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ETD Abstract Container

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Traces of Memory: A Response to Nature's Subjugation of Youngstown, Ohio

Gibbs, Joseph
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981225

Abstract Details

2015, MARCH, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture.
Many post-industrial cities within the Rust Belt and around the world have had to deal with the population and economic loss associated with the readjustment of the manufacturing sector in the modern global economy. Cities throughout the world have been forced to reckon with a new landscape as their built environments must now respond to new economic activities and reduced populations. Some cities have fared better than others but all are dealing with new conditions within the landscape. In recent years Youngstown, Ohio has been forced to come to terms with the decades of negative effects that stemmed from the closing of its steel mills, the primary driver of its economy. In Youngstown, the landscape communicates loss and degradation, the shared history of the Rust Belt. Suburbanization and deindustrialization contribute to a sense of loss that is manifested in vacancy and overgrowth. Repurposing vacant lots that formerly have significant community importance will reframe the perception of the city and reorient the city’s collective memory in a positive direction. The current landscape presents a new and permanent reality that must be rethought and retooled. Youngstown 2010 responds to this new reality through broad urban initiatives. However the large scope of the plan fails to physically reorient people in the landscape and adjust their zones of fixation or sites of interaction. Through localized interventions an architectural response can provide a physical and tangible anchor that allows for the interpretation of a new reality. Rather than reorganizing the physical landscape as the Youngstown 2010 plan suggests the landscape will be embedded with new purposes and will reorient people through and among the landscape reintroducing them to their present reality. A repurposing of Idora Park’s former site must recall the purposes it once held, resurrecting its former assets that allow people to recover what was lost. It must redirect people in space and establish parameters that presence the surrounding landscape and its current state. New purposes will move people through the scarred landscape, transcend the borders of vacant lots, and allow people to trespass and reclaim the land. Scars of a lost past will be reflected upon but new opportunities will be presented. As in the Youngstown 2010 plan and other smart shrink plans, loss is accepted but on an immediate scale that will inform an understanding of the larger landscape and historical context.
Aarati Kanekar, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Michael McInturf, M.Arch. (Committee Member)
110 p.
Architecture
youngstown; memory; landscape; rust belt; shrinking cities

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Gibbs, J. (2015). Traces of Memory: A Response to Nature's Subjugation of Youngstown, Ohio [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981225

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Gibbs, Joseph. Traces of Memory: A Response to Nature's Subjugation of Youngstown, Ohio. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981225.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Gibbs, Joseph. "Traces of Memory: A Response to Nature's Subjugation of Youngstown, Ohio." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1427981225

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1427981225
285
© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Traces of Memory: A Response to Nature's Subjugation of Youngstown, Ohio by Joseph Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.