The National Park Service DC Small Parks Project aims to evaluate and manage change for the hundreds of parklets, roundabout circles, and other small parks created by or extended from the original L’Enfant Plan for Washington, DC by conducting detailed analyses of three prototype sites: Marion Park, Titanic Memorial Park, and a section of Fort Drive. The primary research methods for each of the three prototype sites are 1) a Cultural Landscape Inventory, which is a survey of existing conditions, physical history, site chronology, and analysis of landscape features of the site to understand the historical context of each park and its relationship to the surrounding region; and 2) a Rapid Ethnographic Assessment (REAP), which includes interviews, context mapping, and other ethnographic tools to gain an understanding of who uses the parks and why.
At the conclusion of these analyses, the intention is that the National Park Service will use these insights to inform stewardship of these historic sites to better serve their many constituents.
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