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Public Space Research
Parks and other public spaces allow different kinds of people to claim space, practice their particular activities and rituals, encounter one another, relax, and have fun. We feel that well cared for, culturally inclusive public spaces are essential to sustaining civility and social capital in the urban context.
ActKnowledge provides rigorous, high-quality evaluation research to inform
a range of design and programming choices and ground the collective will to provide for parks
adequately. Research can reveal the depth of meaning parks have for users and adjacent communities. We can find out how people use and value spaces as they are and then again after physical
improvement or programming change. We can evaluate the potential impact on park use of specific
proposals or alternative proposals. We can identify cultural relationships that may exist between park
resources and established groups and communities.
ActKnowledge staff have extensive experience researching parks and other public space, including ethnographic studies of urban national parks and beaches in New York, Jersey City, and Philadelphia, usership studies and visitor counts in New York City landscape parks, and a sociological study of a city neighborhood affected by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Two ActKnowledge staff members used Prospect Park in Brooklyn as the setting for their doctoral research in environmental psychology. Our research tools include surveys and counts, ethnographic methods, and participatory planning and design.
Current Project
In 2009 ActKnowledge will complete an evaluation for the Trust for Public Land's New York City Playgrounds Project. The work involves structured observations of use and users at three schoolyard playgrounds, which the Trust has transformed through a participatory design process with schoolchildren from blacktopped yards to amenity-rich community parks. Through pre- and post-intervention observation, ActKnowledge is evaluating how the rebuilding of these schoolyards changes the amount and variety of use, community involvement, and numbers of users.
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