Skip to page navigation menu Skip entire header
Brown University
Skip 13 subheader links

Socio-environmental succession of Providence greenspace: implications of history for contemporary urban land use

Description

Abstract:
Parks, playgrounds, vacant lots, and other forms of open urban land serve a variety of social and ecological functions that reflect both historical and contemporary societal, political, and economic forces within a municipality. As neighborhoods change in response to urban deindustrialization, land use often changes in response to the processes of decay or revitalization. Demographics may influence the size, quality, and use patterns of public greenspaces located within a particular neighborhood as well as the concentration of vacant and/or underused spaces. This project seeks to better understand the contemporary implications of the volatile industrial history of Providence, Rhode Island, by collecting descriptive statistics on all types of open urban land contained within two case-study neighborhoods, Elmwood and Elmhurst. In doing so, we may find associations between historic land development and present-day land use, and may potentially discover correlations between the types of urban greenspaces found within a neighborhood and that respective neighborhood's demographic composition. Our goals include: 1) Develop a comprehensive geo-located database of open spaces in two distinct neighborhoods; 2) Characterize the topography, neighborhood context, and formal and informal social uses of open spaces; 3) Interpret data in the context of selected socio-economic indicators

Citation

Acosta, Kailani, Cole, Cassandra, Montieth, Lauren, et al., "Socio-environmental succession of Providence greenspace: implications of history for contemporary urban land use " (2015). I-Team UTRAs: Interdisciplinary Team Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards, Summer Research Symposium. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.26300/s9bf-w024

Relations

Collections:

  • I-Team UTRAs: Interdisciplinary Team Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards

    In 2014, the Office of the Dean of the College started a new faculty-initiated Interdisciplinary Team UTRA (I-Team UTRA) that supports group projects of one or more faculty and two to six students. Students in selected teams will receive a …

    ...
  • Summer Research Symposium

    Each year, Brown University showcases the research of its undergraduates at the Summer Research Symposium. More than half of the student-researchers are UTRA recipients, while others receive funding from a variety of Brown-administered and national programs and fellowships and go …
    ...