The place of narrative: a qualitative approach to community engagement in Armstrong, British Columbia, Canada

• Main Author: Walkden, Christina
• Other Authors: Wilson Baptist, Karen (Landscape Architecture)
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: place; narrative; community engagement; Armstrong; participatory design; interpretivism; qualitative research; place specific; honest contextualism; design ethics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/24068

The Place of Narrative is an exploration of the implications, opportunities and processes posed by participatory design methods in Landscape Architecture. The thesis has been structured within a narrative inquiry framework that is situated within the larger field of qualitative research. The work aspires to assess if the combination of community engagement and narrative inquiry methods can contribute to a richer understanding of place and inspire more contextually appropriate design responses. In landscape architecture, a deep understanding of the places that we design requires knowledge of local culture and the experiences and connections that people cultivate towards their environment over time. Being in place as designer, visitor and inhabitant helps to establish a level of trust. These stories of the residents—past and present, of designer, and of the landscape itself interweave and manifest in site-specific solutions. The ambition of this research is to capture the complexity of this process and to provide a primer for landscape architecture students interested in the integration of narrative theory, place, people and practice in community participatory design.