Discussions between senior members of DDI — the principal advocate, champion and steward of the city’s central core — and the UNT Design Research Center (DRC) revealed that both groups could benefit from design-led interdisciplinary research into ways that could directly benefit targeted districts within the central core, and provide the DRC and DDI with an opportunity to transform applied research into more generalized means to benefit other districts. Thereby allow DDI to further its ongoing mission and strategic goals.
To test this position, DDI and the DRC have embarked a one-year collaborative pilotresearch project focused on issues and concerns both shared and yet to be identified by stakeholders in the City’s Historic West End District. This project will involve DRC research faculty and graduate students along with numerous DDI,Dallas and district stakeholders.
The project brief entailed five major areas (“Focus,” “Structure,” “Timing,” “Outcomes” and “Success”):
1. Focus > enhancing localized capacity > benefitting all
DDI’s stated mission is to support 13 unique districts that comprise the city’s central core. It accomplishes this broad charge through interconnected programming focused on housing, commercial development, transportation, quality of life and four other targeted urban concerns. As a private 501(c)3, DDI accomplishes its mission with a small permanent staff led by a volunteer directorship.
The increasing needs of a growing metropolis coupled with DDI’s finite structure suggests that the organization’s ability to affect hoped for positive change is limited by virtue of its available internal resources and by the resources of the individual districts it supports. Thus, it seems logical to suggest that if DDI could enhance the capacity of the individual districts to affect autonomous, localized change, the organiza tion could function as a targeted force multiplier in addition to being a broad-based service provider. The proposed pilot project would explore this hypothesis:
That it may be possible for DDI to augment its current offerings by developing and providing districts with adaptable tools, processes and resources that could help them to increase their respective capacity to achieve unique goals andaspirations. And that, taken together, these localized successes could support the overall vitality of the central core while concurrently enhancing DDI’s ability to accomplish its mission.
2. Structure > 1 district > 5 phases > soft systems methodology > faculty led student teams
The pilot project would take one district (or an organization within a district) as its subject of study and development partner — DDI and the DRC jointly determining the best candidate. The project would progress through five phases: discovery, engagement/development, testing, implementation and assess ment. Working inductively and abductively, interdisciplinary teams of faculty led graduate students will identify and deploy cross-disciplinary, hybridized thinking and 2research methods.
3. Timing > benchmarks
The pilot project would commence upon approval of a Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) between DDI and CVAD. The MOU would detail the pilot research projectspecifics along with the respective responsibilities of DDI and the DRC. The project is expected to run for 9–12 months with intermediate, measurable benchmarks occurring at stipulated intervals.
4. Outcomes > expected work products
Although subject to change based on the research findings accrued during the pilot project, the DRC research team expects that the outcomes of this research will offer DDI:
A richer, more complete social, economic and political description of one segment of the Dallas central core. Out of this data gathering and analysis could also emerge methods for more systematically ascertaining these types of data forother Dallas districts.
Adaptable tools, processes and resources that could be offered by DDI to other Dallasdistricts or groups for their respective localized use. These tools, processes and resources might include system designs, technology led solutions, and new knowledge about development best practices.
A repository of intellectual assets that DDI could employ to catalyze widespread community development among other Dallas urban districts.
5. Success > measurement and assessment
Efficacy – do the work products (various means, methods, tools, processes and resources discovered or invented during the course of the pilot research project) work as intended? If not, how might they be improved in their future iterations?
Efficiency – do the work products result from the prudent application of existing resources? If not, how might the efficiency be increased or how might needed resources be identified and leveraged?
Effectiveness – do the work products meet the immediate needs of the local district as well as the larger, long-term needs of the central core and DDI?
Once the project is more clearly defined, these metrics would be adapted to reflect more specific qualitative and quantitative variables and benchmarks.
UNDER Research