Living and Securitizing Parklets in San Francisco

2010年，旧金山规划部将两个停车位改造成一个小型休闲公园，试图增加城市的公共空间和人际互动，并支持当地商业。这个临时人行道的延伸，被称为“公园”，刺激了全市范围内的公园建筑运动，后来发展到全球。今天，公园形式是全球著名的人行道改造。小公园始终是公共空间，但由赞助企业或组织进行清洁，证券化和参加。本研究旨在研究旧金山小公园的生活体验。这项研究主要关注的是，对于居住在小公园内和附近的不同社会群体（例如，按阶级、种族、身体状况和性别区分）来说，对小公园空间进行证券化和“清洁”的努力的细节和效果。我更感兴趣的是这些小公园如何体现、产生或并列出居住者对城市的看法。该研究将遵循以下主要研究问题：不同的人和演员如何体验、生活和竞争旧金山的小公园？对于不同社会群体（根据种族、阶级、身体状况、性别、住房状况和假定的商业能力而区分）的人来说，旧金山的小公园的“维护”和证券化带来了什么？旧金山小公园的生活经验传达了什么关于证券化对当代人行道的影响？在撰写本文时，本研究主要建立在三个学术文献的基础上。第一部分包括有关旧金山历史和当今城市景观的文献。我研究这些文献是为了确保这项研究建立在对旧金山的历史理解基础上。第二个文学体涉及无形空间边界的制造、操作、控制和挑战。在这里，我的目标是与唐·米切尔、杰夫·罗斯、乔丹·坎普和安妮·麦克林托克等学者进行交流。这些文学作品被用来思考公园空间及其居住者所包围、交叉或挑战的空间边界。第三个文学体被用来提供理论视角，让人们思考小公园是如何“自我思考”的，或者换句话说，它采用了什么样的美学。这一领域的主要学者包括Ryan Centner、Asher Ghertner和Annette Miae Kim。我用这些文献来思考公园在公共人行道上扮演的角色，以及感知到的自我认同可能带来的后果。这项研究将以参与式观察和半结构化访谈以及口述历史的形式建立在民族志田野调查的基础上。此外，还将分析一些档案资料，如有关公园的规划文件和公开听证会和会议的录音/会议记录。此外，我还希望采访直接与小公园打交道的公职人员。我使用这些方法来全面了解小公园是如何生活的，理解的，以及可能的争议。我计划在整个博士课程中研究女权主义认识论和方法。

In 2010, San Francisco's Planning Department converted two parking spots into a small leisure park in an attempt to increase public space and human interaction in the city, and support local businesses. This temporary sidewalk extension, called a 'parklet', came to spur a city-wide, and later on global, movement of parklet-building. Today, the parklet form is a globally celebrated sidewalk-remake. Parklets are always public space, yet cleaned, securitized and attended to by a sponsoring business or organization. This research aims at studying the lived experience of San Francisco's parklets. The research is primarily interested in the particulars of carrying out, and the effects of efforts to securitize and 'clean' the parklet space, for different social groups (for example differentiated by class, race, ablebodiedness and gender) that live and dwell in and nearby parklets. I am furthermore interested in how the Parklets embody, generate or juxtapose dwellers' ideas about the city the parklet appears in. The research will follow these primary research questions: o How are parklets in San Francisco experienced, lived and contested by different people and actors? o What does the 'maintenance' and securitization of parklets in San Francisco entail and result in for people of different social groups (differentiated along perceived race, class, ablebodiedness, gander, housing status and assumed commercial capability)? o What does the lived experience of parklets in San Francisco convey about the effects of securitizing efforts in the contemporary sidewalk at large? At the time of writing, this research builds on primarily three bodies of academic literature. The first includes literature on San Francisco's history and present day urban landscape. I engage with this literature to ensure that the research builds on an historically grounded understanding of San Francisco. The second body of literature engages with the making, operating, controlling, and challenging of invisible spatial boundaries. Here, I aim to engage with scholars such as Don Mitchell, Jeff Rose, Jordan Camp and Anne McClintock. This body of literature is employed to think through what spatial borders surround, intersect or are challenged by the parklet space and its dwellers. The third body of literature is employed to provide theoretical lenses for thinking about how the parklet "thinks about itself", or said differently, what aesthetics it employs. Primary scholars in this body of work include Ryan Centner, Asher Ghertner, and Annette Miae Kim. I engage with this literature to think through what role the parklet is perceived to play in the public sidewalk, and what consequences that perceived self-identity may have. The research will build on ethnographic fieldwork in the form of participatory observations and semi-structured interviews as well as oral histories. Furthermore, some archival data such as planning documents regarding parklets and recordings/minutes from public hearings and meetings will be analyzed. I additionally hope to interview public officials that work with parklets directly. I employ these methods to gain a full understanding of how parklets are lived, understood and possibly contested. I plan to engage with feminist epistemology and methods throughout the entirety of the PhD.