Promoting goal-driven performance evaluation: a case study of an urban park in Florida, USA
The Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) advocates evaluating built landscape projects’ performance and collecting evidence to guide future practice. However, in the first few years of landscape performance research, various case studies, while quantifying a number of desirable outcomes, failed to evaluate projects’ performance against their original goals. Therefore, they did not sufficiently establish relationships between goals, design solutions, and performance. This paper aims to demonstrate the need for goal-driven performance evaluation through an urban park study in Florida, USA. We evaluate Depot Park’s level of accomplishment regarding four design goals and discuss experiences and lessons learned during the process. The results show that although it is feasible to conclude whether a project is making progress towards its goals, determining whether the goals are achieved or the level of accomplishment can be difficult. Precisely defined goals, performance benchmarks, and comparative studies are needed for future performance studies.
My role: graduate assistant