Designing the Parks
Part II:
The Present and Future of Park Planning and Design
Today’s designers, planners, and managers of public parks face an array of competing issues and opportunities, yet they lack integrated guidance to address these challenges effectively and creatively. Designing the Parks Part I, (Charlottesville, May, 2008) assessed lessons learned through scholarly examination of park planning and design history. Building upon this body of information, Designing the Parks, Part II (San Francisco Bay Area, December 2008) will focus on contemporary challenges and opportunities and will produce a set of design and planning principles to guide future park policy, development, and management over the next century. Designing the Parks Part II offers several opportunities through the web and on site in the San Francisco Bay Area to help create this design future.
In San Francisco, over three days, participants will analyze the present and consider the future of park planning and design. The goal is to bring together forward thinking designers, planners, park and resource managers, scholars, preservationists, conservationists, social scientists, students, and other professionals who understand the critical issues that must be addressed in public park design and planning to maintain their relevancy and sustainability in the 21st century.
The end product will be a set of draft design principles that will inform the policy, planning, design, and management of public parks today and into the future. The facilitated workshop will consist of plenary speakers, short presentations, case studies, and work sessions organized around three tracks:
While Designing the Parks, Part I - Charlottesville was structured as a more traditional academic conference, Designing the Parks, Part II - San Francisco will follow an interactive, product-oriented format designed to create a visionary set of design and planning principles.
Participants at the San Francisco Bay Area event will work in facilitated teams discussing critical issues, challenges, and opportunities facing public parks related to each of the three tracks. To allow cross pollination of ideas and analysis, the work groups will have periodic opportunities to report back to all of the conferees. Through this process, the teams will extract key concepts and principles, challenge current park planning and design protocols, and envision new approaches to the development of public parks in the future. By the end of day three, participants will have produced a powerful and unified preliminary set of design and planning principles. Following the conference, a smaller interdisciplinary team will refine these preliminary statements to produce a draft set of guiding principles that will be shared for comment with all of the conference participants and others interested in the future of park design. The ultimate goal of both conferences is to provide guidance that assists managers, planners, and constituents of parks at all levels in resolving the potential conflicts that can result from the multiple challenges and requirements that they face as they plan for today and the future.
Those who do not participate in San Francisco will have the opportunity to contribute to an ongoing, web-based dialogue about park policy, planning and design. The ideas generated will help finalize the agenda and themes for the San Francisco work session and will provide a framework for an ongoing discussion as the draft principles are reviewed and tested.
Participating in Designing the Parks Part II
There are four ways to participate
- Attending Designing the Parks Workshop in San Francisco Bay Area
Space is limited and by request only - Preparing a Position Paper or Case Study
Attendance in San Francisco not required - Submitting a Reading List Entry
Attendance in San Francisco not required - Participating in the Online Forum
Attendance in San Francisco not required
