Research

I am currently working several projects about the history of parks, playgrounds, and suburbs in Jim Crow-era Richmond, VA.  Studies of access to parks and green space don't always take into account how neighborhoods around parks change during periods of disinvestment, white flight, and gentrification.

You can see a public database on the history of playgrounds in Richmond here.  I am also working on a paper describing the different "colored" parks proposed for Black neighborhoods, but not built.  This ghost landscape of imagined green spaces (complete with imagined social benefits and imagined social problems) was contested even as it was not built.

Ian Spangler built the first draft of GIS database of Richmond Parks that included time, so that we have the founding dates of (most) Richmond parks (and information about which parks have been sold or traded or repurposed by the city over the years).  He also did an analysis of access to parks from 1990 to the present using that database.   Meredith Stone completed a similar GIS project with playgrounds, which are more frequent and somewhat ephemeral, especially in the early 20th century.  The next step is using city directories to develop a better sense of the distribution of Black and white residents throughout the city.