Chesterfield Fire Station and Parks and Recreation; Fighting Gentrification in 21st Century America using Remediating and Inclusive Policy

My technical project, involving the land development of a fire station and a parks and recreational facility, had me thinking early on about how the addition of these facilities will affect the community that surrounds them. There are very clear, tangible advantages to developing unused land into something that the public may benefit from. However, there are often lesser expected effects of increasing the value of land, namely, gentrification. The negative aspects of gentrification, which largely outweigh any of the positives, remove people from their communities and have potential to warp the culture of the communities it affects. It seemed possible that developing unused land into a fire station and parks and recreation facility has potential to increase the value of the nearby suburban homes which could in turn force the lower income residents to move out. Community involvement and feedback is something that we wish we had more time to collect for our technical project. Collecting community feedback is not only useful for engineers in general, but is an excellent way to combat and detect gentrification early on in the land development process, which is something that the paper gets into.
My technical project was a two semester long process that involved back and forth communication with Dewberry, our industry advisor, and technical design work for the stormwater, grading, and utility infrastructure that needed to be put in place. Our team put together a plan set consisting of existing conditions, the developed site, buildable area, soil and sediment control, grading, stormwater management, and utility design plans that served as our final product. The process was iterative and we often spent multiple weeks on each portion, making difficult decisions between several alternatives until we decided on the right fit for the project. For my research paper, I took look at several case studies, most of which had occurred in North America, and studied the magnitude to which gentrification affected different communities, how political heads responded to the situations, and discussed how those in political power could guide the land development process by implementing regulation or remediation policy. My research methodology consisted of searching for key terms such as “gentrification” and “policy” and reading through various works that had a strong association with these themes, while analyzing in further depth and collecting data from the works that pertained to my problem the most. Actor-network theory is used as a lens to view this problem, as there are many, many separate groups and subcategories of actors, all with conflicting needs, that make gentrification such a difficult problem to tackle in the first place.
Our technical project was largely a success. We set out with a certain set of goals with a schedule that we mostly stuck to throughout both semesters and completed our design plans with varying levels of completeness for each portion. There was a lot to learn over the course of the project, we had to combine the use of multiple programs (with varying levels of understanding) to accomplish our goals. Additionally, communicating with a team of roughly 10 people, including all group members and advisors, was a unique challenge that emulates real world engineering. My research project, which swung in an entirely different direction from my prospectus, I mostly consider a success. I wish I had gotten into the level of detail that I wanted to when I originally asked my research question. Nevertheless, the paper turned out to be something I could be proud of. The research was very interesting and I believe this avenue for research still has so much potential for civil engineers.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering

Technical Advisor: Somayeh Asadi

STS Advisor: Kent Wayland

Technical Team Members: Scout Bale, Jeremiah Castillo, Emma Coutts, Esther Park, Greg Zeckman