JOHN ZEISEL INQUIRY ex DESIGN Environment / Behavior / Neuroscience in Architecture, Interiors, Landscape, and Planning REVISED EDITION FoREWORD BY JOHN P, EBERHARD DI “W. W. Noxon & Company New York * LondonView of Urban Wildlife Preserve CASE STUDY URBAN WILDLIFE PRESERVE ‘A-university medical center located in Sacramento, California, developed a 4.3- acre Urban Wildlife Preserve in the mid 1990s as a healing garden. The Center for Design Research (CDR) at the University of California, Davis conducted a five-year research, design, construction, and post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of the Preserve. The research informed both the master plan for the entire Preserve and the programming and design of its first phase, a 1.8-acre park completed in 1996 for $385,000. Research People involved in the various phases of the design process included the design team (CDR, HLA Group, and UCDMC Engineers and Architects); medic ter staf, schoolteachers, staff, and cleven classes from the neighboring Marion Anderson School; and community residents. Ideas generated in participatory workshops and surveys used to gain child and adult inpur were summarized in a design program for the Preserve. Research methods employed to program, design, build, and then evaluate the Urban Wildlife Preserve included physical trace analysis, behavior mapping, biological assessment, site analysis, behavioral analysis, and interviews. Observational sive surveys recorded types and numbers of human and animal+ Basic participation in tenant association activities * Informal social relationships with ocher building residents + Formal participation in building leadership, management, and maintenance + Pro-social norms in which other residents ate reported co contribute to the well being of the building and its residents ‘They mined two databases, one that covered Brooklyn, New York, and includ ed data on building conditions (an observed physical trace assessment) and ten ant organizations (an indicator of social context). The other was an NYPD database of reported crimes—including their location. A two-page face-to-face interview was administered to residents in a sample of buildings the city had taken over and each interview was “geocoded” by address soit could be corre- lated to the other data sets via the GIS building-level analysis. A critical deci- sion the team had co make before correlating the GIS data was what “band- width” to use—the size of the GIS physical unit of analysis. Bandwidth can be adjusted to be as large as the entire map—the borough of Brooklyn in this case—or as small as 100 feet. The team decided co set the bandwith for this study at 2,000 feet (the size of ewo ety blocks) for assaults, burglaries, and rob- beries, the erimes they were studying. ‘What did they find and what are the policy implications of these findings? Broadly expressed, they found that when participation in tenant organizations and strong pro-social norms are linked to a strong home ownership program in a building, criminal activity against persons in low-income neighborhood build- ings was definitely reduced. This research combined interview results with data on crime, physical building conditions, and home ownership—mapped and manipulated through GiS analysis. The researchers found that: ‘+ The more female-headed households io a building, the lower the within-building +The mote formerly homeless people living in a building, the higher the within- building crime ‘In tenant-owned and -managed buildings and in buildings owned by community based groups, within-building crime was ess than in buildings still owned by the city + There was less crime in buildings with more residents receiving Social Security + There was higher within-building crime in neighborhoods witha higher rime rate ‘With greater echnic diversity, within-building crime is less + Buildings with greater resident participation in tenant organizati in- building crime. “The following design case study for an Urban Wildlife Preserve demonstrates how a multismethod research approach including physical trace observation ‘can be used not only in research for design but also in evaluating a project’s use. “The methods have been employed together to successfully merge ecological sup- port and human ase in the same outdoor place.Research workshop with children, users and their behavioral traces in the Preserve. After construction was com- pleted, a yearlong post-occupancy evaluation of the project was conducted and the results summarized in a POE report (Bowns and Francis, 1998), The participatory planning process employed to inform design included children at a nearby elementary school, and focused on students’ existing per ceptions of the site and ideal images of what an urban wildlife preserve could be. This resulted in identifying a number of unique program elements. One was to provide an outdoor classroom in the Preserve with “loose pacts” such as fall- cen logs and boulders children could interact with and use to manipulate the ‘A water feature was another surprising and unusual element that would not have been incorporated without the research, Among elementary school childsen, water emerged as the most desired element for the Preserve, appear- ing repeatedly in the students’ drawings and stressed by them in site visits and tours. Yet the design team and administrators had rated water as one of their least desired elements due to concerns over maintenance and safety. The work- shop results convinced the team that these issues could be successfully addressed and a major water feature was included in the first phase of construc- tion. The post-construction POE identified water as one of the most popular elements among users. ‘The resulting Urban Wildlife Preserve balanced creating a habitat for birds and animals with designing a place for schoolchildren, hospital staff, and patients. ‘The Preserve was originally planned as a habitat providing shelter and forage for animals, birds, and insects found on and around the medical center campus and in similar urban areas of the Sacramento region. It consists of a plant com- munity representing the ecological niche in which small animal species ean gen- ‘rally live and thrive that in turn is che framework for built elements, like seat- ing and a fountain, that serve specific human purposes. Seasonal wetlands were created as an open-channel drainage on the Preserve to provide a temporary stop/resting place for migrating birds. The Preserve functions as a relaxing, edu cational, and recreational environment.Research based masterplan. ‘nay aan nto Shel Ono Casco Caen Construction plan for Phase IThe final master plan divides the site into four quadrants: an entry gar dn, a cultural “ruin” area, a habitat pond, and an outdoor education area for the adjacent school. The Preserve's main entry garden, located atthe north end of the site, has formal landscaping that transitions from the edjacent buildings to a meditative garden space centered on a fountain, Future plans include a “ruin” area featuring the arch colonnade of the former California State Fairgrounds stable building, honoring the site's cultural history. Lawns and gar: dens surrounding the arches serve as a ceremonial gathering place for staf patients, community members, and schoolchildsen, and a habitat pond is a per- manent water source for seasonal wildlife. An arroyo of rocks and gravel con rect the pond to the main entry and accommodate storm water runoff in the winter months. [An outdoor educational area in the Preserve is located immediately adja cent to a local schoolyard, a gate in the school’ fence providing access for stu dents and teachers. Envisioned as an outdoor classroom and gathering place for formal and informal activities, i isthe core of this open-air room. Surrounded by orchard trees and school garden plots and dominated by an existing Deodora cedar, the plan reflects requests the students expressed in the work- shop for an edible landscape and retention of existing trees. The outdoor class- room serves as the base from which groups of children can spread out to inter act, explore, and engage in educational opportunities of the Preserve. The whole Preserve is designed for explorative and educational interactions. Outdoor classroom,(Child in outdoor classroom, discovers bugs [Natural elements in preserve In E-B literature there has been a marked increase in empirical studies and design guidelines for healing gardens and landscapes (Gerlach-Spriggs ct. al, 1998; Cooper, Marcus and Barnes, 1999; Tyson, 1998; Francis et. al, 1994). The Urban Wildlife Preserve demonstrates clearly how research can be used successfully to inform design of an urban landscape. Without the research that informed the participatory process for the project, a much more formal and less user-friendly design would have developed. The participatory process served to educate both designers and clients to a holistic and naturalistic approach to design, Evaluation To guarantee even greater success in the final design, the client supported a yearlong post-occupancy evaluation after construction of Phase I. POE methods‘employed included behavior mapping of the site's uses, recording of behavior traces, a questionnaice mailed to 500 individuals in the community surround: ing the Medical Center, in-depth interviews with six teachers and staff and wich eight local school students, on-site interviews of users, as well as biological inventories of the site. In-depth interviews were carried out with client and design team members to assess their perception of the project in use ‘The POE identified successes and problems with the first phase of the design and areas for potential redesign or improved management of the Preserve. For example, the POF documented that the site worked well as natu- [mr cetmouietey ore Anrn Ov ne A o ] onmerremtcast SEGRE oacuneTen omen 7 ne 86) Behavior map. - fem * se _ i Fee te " ESS. i Eee fe feese thee tee ‘ i eaey ; hes, soy = POE observed use activities graphWildflower meadow. ral habitat, is well used and loved by the local school children and teachers, but is under-utilized by hospital staff. Increased outreach and information dissemi- nation to the larger Medical Center community resulted. The POE data ‘employed in Phase II provides informacion useful for others designing natural landscapes as healing environments. In sum, the Urban Wildlife Preserve robustly balances human and animal use with plant ecology in a single area. Without the time spent and money invested in design research, participation, and evaluation, the project would not have achieved these goals so successfully. The Urban Wildlife Preserve Project js open to the public seven days a week and is located on Second Avenue, east of Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, California, This case study was drawn from the work of Mark Francis, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of California, Davis and Caru Bowns, Department of Landscape Architecture, Penn State University. In 1999 the project was awarded a National Mert Award for Research from the American Society of Landscape Architects. OVERVIEW ‘A good way to begin almost any E-B research project is to walk around the research site looking for physical traces of behavior. It is easy to do, can be done uunobreusively, and provides investigators with rich imagery to build on in solv=