rethinking urban parks public space and cultural diversity

[...]... attachment that can be fostered to promote cultural diversity These lessons for promoting and sustaining cultural diversity in urban parks and heritage sites are just a beginning More research and experimentation will be needed to fully understand the importance and difficulties of maintaining vibrant public spaces But at the very least, the lessons demonstrate how diversity can be an essential component... theoretical framework for research that relates public space to the individual, the community, and to political and economic forces PSRG is concerned with the social processes that make spaces into places, with conflicts over access and control of space, and with the values and meanings people attach to place In our 15 years of studying cultural uses of large urban parks and heritage sites, we have observed the... harmful to other democratic practices that depend on public space and an active public realm for cross-class and multicultural contact At least in New York after 9/11, very few places retain the cultural and social diversity once experienced in all public spaces—but Washington Square and Union Square still do Further, an increased defensiveness and desire for security has arisen since the terrorist... improve it, may create more problems and dysfunction if the social ecology of the space is overlooked 3 cultural diversity The third important dimension is cultural diversity Biological diversity, so critical to the physical environment as a genetic repository and pool of adaptive evolutionary strategies, has its social counterpart in cultural diversity Cultural diversity became a “politically correct”... dissonant heritage is vital to our discussion of urban parks and public spaces in that it provides another rationale for why cultural diversity and community inclusiveness are so important The negotiation of dissonant meanings and their resolution in forms representative of all cultural groups and communities is the ideal toward which we should be working Cultural Values In historical preservation practice... attention to cultural diversity also leads to community empowerment, expanded citizenship, and the involvement of people in the governance and maintenance of their neighborhoods and workplaces It expands the notion of individual rights of citizenship to include the survival of one’s culture and/ or cultural group, and the marking of its importance in the landscape We would also add that creativity from cultural. .. type of research in their own parks and communities The conclusion revisits the six lessons we identify for promoting, maintaining, and managing cultural diversity in urban parks and reflects on what was learned from this long-term research project on urban park policy Chapter 2 Urban Parks History and Social Context A s Michael Brill (1989), Sam Bass Warner (1993), and perhaps others have noted, the... diverse communities and promote social tolerance in this new political climate? One way, we argue, is to make sure that our urban parks, beaches, and heritages sites—those large urban spaces where we all come together—remain public, in the sense of providing a place for everyone to relax, learn, and recreate; and open so that we have places where interpersonal and intergroup cooperation and conflict can... those spaces that provided a welcoming and lively environment became the basis of his now-famous “rules for small urban spaces.” And these rules were used by the New York City Planning Department to transform the public spaces in the city In this new century, we are facing a different kind of threat to public space not one of disuse, but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and. .. provide information about underlying unspoken cultural assumptions, beliefs, and practices Cultural values are our best indicators as to what people think and feel about a landscape such as a park or heritage site, and they can act as a guide to understanding park use and disuse, place attachment or lack of it, and symbolic meanings According to Randall Mason, “sociocultural values are at the traditional . Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Low, Setha M. Rethinking urban parks : public space and cultural diversity / Setha Low, Dana Taplin, and Suzanne Scheld. — 1st ed. p. cm. . 11:37:28 AM THE CULTURAL LIFE OF LARGE URBAN SPACES 3 and the cultural diversity in public space that has been so characteristic of the American way of life. Globalization and Increased Diversity With. 1 The Cultural Life of Large Urban Spaces 1 Chapter 2 Urban Parks History and Social Context 19 Chapter 3 Prospect Park Diversity at Risk 37 Chapter 4 The Ellis Island Bridge Proposal Cultural