Urban humanities as a framework for the study of public space during the pandemic

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has revealed limitations in traditional public space research methods. There is a need for new approaches to study and intervene during times of crisis. Interdisciplinary urban humanities approaches can help researchers respond to pandemic public space dynamics. This article develops a framework linking urban humanities practices – thick mapping, filmic sensing, and digital storytelling – to the production of space at multiple scales. A case study is presented of a course that employed these methods and proposed speculative design interventions to accommodate street vending, skateboarding, and unhoused people in the Westlake neighbourhood of Los Angeles.

KEYWORDS:

• Public space
• COVID-19
• urban humanities
• methods
• everyday urbanism
• Los Angeles

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Dr. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Dr. Gustavo Leclerc, who led the spring 2021 Urban Humanities Initiative capstone course at UCLA from which we drew this case. We also thank our classmates in this course, whose ideas and insights inspired this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).