Carolin Mees Livres

Focusing on community gardens in New York City's low-income neighborhoods, the book explores their evolution since the 1970s as vital public spaces. These gardens, featuring self-built structures, reflect the cultural backgrounds and preferences of urban residents, showcasing their participatory design efforts. Despite challenges from conflicting land use interests and shifting resident groups, these gardens persist as essential elements of the urban landscape. The text advocates for their inclusion in future urban planning, emphasizing the community's desire for shared land use.

Commonly used and designed open spaces are anchor points in the city and a possible response to the consequences of urbanization and climate change, as well as to the presence of social and cultural differences. This book explores the role of add-ons in urban open spaces: specific components for the cultivation of food, water, energy, and material production, as well as for economic and social resources. The book asks how these added elements create more resilient and sustainable urban spaces, by responding to the needs and preferences of residents and by forming connections to the surrounding urban environment. Scientific texts and opinion papers of international experts provide a unique interdisciplinary discourse depicting the diversity of add-ons from a range of micro- and macro-perspectives, and offering strategies for collaborative, multi-coded urban spaces at the intersection of architecture and open space planning.