Caring public space: Advancing justice through intergenerational public space design and planning

ABSTRACT

Intergenerational public spaces respond to the needs of both youth and older adults and actively foster interaction, engagement, and understanding between generations. We consider how incorporating an ethic of care into intergenerational public space planning and design could support ongoing practices of care for people and places. We present a framework for a revised approach to intergenerational public space design that centers the practices and potential of care throughout a project’s scope, context, process, practice, and evaluation. Drawing on a study of a new pocket park in Los Angeles, we operationalize this quinquepartite framework to demonstrate how incorporating care can support participatory processes, material infrastructures, and programming interventions that advance justice in intergenerational public spaces, particularly in disinvested communities. We argue that an ethic of care exhibits strong compatibility with the principles of intergenerationality, and ought to be made more central in efforts to plan, design, and program urban public spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Care
• urban design
• parks
• older adults
• youth

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dana Cuff, Gustavo Leclerc, Maite Zubiaurre, Gibson Bastar, and Zoe Frumin who each contributed to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University of California Los Angeles [Transdisciplinary Research Acceleration Grant]; Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Claire Nelischer

Claire Nelischer is a doctoral candidate in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles interested in public space, civic participation, and urban design. Claire’s research centers on questions of spatial justice in the production and management of urban parks and public spaces, and the role of planners, designers, and communities in shaping shared public environments and outcomes. Claire is also a doctoral fellow at cityLAB-UCLA.

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is a distinguished professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles and a core faculty member of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative. Her research focuses on the public environment of the city, its physical representation, aesthetics, social meaning and impact on the urban resident. Dr. Loukaitou-Sideris has authored many articles and books, including most recently Just Urban Design: The Struggle for a Public City (MIT Press, 2022), Pandemic in the Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery (Springer Nature, 2022), Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities (Routledge, 2021) and Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining (MIT Press, 2020).

Gus Wendel

Gus Wendel is a doctoral candidate in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gus’s research examines urban planning’s role in the formation of sexual space in Los Angeles, and the ways in which planning upholds gender, race, and class hierarchies within sexual minority communities. Gus is also the associate director of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative.