Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 48(2): March 2022 “The idea to visualize this information in a plat- form that was common and shared by many people was really driven by the fact that we wanted to dispel some myths that were out there about community development and community action.” Target Knowledge Through Visioning Activities In the case of Visionmaker NYC, the e-tool is designed to produce target knowledge through the creation of individual ecological “visions” for the landscape of New York City. Through this creation process, users are presented with various social-ecological trade- offs based on each decision they make. The users can then save their “visions” and view others’ visions. The goal of this process is to shift people’s perspec- tive on urban nature in general. As one developer explained: “They look at the [ecological] metrics and if you just paint one green roof on one building, it hardly moves the needle at all. And then people are like…oh. And they know how hard it is to get one green roof on one building right?” However, the creators of the tool seemed surprised that, after observing people using the tool, users’ tar- gets were not reflecting a bold vision for NYC’s ecol- ogy. After a workshop in Jamaica Bay, during which users generated very conservative ecological future visions for their neighborhood, one of the creators said: “In the end we got like 82 visions out of it. And I forget the number but 78 or 79 of them kept the street grids and the street infrastructure all the same, you know they would paint green infra- structure on the side but, you know, parts of Jamaica Bay, it’s going to have to go back to marsh.” Transformative Knowledge The civic crowdfunding platform ioby has become an expert in the development and transmission of trans- formative knowledge. The impact of this e-tool goes far beyond the raising of monies, as it combines online resources with on-the-ground community organizing and coaching to ensure the owner of each proposed project is able to develop and share the tar- get knowledge needed to successfully implement their idea. Their strategy is to connect users with 131 people who know how to make change, such as city agencies, local experts, or people who have success- fully implemented similar projects in the past. As an ioby employee explained: “Knowing how decisions are made, knowing who to reach out to at your transit agency, knowing how to get a permit for something, that’s all pos- itive change that goes beyond fundraising that I think really contributes to a larger picture of folks being more civically engaged and thinking more about themselves as potential changemak- ers instead of just consumers of city services.” Furthermore, ioby works to collect and exchange transformative knowledge, particularly that which is related to processes of change, and make it available to a wider audience. This is evidenced by a library of resources and how-to guides available on the website as well as a series of webinars and other e-resources. “We have them share what their steps were, what they learned along the way, some of the mistakes they made and we really try and sum- marize that into resources.” Other platforms do offer some information on how to steward. For example, the HTHC app provides instructional resources on pruning, tree planting, etc. “The app is actually chock full of videos, docu- ments, PowerPoint presentations, lots of infor- mation about threats to urban trees…and there’s also a lot of information about how to properly steward a tree, we have videos on pruning, on how to steward, how to plant, so as I said, even if someone picks up the app and never uses it for its data functionality, it serves as a great learning tool.” As with target knowledge, many of the tool man- agers stated an aspiration that, through sharing sys- tem knowledge, users would develop transformative knowledge in the process. Other tools such as Visionmaker NYC do not go as far as developing transformative knowledge. The e-tool asks users to envision what a future landscape of NYC could look like and understand the difference in ecological functioning between the current land- scape and their vision but gives little in the way of then understanding the complex social, financial, and political forces at play in actualizing that vision. ©2022 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2022
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