Document Type

Professional Plan Capstone

Original Publication Date

2022

Client

City of Richmond Parks and Recreation Department, Virginia Community Voice

Location

Richmond, Virginia

Date of Submission

May 2022

Abstract

This plan seeks to demonstrate the potential of immersive technologies, specifically augmented reality, in strengthening public engagement and enabling the collaborative, community led design of local green spaces.

Community engagement, while now a focal point of urban planning education, is still implemented in uneven strategies that often further distance the public from the process and understanding of city vision; new paradigms of outreach and community-government knowledge sharing must be explored to overcome common constraints of time, expertise, and language that prevent public participation in projects that directly impact their health. Immersive urban planning offers a way to bring people into the local process above and beyond traditional approaches by providing tools for autonomous exploration and imagination of public space, particularly neighborhood pocket parks and green spaces.

In this project, one site designated for future city park development in Richmond’s South side Windsor neighborhood (currently known as “Broad Rock Creek Park”) acts as a pilot location for a mobile-based augmented reality land-use planning experiment. At the park and sites in the surrounding walk shed area, community members will be approached to use this technology to visualize, problem solve, and design their ideal future green space by overlaying virtually represented landscape features onto the physical space. Using community survey responses and an AR landscape architecture design tool, user experiences and final design outputs will be analyzed to determine perceptions of the tool and common goals for the future park. This project will serve as an important steppingstone in transforming community participation by offering a tool to facilitate design made by and for neighborhood members.

Rights

© Maria Tova Enriquez Dougherty

Is Part Of

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Recommended Citation

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

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