Many cities have replaced abandoned transportation infrastructure with an elevated park to gain increased economic benefits by developing old fabric. By following this trend, most studies to this point have only focused on the economic rewards from the replacement rather than its uses in the real world. This study aims to understand how park visitors use elevated parks through a park visitors' survey. The authors selected three representative elevated parks-the High Line in New York City, the 606 in Chicago, and the High Bridge in Farmville-for the study and asked visitors about their activities, perceived benefits, and satisfaction. Results indicate that the 606, a mixed-use elevated park, allows visitors to engage in high-intensity activity, the High Line as an elevated urban park provides visitors public arts and gardens, and the High Bridge as an elevated green park provided visitors with a connection to unique natural scenery. This study, as the first to compare three different elevated parks, contributes to an understanding of who uses elevated parks and how they use elevated parks.

The purpose of this study is to explore the aspects of “gentrification” and “degentrification” other than economic factors. To this end, this study focused on the gentrification situations occurring before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in the Itaewon area, South Korea, by using semantic network analysis. We analyzed news articles on the gentrification phenomenon in the Itaewon area reported in South Korea. As a result, gentrification in the Itaewon area is divided into four stages. The first stage of gentrification (2010~2014) is initial stage of gentrification. Gentrification stage 2 (2015~2017) is the period of commercialization as a gentrification growth stage. The first stage of degentrification (2018~2019) is the maturation period of gentrification. The second stage of degentrification (2019~30 June 2020) is the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results confirm the existing theoretical frameworks while building a more nuanced definition through operationalizing gentrification and degentrification. As with the etymology of the term, the degentrification phenomenon can only be revealed when the gentrification phenomenon is prominently displayed. This study has an implication in that it tried to phenomenologically examine the specific phenomenon of the next stage of gentrification through the term “degentrification”.

The purpose of this study is to derive the subjective perception about COVID-19 of public space employees and to identify the characteristics of COVID-19 related issues. By using the Q-method, 24 workers in four public spaces located in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA were selected as P-Sample and Q-Sorting was conducted. Three types of perceptions were identified; Type 1 (Expansion of Non-Face-To-Face Service), Type 2 (Expansion of Professional Labor), and Type 3 (Expansion of Welfare Service Type). All three types recognized that when a confirmed case occurs in a public space, the right and safety of users or communities to know is important, and accurate information must be provided, because it is necessary to prevent the spread of infection. Above all, these results show another side of the COVID-19 situation, as the participants in this study are currently in charge of various tasks such as quarantine and service provision in public spaces. This study can be used as basic data for policy response and system improvement of public spaces in the event of an infectious disease such as COVID-19 in the future.

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This study examines food deserts in Roanoke, Virginia in the United States and explores ways to address food insecurity by utilizing vacant lots. In the State of Virginia, there are 200 food desert census tracts. Twenty-nine of those tracts have 100% low access to a supermarket; four of those tracts are located in Roanoke (Chittum, 2011). Like many areas in Appalachia, Roanoke has suffered urban decline and has lost population and subsequently lost businesses including grocery stores, thus creating food deserts with a disproportionate impact on low-income communities.Currently, tract-based food desert data is too coarse to understand the distribution of food deserts in relation to community demographics and other site-scale factors. This study uses census block scale data to specifically map food deserts in more detail at the neighborhood scale. In the case of Roanoke and its thirty unique neighborhoods, addressing vacant lots requires a methodology that considers the unique qualities of each neighborhood in order to understand the impact of vacant lots in each area and how best to address the challenge.Findings from this study show that this methodology provides community residents and landscape architects a systematic way to analyze, plan, and implement strategies to develop spaces that provide access to fresh food and increase social interaction while reducing the visual impact of vacancy. The authors envision this framework as an early component to a community engaged process that recognizes vacancy patterns and honors community agency and identity in the development of site-specific design strategies.