Urban and Regional Planning and Design
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Item THE PEOPLE’S PARK: A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DESIGN AND CONVIVIAL BEHAVIOR IN SUPERKILEN(2020) RODRIGUEZ, MARIA BELTRAN; Simon, Madlen; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research project investigates the relationship between design solutions andconvivial behavior among users of urban landscapes, particularly within areas characterized by diverse populations. By unpacking the entwined physical features and signs of convivial behavior at play in a People’s Park, this analysis provides insight into the role design can have in promoting convivial behavior. This is particularly important in Europe, which has long struggled to accept diversifying population and where urban neighborhoods are increasingly heterogeneous. This current diversification has tremendous implications for the ways people live together. The typology of the People’s Park is one of the contexts where this will play out. I define a people’s park as an everyday space with the potential to promote social wellbeing. It is characterized by an intent to design spaces for and with all members of a community. I define conviviality as a social condition contributing to everyday quality of life. I examine the people’s park as an institution for fostering convivial behavior in public life. The ultimate goal is to inform urban planning policies addressing social life in the public realm in multi-ethnic or diverse communities. The means to that goal is the development of a methodology for studying the relationship between design and convivial behavior that can guide park design to promote convivial coexistence and that can assist in assessing and improving existing underperforming parks. Research on these questions was undertaken using a single case study site, Superkilen, a park in Copenhagen’s multi-ethnic Nørrebro district. This case study tests the methodology I developed for this research, examining different areas of the park, in an attempt to ascertain what attributes of urban design are associated with convivial behavior, comprising the activities of eating, playing and chatting. Through the findings on Superkilen, I present the People’s Park as a useful model in helping diverse communities live together, through ordinary convivial behavior activity. Superkilen shows a possible path for societies that have historically been perceived as homogenous and must make space for difference and must deal with cultural diversity, as in Copenhagen, Denmark, but also many other European cities.Item URBAN AGRICULTURE TYPOLOGIES, SOCIO- ECOLOGICAL CAPITAL CREATION, AND THE EVOLUTION OF A RESILIENT, LOCAL FOOD SYSTEM IN ATLANTA, GA(2015) Adams, Kevin; Chanse, Victoria; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As urban agriculture evolves in North America it is fostering social and ecological benefits, not just in isolation but as a more comprehensive system where physical, social, and ecological aspects intertwine and scale into an urban food mosaic or a new type of green city. How is this change occurring and what are key characteristics? Building on traditional urban planning and design methods of keen observation, listening, mapping, and visualization and updating these methods with current techniques such as photo voice and map voice, this inquiry unpacks the rapidly evolving context of urban agriculture with in the metro area of Atlanta, GA. The dissertation breaks the inquiry into three parts or ‘essays’ each with its own sub-question and research literature on which it builds. Essay one asks how urban agriculture is integrated socio-ecologically on site and across city scales, looking for variation as it interacts with fifteen Atlanta urban entities representing forty sites. Essay two then asks how this variation can be typed, and essay three adds a quantitative piece to the ensemble by taking the fifth and last theme of essay two, the eco-literacy value of urban agriculture, and creating a tool to measure its distribution in Atlanta. Although the primary disciplinary focus is urban and landscape design, since the inquiry also sits within a college of planning and design, the concluding essay reflects on the dissertation and its methods and how they correspond to urban planning theory.