Highlighting assumptions of community engagement in urban stream restoration

Abstract

Restoration practitioners experience mixed results when they try to engage community members in urban stream restoration projects. In some cases, practitioners make presumptions about community responses to restoration that lead to unsuccessful engagement and detract from restoration goals. During the 5th Symposium on Urbanization and Stream Ecology, we noticed that participants repeatedly discussed community stakeholder engagement as a tool for effective urban stream restoration. However, most presenters did not acknowledge that typical engagement strategies do not consider how the target community’s social, economic, and political dynamics will influence stakeholder response. As a result, many practitioners make assumptions about communities that can be counterproductive to engagement efforts. Here, we discuss 4 underlying assumptions that many researchers make when trying to engage community stakeholders: 1) community members and researchers have the same project goals, 2) educating residents is essential in garnering community support, 3) the community will benefit from the restoration effort, and 4) the community has solutions to contribute to the technical aspects of the restoration effort. We present and develop these assumptions in the context of relevant urban stream restoration projects and highlight the complexity represented across communities where urban stream restoration projects can take place. Land managers and researchers must first cultivate a thoughtful understanding of the community and its existing socioeconomic capacities before integrating community stakeholders into urban stream restoration projects. We believe highlighting these societal complexities will promote a deeper consideration of appropriate engagement strategies for urban stream restoration projects.