Relational Diagram

Many spaces and systems within a park can be associated with a collection of people who participate or activate them.   Playgrounds tend to draw a range of constituencies.  Basketball courts a different range.  Dog parks and trees are sites that engage non-human beings.  And so on.

Similarly, there are often direct and indirect partipicipants.  A guardian may accompany and supervise a child as they play.  A human may accompany a dog.  Each of these indirect participants may discover and particpate in secondary, unanticipated or unscripted activities.   For example, they may socialize, fall in love, or assist each other.

Instructions

1. Evaluate an existing park to establish an exhaustive inventory of its spaces and systems.
   
2. Add a second layer, to make an exhaustive inventory of who or what might directly engage those spaces.
   
3. Continue... building successive layers to identify secondary companions or caretakers.
   
4. Are there derivative or unintended activities that result from companions interacting?

How it might be useful

These diagrams can help expose latent patterns of use and relation as a basis for speculation.  Once exposed, one can develop an agenda about what activies shoudl be intended or sanctioned, adjusting or eliminating the hierarchies of activity, and consequently the range of constituencies, spaces and infrastructures that might serve them.

References

Stan Allen, Notations + Diagrams: Mapping the Unmappable.
Lyster, Clare, Landscapes of Exchange.
IBM Sequence Diagrams, also here. 

Possible Tools

Hand Drawing, Adobe Illustrator.

ChicagoParks to Reference:

Use any park in the (list) as a constraint or reference, exhausting the landscape, space by space, object by object. Try not to ‘overmine’, or ‘undermine’ the survey,  Objects contain objects.  Objects are contained by other objects.  Spaces contain spaces.  Spaces may be contained by spaces.