Walking to Build a Critical Community-Engaged Project: Collaborative Observations of Neighborhood Change in Long Beach, California

Claudia Maria López, R. Varisa Patraporn, Kelliana Lim and Kylee Khan
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Claudia Maria López: Department of Sociology, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA
R. Varisa Patraporn: Department of Sociology, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA
Kelliana Lim: Department of Sociology, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA
Kylee Khan: Department of Sociology, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA

Social Sciences, 2022, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: Academic and community research partnerships have gained traction as a potential bridge between the university and local area to address pressing social issues. A key question for developing justice-oriented research is how to integrate best practices for creating genuine, authentic research partnerships. In this paper, we discuss the process of building a critical community-engaged project that examines how urban redevelopment changes neighborhoods within immigrant and/or communities of color. Focusing on Long Beach, California, in this article, we detail the development of a mixed-methods study that involves undergraduate students and community members as co-collaborators. We discuss the use and outcomes of co-walking as method, emphasizing observational findings, as well as the process of building team collaboration. We find that neighborhoods in Long Beach are changing rapidly in terms of the use of greening, increased technology integration within neighborhoods, and modern aesthetics, revealing that new residents will likely be younger and single residents with disposable income and no children. From this process, we identified a more critical question for the research project: “Development for whom?”. We argue that co-walking as method is an observational and relational process that assists with the foundational steps of building a critical community-engaged research project.

Keywords: community-engaged research; walking; student researchers; qualitative methods; urban development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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