17 Small City Natural Environment • Feature • ARCADE designers, or ecologists, or foresters, or naturalists. But as we continued working directly with communities after launching The Mastheads, we realized that building meaningful connections between residents and their surrounding natural environments was one of the most impactful, and initially most available, openings for us to strengthen our local social fabric. As many young designers know, commissions for public buildings will go to firms with “more built work.” Projects with minimal construction are more flexible. The work of “artists” can be discretionary, and outdoor “structures” are a more flexible designation than “buildings.” Our public work began to take the shape of designing community happenings and outdoor installations because that was a space and scale outside of the public procurement mandates that often send local work to large corporate firms based outside of the community. From our first public project, we have worked to find pathways that fund the type of design we believe is necessary — learning from and within a community — in ways that keep “the public” as our clients, and allow us to experiment with engagement methodology as an artform in itself. We build partnerships with local government, local non-profits, and neighborhood action groups and write grants to support multiple stages of public projects — from design, to construction, to ongoing programming. Two of these projects — the Westside Riverway Park on the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, MA and the Riverwalk along the Hoosic River in North Adams, MA — are the focus of this piece. The following sequence organizes the broad steps we take to understand, design, and support ongoing and meaningful engagement between communities and their natural environments. 1. Gather Memories Outdoor projects on municipal land are part of the public realm. Every
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