Caring public space: Advancing justice through intergenerational public space design and planning

Intergenerational public spaces respond to the needs of both youth and older adults and actively foster interaction, engagement, and understanding between generations. We consider how incorporating an ethic of care into intergenerational public space planning and design could support ongoing practices of care for people and places. We present a framework for a revised approach to intergenerational public space design that centers the practices and potential of care throughout a project’s scope, context, process, practice, and evaluation. Drawing on a study of a new pocket park in Los Angeles, we operationalize this quinquepartite framework to demonstrate how incorporating care can support participatory processes, material infrastructures, and programming interventions that advance justice in intergenerational public spaces, particularly in disinvested communities. We argue that an ethic of care exhibits strong compatibility with the principles of intergenerationality, and ought to be made more central in efforts to plan, design, and program urban public spaces.