This week I read Carolyn Finney’s book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. Finney critically analyzes how parks and outdoor spaces, and people who use them, are represented in the media, policy, and society. She notes that the Civil Rights Act and the Wilderness Act were both…
This week in Japan I visited two parks on Miyajima Island and gardens in Okayama and Takamatsu. These experiences have made me consider how water powerfully shapes landscapes and how humans use a variety of strategies to control the flow and movement of water. Miyajima Island Miyajima Island, or Shrine Island, is designated as one…
Tokyo is one of the world’s largest and most populated cities. It is best known as a vast metropolis or megacity, yet 3.44% of Tokyo is green space. This week I visited green spaces in Tokyo—gardens, shrine complexes, parks, and tree-lined walkways. I also had the opportunity to visit Tamagawa University to visit elementary classrooms…
Waterfront Parks in New York City Waterfront parks are important reminders about how cities rely on water for manufacturing and transport of goods and how ports can facilitate economic development. While I was in New York I visited two waterfront parks, Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Hudson River Park. Both of these parks are mixed-use…
This week Holly and I made a 3 minute video about the High Line. In this video we share images of the park while exploring how purposefully placed artifacts, like railroad tracks, are powerful teachers, how plants led the way for park design, and how seeing city views and ongoing construction invites visitors to re-consider…
During the past two weeks I’ve spent time exploring New York City’s High Line. Last week I wrote about how the High Line spaces create a sense of both expanse and enclosure. This week I consider how the park design fosters strolling and sitting, and why those two activities are potentially important for park visitor…
This week I visited New York City’s High Line, a former urban freight railway that has been re-envisioned as a public park. The High Line provides a purposeful contrast to the Ruston Way waterfront (Tacoma, WA) as both share an industrial history, are sites of preservation and transformation, and have deep connections to rail transport.…
In addition to my exploration of the Ruston Way waterfront, in the coming months I will be visiting other re-constructed industrial sites: Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, High Line in New York, and Benesse Art Projects in Japan. This week I visited Olympic Sculpture Park, a former UNOCAL petroleum transfer and distribution center that has…
Each week a confluence of planned and unplanned events determines what I study and reflect on. In this blog post I share excerpts from my daily notes for this week to make visible some of the activities I engage in to better understand the Ruston Way waterfront. Readers of this blog know that I have…
Restaurants both give us access to water views and distance us from the water. Water is an important aspect of the Ruston Way waterfront (Tacoma, WA); it is a preferred landscape feature that influences how we perceive, experience, and interact with nearby nature (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1998). In a conversation two weeks ago, while eating in…