SOCIAL SPACES

OSU professor changes the world of landscape architecture

For 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 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.

Shauna Brennan explores Seattle Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington.

Photo by Brett Stanfield.

"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.

To collect data to study park usage in the past, Zhang would have had to travel to the park and observe human behavior regularly, which can be expensive and time consuming, he said.

Today, social media offers a quick and easy way to access an enormous amount of public data, which is why Zhang chose to use Instagram in his research, he said.

Zhang, OSU students and his research collaborator, Yang Song, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, searched Instagram posts using a geographical tag, gathering posts associated with Freeway Park, he said.

“By looking at the posts, we can look at what activities people do in the park,” Zhang said. “We can see their facial expressions, their focus and whether they’re coming to the park in groups or alone.”

More than 3,300 Instagram posts from more than 2,000 users were collected for the research on Freeway Park, Zhang said. Then, he analyzed and categorized the data.

Zhang said the goal was to answer the following three questions: How is the park used as a public space? What are the users’ emotional ties to the built environment of the park? How should social media data be used to understand site-scale landscape architecture design issues?

Jacob Krafft, Zhang’s former undergraduate research assistant and 2020 graduate of the landscape architecture program at OSU, said the hardest part was categorizing the data.

“I looked at each and every photo for this project,” Krafft said. “Because we were documenting emotions and faces as well as activities nobody else has done before, categorizing had to be done manually.”

The ASLA Awards Jury called Zhang’s research innovative by allowing designers to see their work literally through the eyes of the public.

“The world is changing through technology and social media,” Holmes said. “Zhang’s willingness and desire to understand how that change is impacting our profession and the lives of our citizens is commendable.”

CHELSEA STANFIELD OAKHURST, CALIFORNIA