Do Trees Seed Neoliberalism? Race, Public Spaces, and the Moral Economy of Greenery in 1990s Los Angeles

Given today's rapid urban growth and challenges, reconnecting with nature is vitally important. In this sense, biophilia promotes multiple benefits for the health and overall well-being of urban dwellers. This research aims to develop a tool for assessing the conditions and biophilic character of public green spaces in the city of Catamayo, Ecuador. The methodology used is based on the measurement of 12 indicators in public spaces for recreation and transit, corresponding to four areas: morphology, bioclimatic aspects, social use, and perceptibility. Among the main results, it is highlighted that only 39.7% of the city's neighborhoods have public green areas. Of the 47 spaces evaluated, 62% achieved average biophilic conditions, 38% good, and none achieved an optimal rating. Residents perceive that green spaces lack adequate quality and accessibility, and that the urban environment does not facilitate contact with nature. Therefore, it is determined that the city lacks the biophilic conditions necessary to maximize environmental and social benefits for its population. In this sense, it is essential to implement biophilic design principles in urban planning for the management of public spaces and significantly contribute to improving the quality of life and health of residents by promoting a closer relationship with nature.

<p>Since Wellington’s establishment as a British colonial town in 1839 its townscape has evolved rapidly - becoming aesthetically complex, multifaceted and increasingly incoherent. New Zealand cities have characteristically borrowed an array of architectural ideas from other countries and applied them with little consideration of local context. In Wellington, as elsewhere, the result has been a townscape that has no common aesthetic base to build from and no shared design language. Yet from this aesthetic confusion, some informal but strong local typologies have emerged. In searching for an architectural solution to the problem of Wellington’s aesthetically incoherent townscape, this thesis takes the stance that it is these unique local typologies that must be built upon. Attention to local context and an awareness of site specifics are of most importance in the development of a strong design language for the city. The existing special qualities that give Wellington its personality must be carried through to develop a more coherent townscape. In this way local identity will eventually prevail and the aesthetics of the city will become something that speaks of clarity and truth. For logistical purposes, one particular block in the Te Aro neighbourhood has been focused upon. This thesis advocates an intimate understanding of place and so the site specifics of this block are looked at closely. The philosophy and methodology could be applied to other neighbourhoods and cities, with designs developed in response to their particular local conditions. Within the inner city there are many thresholds and blurred boundaries between what is private and public space. New Zealand cities are particularly interesting to study, because historically the inner city neighbourhoods have not been densely occupied for residential purposes. But this has been changing recently, and rapidly, in our larger cities. Te Aro is a good example of this trend. The relationships between public and private spaces within the city, and the spaces between these realms, are what this thesis is particularly concerned with. By applying the discipline of landscape architecture to revive and make use of these small, neglected interstitial spaces, it is hoped that the overall visual coherence of the inner city will be improved and some strong local typologies enhanced.</p>

<p>Since Wellington’s establishment as a British colonial town in 1839 its townscape has evolved rapidly - becoming aesthetically complex, multifaceted and increasingly incoherent. New Zealand cities have characteristically borrowed an array of architectural ideas from other countries and applied them with little consideration of local context. In Wellington, as elsewhere, the result has been a townscape that has no common aesthetic base to build from and no shared design language. Yet from this aesthetic confusion, some informal but strong local typologies have emerged. In searching for an architectural solution to the problem of Wellington’s aesthetically incoherent townscape, this thesis takes the stance that it is these unique local typologies that must be built upon. Attention to local context and an awareness of site specifics are of most importance in the development of a strong design language for the city. The existing special qualities that give Wellington its personality must be carried through to develop a more coherent townscape. In this way local identity will eventually prevail and the aesthetics of the city will become something that speaks of clarity and truth. For logistical purposes, one particular block in the Te Aro neighbourhood has been focused upon. This thesis advocates an intimate understanding of place and so the site specifics of this block are looked at closely. The philosophy and methodology could be applied to other neighbourhoods and cities, with designs developed in response to their particular local conditions. Within the inner city there are many thresholds and blurred boundaries between what is private and public space. New Zealand cities are particularly interesting to study, because historically the inner city neighbourhoods have not been densely occupied for residential purposes. But this has been changing recently, and rapidly, in our larger cities. Te Aro is a good example of this trend. The relationships between public and private spaces within the city, and the spaces between these realms, are what this thesis is particularly concerned with. By applying the discipline of landscape architecture to revive and make use of these small, neglected interstitial spaces, it is hoped that the overall visual coherence of the inner city will be improved and some strong local typologies enhanced.</p>

T is a great time to be a museum anthropologist. Museums of all kinds are seeking insights into how better to engage their diverse publics and how to more creatively represent cultural issues. I can recount a few stories from my own experiences both at The Field Museum and with others to illustrate the point. One of the most intriguing recent experiences I had was working with renowned Chicagobased architect Jeanne Gang. Gang was commissioned as one of nine architects to participate in an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and design a new development for a depressed vicinity in the Chicago Metropolitan Region. Gang knew of my work in Chicago and that we had done a study of Mexican immigrants social networks and arts practices. She consulted with me about what kind of housing and public spaces might work for working class Latino immigrants (now the fastest growing demographic in Chicago). Gang’s final designs and models (as sh own in the exhibit [Museum of Modern Art 2015]) incorporated flexible use spaces for extended family households and public recreational and multi-use spaces. MOMA’s exhibit, titled “Foreclosed,” is part of a growing trend by art museums to showcase social concerns through an aesthetic lens. In another example, the Queens Art Museum did an exhibit on housing foreclosures in Queens (Cohen 2009) and hired a “community organizer” to reach out to Queens residents to both see and comment on the exhibit. The community organizer could just as well have been an anthropologist. At The Field Museum, our anthropology practice has most recently focused on integrating standard museum multimedia and visual communications strategies as part of participatory CENTERING CULTURE IN MUSEUM WORK/ CENTERING THE MUSEUM IN CULTURE WORK

Urban trees are of high importance for healthy urban ecosystems. However, some trees are invasive plants that may ‘escape’ from urban areas into natural environments. Furthermore, invasive forest pests often arrive and establish in urban environments before they spread to forest ecosystems. Therefore, knowledge of tree species composition in urban areas is important for the biosecurity of cities and surrounding forests. Despite this, urban tree inventories often lack information on trees on private properties. To assess the potential role of urban areas as a source of invasive trees as well as invasive pests of trees, we compared the species composition of urban trees in public and private spaces in several Swiss cities and in tree nurseries (henceforth: ‘nurseries’) in Switzerland. We analysed the various data sets we compiled regarding invasive tree species, and examined how many trees are potential hosts for invasive quarantine pests of trees. We found no statistically significant difference in tree species composition in public and private urban areas, but the proportion of non-native trees was higher in private than in public spaces. Tree species available in nurseries and those present in cities were not significantly different, with larger urban tree inventories having a greater overlap with the species available in nurseries. Five of eight tree species considered invasive whose sale was banned since September 2024 were still on sale ten months before the ban came into force. All eight tree species were present in urban tree inventories. Importantly, between 91 % and 97 % of all urban trees in public and private spaces were suitable hosts for at least one quarantine forest pest. Given the pivotal role that urban trees play for the health of urban and peri-urban ecosystems, knowledge of tree species composition is essential from a biosecurity perspective. Our findings suggest that the combination of public urban tree inventories and trees available from nurseries can provide an estimate of the composition of private urban trees and can be useful for invasive species monitoring.

This paper deals with improving the quality of public open space in densely built and declining inner city areas. It investigates the potentials of 'smart' and 'green' redesign of public open space for enhancing public realm and the quality of life. Smart redesign of public open space entails the transformation of public open space into an inclusionary intelligent civic arena which allows citizens to have both face-to-face contact and interaction, and virtual communication by means of free community electronic equipment of space and e-services. Green redesign includes the refurbishing of public open space using green technologies and energy saving elements and equipment. The paper explores the amalgamation of 'smart' and 'green' design approaches and the development of a dynamic 'smart & green' public open space and networked communities as catalysts to handle declining inner city neighborhoods. The thinking behind this approach lies in the urgent need for transformation of unused and meaningless private plots into common semi-public open space within urban blocks in shrinking urban units. Accordingly, we argue that this need reflects a potential double gain, a win-win scenario for simultaneously (a) raising awareness of spatial disadvantages in central urban areas, and (b) enhancing quality of life. Thus, in a broader perspective, urban shrinking units will potentially become more attractive and will gain a stronger economic and social identity. The paper investigates redesign patterns for Greek cities and presents a pilot study for cities of Volos and Larissa.

Although it is well-established that urban green infrastructure is essential to improve the population’s wellbeing, in many developed countries, the availability of green spaces is limited or its distribution around the city is uneven. Some minority groups may have less access or are deprived of access to green spaces when compared with the rest of the population. The availability of public green spaces may also be directly related to the geographical location of the city within Europe. In addition, current planning for urban regeneration and the creation of new high-quality recreational public green spaces sometimes results in projects that reinforce the paradox of green gentrification. The aim of this study was to explore the concept of environmental justice in the distribution of the public green spaces in two contrasting cities, Tartu, Estonia; and Faro, Portugal. Quantitative indicators of public green space were calculated in districts in each city. The accessibility of those spaces was measured using the “walkability” distance and grid methods. The results revealed that there was more availability and accessibility to public green spaces in Tartu than in Faro. However, inequalities were observed in Soviet-era housing block districts in Tartu, where most of the Russian minority live, while Roma communities in Faro were located in districts without access to public green space. The availability of public green spaces varied from 1.22 to 31.44 m2/inhabitant in the districts of Faro, and 1.04 to 164.07 m2/inhabitant in the districts of Tartu. In both cities, 45% of the inhabitants had accessible public green spaces within 500 m of their residence. The development of targeted new green infrastructure could increase access to 88% of the population for the city of Faro and 86% for Tartu, delivering environmental justice without provoking green gentrification. The outcome of this study provides advice to urban planners on how to balance green space distribution within city neighbourhoods.

Public space is the setting of public life and ideally functions as a forum for political action and expression; as a ‘neutral’ or common ground for social interaction, intermingling, and communication; and as a stage for social learning, personal development and information exchange. Throughout history, communities have developed public spaces that support their needs, whether these are markets, places for sacred celebrations, or sites for local rituals. As the social, economic, and political centres of cities, they have played a variety of roles in human life at the physical, psychological, social, political, economic and symbolic levels. However, in contemporary urban life, public spaces have lost a lot of their value and contemporary trends have constrained their development. Nowadays, more than 75% of the population of Mexico lives in cities, yet poverty, insecurity, social and physical fragmentation, and low quality environments are the main characteristics of Mexican urban spaces. This paper intends to examine how the transformation and appropriation of public space is taking place socially and spatially in the diverse and contrasting settings of contemporary urban Mexico. In this context, it is crucial to discuss how Mexican cities should reconstruct and reproduce their public spaces to meet the challenges of the 21st century and build more responsive and sustainable urban environments.

Reviewed by: The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York by Mariana Mogilevich Noah Allison (bio) Mariana Mogilevich The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020 240 pages, 10 colored plates, 75 black-and-white illustrations ISBN: 9781517905767, $30.00 PB In The Politics, Aristotle makes a fundamental distinction between oikos, the household, and polis, the political community. Existing alongside the oikos, the polis is often translated as "city-state," and has territorial and political connotations. According to Aristotle, the polis was established "with a view to the common good" and it represented the sovereignty of the "civic body."1 In other words, the polis had the potential to become a space of political equality where men could assemble, deliberate, and make decisions that ideally would benefit citizens. While such ideology has certainly evolved—primarily to include women and children—Aristotle's polis construct continues to shape spatial practitioners' orthodoxy concerning city spaces to this day. For instance, designers often present public spaces as universal goods essential to equitable and sustainable urban development. However, history has shown time and again that the existence of public spaces in and of itself does not guarantee anyone's right to access, occupy, or control such places. In this way, the political promise of public space and its frequent outcome of inequitable urban development illustrates a paradoxical ideology. Mariana Mogilevich subsequently argues that public space ideals are never realized because of specific historical processes. To illustrate such processes, Mogilevich carefully presents how design approaches in the later twentieth century reproduced contemporary public space ideologies in her debut book, The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York. Mogilevich—a historian of architecture and urbanism—contends that in order to make sense of inclusive public space ideologies, they must be understood not in terms of access, ownership, or their relationship to the state, but rather as physical lived spaces. Through this lens, The Invention of Public Space details multiple open-space experiments in New York City under Mayor John V. Lindsay. Elected amid an "urban crisis" marked by White flight, he imagined the city as a model for fun, freedom, and diversity during his tenure between 1966–1973. Such vision gave unprecedented agency to his new government, which he staffed with "young urbanists"—architects, landscape architects, planners, and administrators who sought to ensure that the city provided personal freedom and a sense of belonging, an outcome they believed would stimulate full participation in city life. To be sure, Lindsay was no master builder and did not develop a totalizing vision. Rather, under his direction, public spaces were designed for and by New York City's heterogeneous publics in a broad array of places: existing city parks, undefined plazas, streets, vacant lots, and waterfronts. Analyzing archival materials, oral histories, and published accounts, interviews, films, and photographs, Mogilevich meticulously traces how these five types of experiments were respectively interpreted at the moment by designers, researchers, critics, and users. Composed of delightful narratives and captivating illustrations that demonstrate how psychological discourses, public participation, and urban scale informed these projects' designs, The Invention of Public Space significantly reveals the changing and contradictory ways that urban space produces political meaning and citizenship. After introducing the politics of "Lindsay's New York," each chapter focuses on a different open-space typology. Readers first learn how one design, in particular, promised a solution to the social and spatial problems plaguing the city. Although predating Lindsay's election, the Jacob Riis Plaza in a Lower East Side public housing complex sought to replace a landscape of isolation and marginalization with an environment for individual experience and personal development. Guided by contemporary psychological understandings, M. Paul Friedberg designed the plaza as a sequence of four demarcated spaces called "outdoor rooms." The four rooms were delineated in terms of their uses, alternating between quiet and active spaces. Such design had a sense of progression and enclosure, creating a topography of experience believed to help children develop into their "best selves." In fostering free play, individual development, and aesthetic experience, the plaza thus forged a new...

The 5th International Conference On the Surface: Photography on Architecture - Visual Spaces of Change: Unveiling the Publicness of Urban Space through Photography and Image, which took place on the 31st of May 2019 on occasion of MAAT’s Fiction and Fabrication exhibition offered a forum for an interdisciplinary debate on photography and architecture, with a strong editorial component devoted to the publication of original works and ideas at the intersection of these two fields. Aiming to promote the awareness and reflection upon Architecture and Art, namely documentary photography in regard to its conception as an instrument to question the universes of Architecture, City and Territory, the theme chosen for this edition of On the Surface focused on the contemporary transformations of the public space: “Visual Spaces of Change: unveiling the publicness of urban space”. Proposing to debate and explore the potential of Image and Photography as resourceful tools to research and to reflect upon and render visible the emergence of new collective experiences in the social space, the focus was on Documentary and Artistic Photography for addressing crosscutting issues that are shaping contemporary changes in cosmopolitan territories. This conference wanted in this way to contribute for greater social interaction among artistic and cultural institutions and academia, extending the action of museums, universities and art venues beyond their traditionally circumscribed spaces of action, stimulating the agents and institutions involved to be more active and open to debate in their approaches to public space. The intention was to render visible aspects of urban change, as well as how architectures, places and spaces are used and lived, crossing and shifting traditional boundaries for expanding the capacity of institutions to participate in the public domain. In this sense, we aim to contribute for critically thinking architecture as an integrative field of knowledge with historical, cultural, social, economic and political dimensions, and explore photography as a dynamic process of discovery, documentation and reflection that incorporates interpretive, artistic and even fictional aspects of these multiple dimensions. On the Surface 2019 challenged authors and researchers from the fields of photography and architecture to discuss and use image and photography to better understand the city as a living organism, a rich multifaceted space characterized by a variety of experiences and programs, which are a reflection of the knowledge, beliefs, values and customs that characterize different societies. Thus, a central objective of the conference was to discuss in what way image and photography can be used to unveil how architecture expresses the cultural values and identity of our cities, being these critical research instruments for understanding and perceiving architecture in meaningful ways, as well as for understanding the past in order to better grasp the transformations that are increasingly influencing our social practices and place experiences, affecting the modes of citizen participation and cultural interaction. By overlapping and crisscrossing the disciplinary boundaries of Image, Art and Architecture, the borders of these disciplinary fields are challenged for critically thinking through contemporary changes occurring in between physical and virtual dimensions of everyday life. Through the realization of these debates, it was intended to contribute to the creation of a space of exploration, discussion and reflection towards new ideas and research paths about the use of photography as an instrument of visual research and communication, as well as about architecture and the public space, with a focus on emerging dynamics of urban transformation. [...]

The main question for this study on urban aesthetic and fear of crime is how connections between incivilities in public spaces and the public authorities’ engagement in problem solving affect conditions for urban security. The focus is on the city center of Bologna, an Italian metropolis, where the incidence of social and physical incivilities is almost high as the feeling of insecurity expressed by residents. The quantitative research carried on in this study is based on an innovative Geographical Information Systems used to assess and monitor the level of local disorder and incivilities. The information gathered were combined with the analysis of the perception of safety on 600 residents of the city’s center interviewed by phone through the system Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) system. The chapter is divided into two main sections. The first provides an overview of the conditions of urban decay and fear of crime in the city center of Bologna. In particular, it focuses on how social and spatial conditions play a fundamental role in the intensification of insecurity in some parts of the city center. It highlights the importance of incivilities—physical and social—as causal factors in understanding the complexity and range of fear of crime. The final section explores how interactions between identifying, collecting and analyzing significant data on incivilities offer suitable opportunities for local authorities to get involved at an early stage and to put adequate crime and incivilities prevention policies into action.KeywordsIncivilitiesFear of crimePublic spaceLocal authoritiesPrevention

How did East Asians who were retiring abroad cope with the pandemic? This paper traces the development of a Naturally-Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) in Vancouver through the efforts of various community organizations. As borders closed during the pandemic, a group of community-dwelling East Asian older adults found themselves remaining in Metro Vancouver through the winter. They formed a group chat and began regular video chats. They shared virtual events, supermarket deals, and neighbourhood walks. A younger member stepped up to ask after members of the informal group whom were absent or unwell. Topics of discussions ranged from the wellbeing of members and their spouses, securing medical appointments, translating forms to be filled, friends back home, leisure activities, and the lives of their children or grandchildren. The group was formally served by facilitators of a seniors’ club at a non-profit. At the same time, they existed as an informal network marked by mutual care. We discuss the health-promoting nature of mutuality in this NORC as compared to other neighbourhoods to theorize the conditions needed for the emergence of Gemeinschaft NORC in urban areas. This paper sketches a theory of mutuality as the key which transforms dyadic peer support into community cohesion. We explore the implications of mutuality on formal programs in order to harness their potential to have population-level spillover effects for the wellbeing of community members just beyond their direct reach. We further speculate that mutuality is that which was lost in modernity, and is the reason culture is medicine.

From time immemorial, societies have fashioned informal and formal public and private spaces in their settlements. Public space is “a place accessible to all citizens, for their use and enjoyment” (Jackson, 1974). In contrast, a private place is open to those permitted by law or custom. As it becomes more clear in the following essay, the meaning of the words “accessible,” “use,” and “enjoyment” is very broad (Francis, 1989). The demarcation of public and private areas, although seemingly sharp is sometimes vague. In addition, different societies at various times in history have placed more or less attention on the creation and maintenance of public space. Public space is important to urban sociologists who recognize that it serves as a setting for community activities or public life, for example, parades, meetings, and informal gatherings. They also observe how it can be a magnet for community organization; for example, groups unite in designing, developing, maintaining, and protecting public spaces. And finally, they see that it can provide a unique identifiable reference that reinforces a sense of belonging to a community; for example, New Yorkers identify with Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue, and Central Park or Philadelphians resonate to Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Love Park, Fairmount Park, and the steps of the Museum of Art.

Using Lima as an example, the author analyses the meaning of sustainable development and how grassroots community-based organisations can contribute to its achievement in megacities. Demands are today made of cities and countries of the South to develop in a sustainable way, although Northern nations did not themselves do so. 'Sustainability' on a global scale is thus attainable only at the cost of the urban poor in the South. The paper argues that the recent shift towards placing the problems and concerns of Third World megacities back on national and international agendas is founded on environmental preoccupations, rather than being an attempt to address poverty and the lack of basic services. The fragmentation of issues and people in urban environments is seen as a threat to genuine development, while community-based organisations may suggest some ways towards achieving a form of development that integrates social and political concerns and is, therefore, sustainable. The paper asserts that 'public spaces' are a way of achieving a decentralised approach to development and democracy in the megacity, provided these are informed by an understanding of the individual and the community, and by a vision of development and politics.

idea of just going out and doing it, or as it is popularly expressed in the underground, the do-it-yourself ethic... is not just complaining about what is, but actually doing something different, notes New York activist Steve Duncombe (1997). Over the last quarter century, Time's Up! has taken just such a DIY approach to shaping the urban landscape of New York. Since its founding in 1987, the group has put forward sustainable solutions to urban problems such as pollution, increasing asthma rates, lack of green space, global warming, and congestion, through a direct action approach to street activism, demonstrating the possibilities of community gardens, non-polluting transportation, and bike power. The group has repeatedly offered cost effective approaches to challenges of living. Rather than implore those in power or ask for permission, these activists helped shape what streets and public space could look like with graffiti, guerilla gardening, and festive bike rides, reclaiming vacant lots and car-cluttered streets for people-based uses. In doing so, Time's Up! fashioned the as a mutable work of art challenging the increasingly contested nature of public space (Shepard and Smithsimon, 2011).As with many cities, public space in New York is subject to a highly competitive struggle over access, land use, rules, and policies governing a global city. Over and over, those favoring DIY uses of public space have had to compete with those who see public space as a commodity from which to maximize profit the inch (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Shepard and Smithsimon, 2011). These are struggles over the very nature and meaning of urban space. Influenced movements from squatting to Global Justice and Occupy, Time's Up! has honed innovations in direct action in support of a more sustainable brand of urbanism, helping urban spaces feel vibrant, sustainable, and user-friendly. The following considers the ways the group supported efforts around community gardens and biking, while fashioning a distinct model of sustainable urbanism.Full disclosure: I have been a volunteer with Time's Up! and the do-ityourself movement in activism in New York for well over a decade. This qualitative case study builds on multiple data sources including my voice as an observing participant, discussions with other participants, and historic accounts to highlight the story of Time's Up! and the public space movements it supports (Butters, 1983; Patton, 2001; Tedlock, 1991). Case studies such as this are effective for exploring and describing the life course of both social movements and community organizations (Snow and Trom, 2002; Yin, 1995). This form of research is useful for considering urban behavior and political participation seen throughout this report, as well as highlighting effective practices in planning and development, translating knowledge into action as Time's Up! has done to fashion its own distinct brand of sustainable urbanism (Birch, 2012; Shepard, 2013). In asserting a to urban space challenging a system of automobility, Time's Up! takes part in a distinct lineage of cycling activism extending from the Women's Movement to European socialism, environmentalism and anarchism, the Provo to Situationism, and clashes in the streets during the Republican National Convention and the Occupy Movement. Here, Time's Up!'s cycling advocacy is part of a pro-urban politics, which Henri Lefebvre described as a right to the city (Furness, 2010; Harvey, 2013; Horton, 2006).Through the case study of Time's Up!, we explore do-it-yourself strategies vs. more conventional strategies for urban transformation. When liberal reformers arrive, radical wings often follow, pushing change through direct action rather than more deliberate means. For Martin Luther King's message of nonviolence, there was Malcolm X who preached change by any means necessary. While liberal environmental groups such as Sierra Club support legal means to preserve the natural environment, more radical groups such as Earth First and Earth Liberation Front support blockades; Sierra Club sues and Earth First members climb into old growth trees to save them (Butterfly, 2010; Rosebraugh, 2004; Shepard, 2011). …