Bo Zhang visits Seattle Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington. Photo courtesy of Bo Zhang. Shauna Brennan explores Seattle Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington. Photo by Brett Stanfield.
or many, social media influences how they see the world. The same may now be true for a new generation of landscape architects because of the research of Bo Zhang, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Oklahoma State University. “When people post pictures on Instagram, they document their perception of the public space for the researchers with an image,” Zhang said. “Social media users are doing all the work for us, and they’re doing it every day.” Zhang’s research earned him the 2019 American Society of Landscape Architects Professional Honor Award. He is one of only two recipients in the research category this year. “Zhang’s accomplishment is extremely significant within our 62 | COWBOY JOURNAL
profession,” said Michael Holmes, program director and professor of landscape architecture at OSU. “Receiving this honor shows the quality and relevance of Zhang’s research.” Zhang collected and analyzed three years of data from Instagram to study public use of Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington. He said the data provides greater clarity on usage and public perceptions of the famous park. Built in 1976, Freeway Park rests above a section of Interstate 5. The park is the first of its kind and considered a masterpiece in landscape architecture design, Zhang said. Designed to provide an outdoor space in a densely populated downtown Seattle, Freeway Park reconnected surrounding neighborhoods divided by the installation of the
freeway a decade earlier, according to the Freeway Park Association. As the vegetation in the park matured, the unique maze-like architecture of the park became difficult to navigate, Zhang said, and crime increased in the area. As a result, the park is not well liked and goes unused by locals — a dilemma Zhang said is important to address. “People like to present how necessary and good open spaces like these are, or should be, but there is a lack of empirical study on actual usage by the public,” Zhang said. “This is even more so when you are dealing with a park as famous as Freeway Park.” Zhang accepted the challenge to find the usage numbers of the park, he said, although conducting research on such a famous park can be demanding.
