After some feedback from my pp professor and a few hours of chatting with classmates, friends, and family members, I think I am finally reaching a really interesting jumping off point. YAYYYYYYYYYYYFKJSHKJDHSKJDHKSHDKJSHDKJSHDFKS:FH"O THANK GOODNESS.
Here is a quick straight-from-my-brain description of what I think could be my project area:
I am interested in the forgotten or bare space in urban fringe or inner city urban developments. I am especially interested in minimizing edge effects between neighborhoods, for people and non-humans. My professor mentioned I should start researching classic greenways and garden cities, (Letchworth or Welwyn), think back to our travels through Copenhagen and Almere, as well as looking into the haphazard non-planned green space that pops up in many US cities (Los Angeles around the river, or Brooklyn Bridge Park). I have started to research in that direction and also foresee an actual direction/idea coming into play. Thinking about the unplanned nature of a lot of "parks" and chatting with my dad I was reminded of the unplanned (kind-of?) nature of blank space in many cities as a result of the recession and foreclosures (specifically rust-belt cities). I am now going to start researching ideas surrounding the foreclosure of homes, what happens to the spaces left behind, if there are any more economical ways of demolishing these homes, as it is costing cities and will cost cities billions of dollars to just create blank space. (how blank is it....really?) This also made me think a little about New Orleans and the bare space left behind in the lower 9th ward, and how any solutions created could possibly also be applied to areas after disaster. It could be a way of finding a positive in a negative situation or using a bad situation to then create highly improved connections and new opportunities within city plans of yore. In essence, take the standard web setup of many cities, look at the in between spots, and create a new/improve on a system that will turn the web into a net.
Some other questions I will also begin to ask as I dive into precedent studies and lots of reading are if patches are effective in changing the habitat for non-humans? Is this enough or do we have to rethink the field of urban space (i.e. all urban space as potential habitat and greenspace) by radically re-imagining what we think of as park etc? (those are both from my professor and I think could lead to really cool discoveries)
So thats where I am right now...about 4 days later than I should be, but hey at least I got somewhere. I am working on my own schedule, cause Capstone is all about me in the end, right?
-Kammeron