Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
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Based on the same survey, the inhabitants are not active in local activities:<br />
only 45% have participated in a local event within the last year. Low<br />
participation in neighbourhood activities can be assumed to be connected<br />
with the inhabitants’ weak feeling of community cohesion.<br />
In the following we discuss the building of a better neighbourhood<br />
and improving social <strong>wellbeing</strong> in Kannelmäki based on two overlapping<br />
projects: a Master’s thesis 2 project about participatory community design<br />
and an intensive short-term student project called Repicturing a suburban<br />
neighbourhood.<br />
But what is a neighbourhood? The word can have different connotations<br />
– something that became evident during our projects. One of the students,<br />
<strong>for</strong> example, described what the word neighbourhood means <strong>for</strong> her in<br />
the following manner:<br />
“For me, the idea of my own ‘neighbourhood’ changes depending on who<br />
I’m talking with. If it is with someone familiar with the area, I might speak<br />
about a very small portion of a specific area as my neighbourhood. But if it<br />
is with someone from another city, I might speak about the larger general<br />
area as my neighbourhood.“<br />
The variance of interpretations also becomes apparent in the following<br />
quotations from the inhabitants of Kannelmäki:<br />
“I live in an apartment so the people from your own stairway. I think that<br />
a neighbourhood is…those who live in the same building.”<br />
“For me it means the area where I live, the closest quarters and the houses<br />
that are closest to my home. And it can also mean my old neighbourhood<br />
where I used to live with my parents.”<br />
2 Malin Bäckman<br />
101 · Social <strong>wellbeing</strong> through participation in Kannelmäki suburb