing complex was the use of existing conditions, such as the warm climate and narrow alleys in the historic centre. These were translated into central staircases that are both functional and provide spaces for people to meet and interact.
“To live together, to form a community, you have to meet each other. In order to meet each other, you have to leave space to meet each other.” — Lyongo Juliana
Whether it’s designing urban areas in Amsterdam Southeast, Nieuw-West or in Curaçao, Lyongo always considers the communities’ needs and aims to create meeting spaces. He shares that the only way to create spaces where people feel they belong, is by knowing who the end user is and what their needs are.
During the short Q&A after his presentation someone asks how to meet the communities and get to know them. “You should not take yourself as a starting point, although this is a very human thing to do. You have to have an open mind, and don’t be ‘the big architect’. It’s in the way you’re dressed, so you dress down, walk around and ask questions.” He explains how in formal participation trajectories the wrong questions are often asked to the wrong people. “The people in more challenging neighbourhoods often don’t come to these meetings. To get to know them you first have to win their trust, and they don’t trust you, because society has left them on the sidelines for a very long time.”
Designing interventions
After the two inspiring speakers it is time for the participants to get their creative juices flowing and think about ways how they can design for belonging. When Shay Raviv was asked to create a session about how migrants can experience a greater sense of belonging in a new place, like Europe, she deliberately decided that it wouldn’t be right to talk and think for another group. With that in mind she has created an exercise within the context of belonging from a lived, personal experience and connecting that with shared spaces that are designed. It’s a step-by-step exercise to prepare the group for the creative thinking that is needed to come up with new perspectives and approaches on what belonging means and how it shapes the world around them.
The exercise begins tangibly, asking participants to describe the meaning of belonging through different bodily sensations. While some think about the smell of apple pie, or the ocean when they think of home, the others talk about emotions and the people around them. After the first step, everyone is invited ‘outside of their home’ and is asked what activities make them feel a sense of belonging when not inside their homes. Daily routines like doing the same round for your groceries and connecting with your neighbours in a park are examples that are shared.
An open mind is a creative mind
After warming up with the first two questions it’s time to get creative. Here’s where the fun part starts! Teams discuss whether pre-designed places like supermarkets can also be a playground where adults and children meet, or how many possibilities a public picnic table can offer. The main question is matching activities and public spaces in order to create environments where people can meet, interact, feel safer and maybe even belong. “When a group of people are taking the same train for a festival or a nightclub, why not create a way in which they can meet and connect already?” one participant asks.
As the session draws to a close, one important takeaway rises above all others. We are reminded of how vital it is to keep an open mind and maintain awareness of both your own perspective and the perspectives of those you are designing for. But besides that, we also learned that there is a lot of room for creativity in existing spaces around us, and that you can match them with other activities too. Sure, a street lantern lights up our streets and provides safety, but can it also be a place to meet with your neighbours and share food? Can it be a moment that sparks a sense of belonging?
All images: Tom Doms.
About the author
Kübra Terzi is a freelance writer, strategist and an expert in inclusive language and communications. With an intersectional approach and point of view she aims to show in her work the many ways inequality is present in our society, and therefore, also in our language. Kübra is based in Amsterdam, and works within the humanitarian, social and cultural industry.