Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

As we conceive of public space, what is present in our conceptions? What is added and what is left out? The aim of this paper presentation is to question the nature and role in architectural park and public space renderings and how they may serve as an early sign or intent to gentrify and displace/replace one population with another. Spaces in urban locations have steadily found ways to erase people, particular people of color. Waves of Gentrification since the 1970s have resulted in dramatic demographic shifts in vibrant cultural destination in various cities with examples of displacement. New Urbanism has been an approach that has sought to make cities smaller with a focus on decreasing the need to commute from one location to another, but this has resulted in people of color not being as welcomed in those new urban centers through loitering laws (and “stop and frisk”). The latest is trend of cities is towards “Placemaking” that centers on urban planning initiatives on public spaces that seem to either erase histories of color or celebrate their contribution in absence of their presence. Humans have a strong sense of Place, especially feelings for the distinctiveness of particular places. Whether this meaning-inscribed Place is of the built, natural, or virtual environment, Places reflect our histories, beliefs, ideals, backgrounds, and policies. By examining the intersections of Race with other categories of difference, such as ethnicity, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and ability, the intent here is to foster an ability to engage in self-reflection on how racial and ethnic differences/disparities have shaped social backgrounds, everyday lives, and even imagined futures in built, natural, and virtual environments. The above stated aim is to confront the pervasive nature of Race and ethnicity via prejudicial thoughts and discriminatory actions through the development and presentation of park and public space renderings that may have precipitated the erection of structural inequalities in society and environmental policies. Further through a visual analysis of those renderings can we begin to find ways that Place meanings can be confronted, reconciled, or even redeveloped to imagine a very different, conciliatory, and mutually positive interaction between categories of Race and “Otherings”. Thus, rather than focusing at length on any one racial and ethnic group, the presentations offers an analytical frameworks to promote comparative thoughts and discussions between nine selected cases of architectural renderings at different locations and Places of meaning in the built and natural environment.