A Post-Design Evaluation Of Park Design And Usage: Cal Anderson And Judkins Park (Seattle, WA)

Abstract

Parks provide physical, mental, and environmental benefits, but still remain underutilized. To understand how designers’ intentions to consider community needs influence park usage, this post-design evaluation looks at the design intentions for two parks in Seattle, WA, Cal Anderson and Judkins Park. The design intentions for each park, found through face-to-face interviews and researching archival documents, were assessed and contrasted to the needs of the community and park usage. It was found that although both parks were designed with community needs in mind, that design isn’t the only factor that influence high intensity usage of a park. Additionally, there was high usage of flexible, unprogrammed spaces, suggesting that there is merit in allowing parks to evolve naturally, without the need for design intervention. Lastly, the study provides a methodological recommendation for future post-design evaluations of using a holistic method of a questionnaire distributed to the community and an observational analysis as a successful way to measure park usage.