Designed experiments: new approaches to studying urban ...

AJ Felson and STA PickettDesigned experiments in urban ecosystemscreating aesthetically pleasing amenities and enhancingurban space. For designers, the approach could provide anew design paradigm that builds on past movements,including modernism or the picturesque. Infusing educationaland aesthetic qualities into urban experimentationwill raise its public value and help bring identity to otherwiseoften inconspicuous research sites.Play a useful role in the citySuch experiments would create design solutions thatadapt to site context and constraints, and address themultifaceted conditions of cities. They would function aspart of the city fabric, for example by improving safety,facilitating circulation, and creating park spaces. In thisway they would play a social or functional role, thusbecoming a conspicuous and lasting part of the city.Allow research in multiple locationsChanneling experiments through urban design projects willhelp spread research sites throughout the city. Exploitingthe range of conditions available in the metropolis isalready one of the goals that ecologists recognize throughsuch approaches as urban–rural gradients (McDonnell andPickett 1993; Table 1). Designed experiments take this furtherby making all designed buildings, infrastructure andlandscapes accessible as potential sites for experimentation.Provide a public identity for urban ecologyInserting simple experimental units into multiple researchsites would help produce a set of common experimentaldesigns that become recognizable figures in everyday landscapes.These informational, functional, and aestheticadditions to the city should foster public appreciation andunderstanding. This, in turn, could help to reduce vandalism,encourage public participation in sustaining andmaintaining the experiments, and increase demand forsimilar experiments elsewhere. Public involvement mayalso be essential for tackling obstacles such as highly fragmentedprivate land ownership or regulatory controls.Reintegrate ecological processes into citiesDesigned experiments could reintroduce biological activity,such as enhanced vegetative structure, increased soilmicrobial activity, or improved riparian function, to urbanareas. This infusion of ecological functions into urbandesign practices, could ultimately result in a “retrofitting”of urban environments to include more biologically diversesystems and to better accommodate ecological functions. ConclusionsDesigned experiments are a potential means for ecologiststo investigate urban ecology collaboratively with architects,landscape architects, and urban designers. Thisinterdisciplinary effort raises the potential for ecologiststo become involved in the actual design process of urbanareas. This allows the infusion of experimental goals andmonitoring approaches into the projects. Such experimentswould take advantage of designed urban components,including buildings, streetscapes, parks, and infrastructure,to establish further research sites. Functioningboth for research and urban design, experiments willblend quantitative analysis with aesthetics and function,providing a cultural identity for experimental research,creating usable spaces for people, and contributing tourban evolution. Through the effort of creating and thenstudying these spaces, ecologists will accumulate quantitativedata, which can then be fed back into new experimentaldesign proposals. Over time, designed experimentshave the potential to deepen our understanding ofhuman impacts on biological processes and to improvethe ecological function of human-dominated landscapes.Designed experiments expand traditional ecologicalgoals to include the new role of urban place-making.Merging ecology with design will help engage ecologists inattempts to structure and maintain urban environments.Focusing on the creation of urban ecological forms thatintegrate traditional research with the functional and aestheticdesign of urban space, ecologists will contribute tourban processes and growth. As in adaptive managementused in forests and fisheries (Likens et al. 1995; Holling etal. 1996), urban ecologists could use designed experimentsas a management tool to predict, monitor, and regulateurban ecological patterns and processes. Through a crossdisciplinaryexchange, these experimental strategieswould help place research within cultural, aesthetic, informational,and functional urban networks. AcknowledgementsThis paper is a contribution to the Baltimore EcosystemStudy, LTER (NSF DEB 9714835), and to the program ofthe Institute of Ecosystem Studies, with partial supportfrom the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. ReferencesAlberti M, Marzluff JM, Shulenberger E, et al. 2003. Integratinghumans into ecology: opportunities and challenges for studyingurban ecosystems. Bioscience 53: 1169–79.Amidon J. 2005. Ken Smith Landscape Architect: urban projects.Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press.Bacon EN. 1967. Design of cities. New York, NY: Viking Press.Banham R. 1960. Theory and design in the first machine age.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Beardsley J. 1984. Earthworks and beyond: contemporary art in thelandscape. 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