Designing for Social Integration
How might we leverage our built environment to improve the lives of newly arrived refugee families in Canada?
Forced displacement and resettlement have become a largely urban phenomenon with
more than half of the world’s refugees living in urban areas . While Canada’s immigration policies have been generous, newly arrived refugees not only face issues of social isolation but also struggle to make ends meet given the high cost of living in its metropolitan cities. The city of Toronto hosts close to half of the resettled refugees in Canada and has the highest childcare fees in the country. While subsidies are provided by the government, they have long waitlists and are often difficult to obtain. Research also shows that the gender employment gap is negatively correlated with access to
affordable daycare services. With traditional gender norms requiring women to prioritize childcare and men working, this perpetuates gender segregation in the household and limits educational and vocational opportunities for the women.
This is occurring at a time when cities around the globe are struggling to maintain their timeless structures as they continue their economic growth. In Toronto alone, close to 130 schools are facing closure due to underutilization of space. While some buildings are getting too old and are in dire need of repair, nearly 20 percent of schools have enrolment significantly below capacity. Many of these old buildings that have heritage value are in danger of being demolished.
Our intervention proposes to repurpose under-utilized school buildings in Toronto as a hybrid space that utilizes the classrooms to provide language lessons for parents and uses the adjacent space repurposed as a daycare . The daycare is separated from the classroom through a transparent and sound-proof barrier that limits disruption, while providing a sense of security for the parents. This allows parents to remain thoroughly involved in the classroom, while being in close proximity to their children. In doing so, we not only preserve the heritage value of public assets, but also provide opportunities for refugees and low-income immigrants to better integrate in a new environment.
Reimagining schools as Learning Daycare Centres
The incentive to utilize school spaces is two-fold. Schools provide the basic infrastructure
for educational programs, which allows for lower logistical costs. Furthermore, schools are
perceived as safe spaces and instills confidence in parents sending their children.
Our intervention targets UNHCR’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 to ensure
inclusive and equitable quality education for all. We also target SDG 5, which aims to
achieve gender equality and empower all women.
When planning for such a service-based intervention for a diverse audience, we have to be realistic. Children of ages three to seven years old require supervision, thus the proposed facilities will require participation from daycare providers. Volunteerism-based solutions have worked for this in the past, with youth and other parents providing supervision as a service to their respective communities.
There are also opportunities to utilize provincial funding for individual daycare applicants
to subsidize these services. This can create opportunities to involve members of local
communities like architects, artists and tech enthusiasts to build engaging experiences for
children and skill workshops for parents.
This project was developed with the support of my friend and fellow UBC alumnus
Pranay Jain, and was submitted as an entry in the 2019 APRU Cities and Refugees Ideas Competition, in which over 90 teams from over 24 countries competed. While the problem definition and research process was highly collaborative and did not have clearly defined boundaries for contribution, I was primarily responsible for conducting the background research on the topic, as well as for designing the classroom and the social pavilion, while Pranay led the daycare design. Additionally, I led the storyboarding for the video below.
References
Hong, J. S., Voisin, D. R., & Lee, J. (2018). Urban African American Youth and Their Caregivers’ Perceptions of School Safety in Chicago: A Social-Ecological Perspective. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 16(2), 174–189.ce,1 6( 2), 174–189.
Melissa, Moyser, Canada, Statistics. Women and Paid Work. Ottawa, ON, CA: Statistics Canada, 2017.
