Last Friday, ImageThink was honored to join the American Institute of Architects (AIA) at their Disaster Response Initiative town hall meeting in the Rockaways. The Rockaways comprise a portion of New York City on the slender Rockaway Peninsula. The peninsula runs along the southernmost edge of the borough of Queens. The Rockaways, home to about 130,000 New Yorkers and long been a popular resort area, was devastated by Hurricane Sandy last year.
Working with members from the Rockaways community, AIA assembled a team of disaster relief and response specialists to listen to the community. The AIA’s objective was to gain insight for making recommendations to the Rockways community, and we used this as an opportunity to develop a community engagement strategy to revitalize the are. The conversation of rebuilding the Rockaways post-Hurricane Sandy focused on local commercial revitalization, encouraging tourism, and building new community assets.
ImageThink created live graphic recordings of the community’s inputs as the AIA team facilitated the discussion. ImageThink was able to graphically show both the community’s collective areas of passion and areas of community concern. This allowed the AIA team to better navigate the process of recommending a successful recovery plan.
To view the graphic recordings ImageThink created for AIA Responds in the Rockaways, Queens, NY, please click here to visit our gallery, and be sure to check back with our blog for more great examples of graphic recording.
