This session proposal aims to bring a fresh perspective to urban revitalization, highlighting how abandoned city lots with small footprints can have outsized positive impacts on their communities, particularly for children and the elderly who are often marginalized by urban designers. By the nature of its scale and proximity to housing, a pocket park is a perfect opportunity to focus specifically on intergenerational-friendly design in any community. These parks also serve as community meeting places, particularly when they are connected to public transportation.
Katie Scanlon will present the paper Space for Public Life: Recapturing Abandoned Urban Lots as Pocket Parks for Children and Elderly dealing with issues of DEIJ as related to urban design.
Graduate students at the University of Hartford were tasked with analyzing the needs of marginalized individuals and designing a park for the Hartford Blue Hills neighborhood. Located in a predominantly African-American and Caribbean immigrant neighborhood, the design studio was given the brief to develop a pocket park, specifically for children and the elderly in this neighborhood. The leading concerns of the project were safety and durability as the neighborhood has high rates of crime and low budgets for the maintenance of any implemented design and landscaping elements.
This session proposes to present the best practices realized within the design studio and serves as an inspiration for professionals, residents, and city administrators alike.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- The key to forming a vibrant community is to encourage events, as well as participation from people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds, to ensure that everyone feels included. To prevent loneliness and isolation, cities should encourage multigenerational public spaces. To enhance community integration, all age groups should be respected and included in social gatherings
and community events. - The World Health Organization’s concept of “aging in place” should be extended into public spaces that support intergenerational play areas that support lifelong engagement. Livable communities attract residents from across the lifespan, including professionals needed to support aging in place and in community.
- Adjusting public spaces to be safe and accessible is one of the most important needs of a healthy and inclusive city. City parks should provide adequate shelter, facilities, and easily accessible seats, as well as promote the opportunity for all to play and engage with the natural environment.
- Prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists should also be a top priority in the inner city; infrastructure should be improved to encourage walking and cycling, while “traffic calming” should be implemented to make streets less dangerous and chaotic. Livable communities create economic value. Livable communities have been associated with increases in home values, higher property and sales tax revenues, savings on service delivery and infrastructure costs, growth in business revenues and development opportunities, and decreased individual transportation costs.