ABSTRACT
How can designers and planners create and manage public spaces in neighborhoods experiencing rapid demographic shifts? This question is about more than whether the immediate recreational needs of diverse populations are being addressed. Planners and designers should be concerned with the meaning that spaces have for the people who use them and ways to preserve and enhance meaning as neighborhoods evolve. While urban planners often attempt to address meaning through urban design, they have not yet developed a systematic approach for exploring the significance of community spaces. Other disciplines have developed systematic approaches, offering an opportunity to expand the tools practitioners use to understand, plan for, and manage places.
