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A project team of University of Oklahoma researchers and Oklahoma City civic partners are collaborating to create the Legacy Building Toolset, a digital platform that will allow community members to collectively explore identity, the meaning of place, and create and engage with community assets and more easily allow community members to participate in community collaboration projects.
The project recently received a $50,000 award from the National Science Foundation as part of the Civic Innovation Challenge, a multi-agency, federal government research and action competition that aims to fund ready-to-implement, research-based pilot projects that have the potential for scalable, sustainable, and transferable impact on community-identified priorities.
The project team is led by Deborah Richards, Assistant Professor of Architecture, and also includes Vanessa Morrison, the Associate Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, and John Harris, the Director of the Division of Regional and City Planning.
The Legacy Building Toolset is a response to how local residents often experience powerlessness and the exclusion of their voices in the urban planning and policy making process. The toolset will first be developed in the context of Northeastern Oklahoma City but will be applicable to communities across the United States.
Northeastern Oklahoma City is a predominantly Black community currently working to strengthen cultural and economic activities and create a strong sense of place and identity. Today, the racist urban policy and societal norms that shaped the history of the area are being reviewed to identify more equitable urban policies and practices. The Legacy Building Toolset will allow community members to explore their identity and meaning of place in order to create community-driven interpretations of meaning in the built form at a large scale with an overlay of culture and identity. The information from the platform may inform transportation and mobility improvement projects, cultural programming and resources for establishing city recognized commercial districts.
To learn more about the Legacy Building Toolset and the other projects that received a 2022 Civic Innovation Challenge grant, click here.
The University of Oklahoma College of Architecture is proud to announce that Model Schools in the Model City, authored by Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., has been named one of ten finalists for the 2026 ASALH Book Prize for Best New Book in African American History and Culture.
This semester, students in the LA 5535 Studio: Ecological Planning and Design, led by Prof. Afsana Sharmin, took on an ambitious hypothetical project to redesign key parts of the OU campus. Their mission: to tackle the critical real-world challenge of stormwater management through innovative green design.
Petya Stefanoff, Chair of the Educational Committee with the American Planning Association, Oklahoma Chapter (APA-OK) and Gibbs College PhD candidate, has developed a new training program for local government officials. The program, focused on land use, zoning principles, and land development, recently certified its first graduates with Certified Citizen Planner status.
