Principle #5: design for belonging
What it is
Design for Belonging is a design principle that Street Works applies in service to anti-bias, democratic practice, loving care, and solidarity.
This principle is important to Street Works because we believe...
Systems, institutions, cultural norms, language, aesthetics, and informal social dynamics all shape who feels welcomed, trusted, visible, safe, and able to participate meaningfully. We believe belonging must be actively designed for. Without intentional design, communities and organizations often reproduce anti-Blackness, racial hierarchy, cultural dominance, ableism, insider dynamics, and other forms of exclusion even when inclusion is verbally encouraged.
Because of this, Street Works pays attention to who is formally invited into a space, who feels ownership over it, whose communication styles are normalized, who is centered in decision making, whose labor is recognized, and who may be quietly excluded without explicit hostility.
GoalS
Build systems that recognize and interrupt exclusionary patterns. Pay attention to who participates, who withdraws, who takes on leadership, whose ideas are legitimized, and who may be structurally excluded even without intentional harm.
Design for multilingualism and multiculturalism. Participation should not depend on perfect English, shared cultural familiarity, literacy level, institutional knowledge, or confidence navigating formal systems.
Create multiple pathways into participation and leadership. People contribute in different ways, at different speeds, with different capacities, communication styles, and relationships to public space, institutions, and community life.
Design accessibility into participation. This includes pacing, physical accessibility, communication support, economic accessibility, and flexibility around participation.
Continuously examine how Street Works may reproduce power or exclusion. Anti-bias work is not a finished achievement, but an ongoing design and governance responsibility across programs, relationships, and systems.
WhY
This design principle builds on the Make Justice Normal characteristic of Anti-Bias / Pro-Earth, which looks to understand how systems default to biases of specific groups, including systems that are supportive of structural white dominance.
Street Works extends that thinking into the design of participation. We have learned that exclusion is often reproduced through systems and habits that appear neutral on the surface. Language fluency, confidence, cultural familiarity, availability, professional norms, communication style, access to transportation, and prior relationships all shape who feels able to participate, lead, speak, or belong. Even communities committed to justice can unintentionally reproduce insider dynamics and social hierarchies if these patterns are not actively designed against.
Because of this, we intentionally design belonging like an artistic practice, into how people encounter a project, understand expectations, communicate, share responsibility, access leadership, and move through participation over time.
This principle is especially important in a neighborhood like Jackson Heights, where linguistic, cultural, immigration, class, and racial diversity exist alongside uneven access to power, stability, and public visibility.
For Street Works, anti-bias design therefore includes paying attention to: who consistently participates, who withdraws, who becomes central, whose labor is recognized, whose communication styles are legitimized, and who may remain peripheral even in spaces that describe themselves as inclusive.
This principle also shapes how we understand expertise. Many forms of knowledge that sustain communities — caregiving, migration experience, cultural memory, survival strategies, translation, informal teaching, emotional support, neighborhood knowledge, and mutual aid — are often devalued because they are not professionalized or highly rewarded by the market. Systems like the Time Bank recognize these forms of contribution as meaningful and necessary.
