Kate S. – Designing Public Spaces

I’ve always loved cities, and I’ve been interested in urban design all my life. In 10th grade, I won third place in an architecture competition to design a ‘community market’ for a neighborhood in Chicago. Through this experience, I learned that I really enjoyed human-centered design and the process of problem solving for a neighborhood’s needs. While I am not specifically interested in architecture now, the love for urban design has stayed with me. 

I’ve lived in my neighborhood in Jersey City all my life, and I’ve noticed over the years a spot on the waterfront that has sat empty, even as the rest of my neighborhood has grown and developed. The site’s location is a perfect place for a public park, and I was inspired to create a thoughtfully designed space that would benefit the community as a whole. This turned out be no small feat, one of the biggest challenges I encountered was not having enough time to accomplish every action item on my list. In the future, I have plans to bring my designs to a future neighborhood association meeting in hopes that this project will one day come to fruition. Through my gallery, I hope to illustrate the complexity of designing a public space and the importance of designing usable, human-centered spaces.