Landscape and Participation in 1960s New York

In Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture, edited by Kenny Cupers | 2013

For landscape architects working in New York City, the 1960s were a critical time of experimentation in increasing people’s participation in the production and use of space. 

Landscape architects played a crucial mediating role as proponents of new approaches to urban design that sought to address problems of identification by giving citizens a greater degree of creative agency in urban space.  This required correcting the conception of the city’s population as comprised of homogeneous users of space, and learning what it meant to work with a heterogeneous urban public.  At the level of landscape, these new approaches integrated individual experience and self determination while also fostering group identification as a path to citizenship.

---

Find the book here︎︎︎

---

Public Space, Writing

---

︎︎︎  ︎︎︎