About the Project

• Design and test a hybrid methodology that  integrates social media analytics and digital data collection methods with qualitative interviews and design workshops with young migrants to better understand their perspectives on public space usage.
  
• Increase the applicability and long-term sustainability of immigrant-led participation in participatory design. This includes providing support to professionals and associations at the forefront  of urban development through the creation of a crowdsourcing tool.
  
• Develop an application  that informs alternative land-based strategies, such as urban agroforestry, permaculture, or the integration of traditional intergenerational knowledge from immigrant communities in land management practices.
  
• Frame new concepts for sustainable public space design and management that  address both cultural considerations and climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

• The first IRB protocol includes the qualitative study (interviews and observation) and was modified to incorporate recruitment through advertising and the survey about memories. It also has had minor amendments to change the team members and being able to ask participants for their email for future participation in other related projects
  
• The second IRB protocol was specially designed for the social media data study. Since we are collecting personally identifiable information, additional security protocols and de-identification processes need to be in place to protect participants.
  
• The third IRB protocol is about the generative AI study. 

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• Participatory Workshop
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• Qualitative Interview
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• AI Generated Image Tools
  
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• Online Survey & Data Donation
  
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• Fieldwork / Site Visiting
  
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1. Gathered significant feedback from the immigrant community, focusing our research on their usage preferences and how these behaviors intertwine with memories, fostering a sense of belonging.
2. Gained insights into the diverse utilization of public spaces among immigrant groups, particularly Hispanic and East Asian communities. The research findings so far demonstrate that obtaining data on memories of preferred public spaces in the participants’ country of origin and LA can allow a better understanding of how they could potentially experience a sense of belonging in the newly designed park. 
3. Second-round interpretations revealed the importance and issues related to sense of belonging and conviviality.  
4. The knowledge obtained from interviews, although innovative in terms of how young immigrants “spatialize translocality,” one of our main research questions, is not specific enough for the design process. Their generic use of spatial concepts and vague use of the word “nature” necessitated a shift to leverage AI to help translate immigrants’ translocal identity preferences to more specific landscape design opportunities.
5. The decision to shift the outcome of the research, initially a crowdsourcing application, to a collaborative interaction process among participants and designers through generative AI promises a more significant impact if applied in standard participatory processes since it will help designers move beyond confirmation of program or activity distribution, the most common responses in participatory design; it will also embrace decisions that build a sense of belonging and reinforce conditions that allow conviviality.
   
6. Finally, to continue with reliable data, the crowdsourcing method of shared public social media data will guarantee a deeper understanding of immigrants’ preferences by including simultaneously verbal and visual data that responds potentially better to design demands. 
   
7. Proof of initial impact of the research on the design process of Studio-MLA, especially regarding how they are reconsidering context parks, and reflected on their recent study on the interaction of cultural expression of ethnic groups and public space in the area.
   
8. Data from social media is often demonized because of potential harmful use. However, they could provide significant insights into how people behave and their personal history, which can inform design decisions. Data donation from social media can scale up the collection of the inner world of stakeholders, which can result in spaces much more grounded in their histories and needs. There are studies on using big data for landscape design, but these opportunities have not been explored in depth or in the context of adapting public spaces for immigrants.
   
9. Successful submission of the abstract with the title “Matters of Representation: Deciphering participatory design thinking patterns with immigrants exploring AI as a tool for co-design practices” to the Conference of Educators of Landscape Architecture [CELA], September 2023. Abstract accepted for presentation at the Conference of Educators of Landscape Architecture in March, St. Louis, Misouri.