Emergent Public Space: A Framework For New Green Urban Commons In San Diego
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Date
2017-07-09
Authors
Oneal, Keegan
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Abstract
Emergence can be defined as “the movement from low-level rules to higherlevel
sophistication” (Johnson, 2001). Emergence helps to explain how
systems develop and change, and there is a growing body of literature where
emergence theory is used to explain urban environments as Complex Adaptive
Systems (CAS). A challenge remains, however, to translate our understanding
of emergence and CAS into operative guidelines for the design of resilient
urban environments.
Several landscape architectural theories including Landscape Urbanism,
Ecological Urbanism, and the writing of Rod Barnett have endeavored to
reconcile our understanding of CAS with the act of designing urban landscapes.
This project builds upon this discourse by applying Barnett’s description of
emergence theory to the design of specific landscape phenomena called green
urban commons (GUC). These niche landscape phenomena loosen existing
institutional structures and allow novel forms of land use to materialize
(Radywyl and Biggs 2013). Related to the nascent practice of iterative urbanism,
GUCs take various forms and o en involve the conversion of underutilized
urban land into productive community assets. These landscapes are iterated
and changed over time by stakeholders, and temporary land uses o en
transition to more fixed, institutionalized change.
The goal of this pragmatic research-through-designing project is to encourage
the creation of GUCs in San Diego’s Mid-City and Southeastern communities as
a means to improve resident quality of life and urban resilience. The explicit
application of emergence theory is presented as a way to enhance the landscape
quality of GUCs, and a framework is proposed to encourage and expedite the
development of new GUCs on city-owned vacant land in San Diego. To assess
the scalability of the framework’s prescriptive recommendations, portions of
the framework process are applied to three vacant urban lots in the Mid-City/
Southeastern San Diego study area. The speculative impacts of these case
studies are then discussed in light of Barnett’s criteria for civic landscapes that
exhibit emergent characteristics.
Description
178 pages. Examining committee chair: Liska Chan