PROJECT 2 – PART 1 Since it was a beautiful Fall day out, I decided to explore Pan Pacific Park. It’s situated right behind the busy Farmer’s Market on 3rd and Fairfax and The Grove LA. It’s also flanked by the Palazzo and Parc LaBrea apartment complexes on 3rd Street; residential housing on Garner Street; and The Broadcast Apartment complex, Erewhon grocery store, USPS, and chic restaurants on Beverly Boulevard. Due to its diverse recreational, athletic, and leisure offerings, it’s a very popular place for people to play, unwind, socialize, and workout.
Force #1 — Education and Activity Centers:
The park has several main hubs for people to enrich their lives. On the northside of the park, near Beverly Boulevard, is the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. The museum is a beautiful building that seamlessly integrates into the park landscape and attracts visitors from near and far. In front of the museum is a small outdoor amphitheater. Although I’ve personally never heard of any performances happening there, it’s a nice area where I see people either relaxing or running laps. On the eastside of the park is the Pan Pacific Senior Living Center. The facility has a community room, kitchen, auditorium, gym, computer lab, and dining hall. The building hosts all sorts of activities; from bingo, to Hatha yoga, to acting. Adjacent to the Pan Pacific Senior Living Center is the Fairfax Branch Los Angeles Public Library.
Force #2 — Picnic and BBQ Areas:
There are plenty of lone picnic benches and BBQ pits scattered all over the park. There are also two large covered areas that can be rented out for parties that house more picnic tables and a grill. During my observation, I saw four birthday parties going on (one in each covered area and two out in the open on the grass). There were also people casually barbequing and eating with friends at various picnic tables.
Force #3 – Exercise and Team Sports:
The park has so many solo and team exercise opportunities. The park has a soccer field, outdoor swimming pool, three baseball diamonds, an outdoor basketball court, bodyweight workout circuit, and a set of monkey bars. There are also plenty of paths for people to walk, run, and bike on.
Force #4 – Playgrounds:
The park has two large playground centers for children to explore and play to their heart’s content. During my observation, I saw a plethora of children playing while their parents either played along with them or supervised from a safe distance and socialized with other parents.
Force #5 – Wide Open Space:
In general, the park is one big playground for people to use and explore in a multitude of ways. Children, adults, and dogs run across the grass to frolic and play games. Many people also use the space for quiet and solitude as they sit in a in either the shade or the sun and soak up the surroundings.
PROJECT 2 – PART 2
Base Map:
Force #1 — Education and Activity Centers:
Force #2 — Picnic and BBQ Areas:
Force #3 – Exercise and Team Sports:
Force #4 – Playgrounds:
Force #5 – Wide Open Space:
PROJECT 2 – PART 3 – V1
One of the most challenging aspects of this project was figuring out what to focus on. There is so much going on in Pan Pacific Park and its surrounding areas. While I initially just wanted to focus on the park, Jesse suggested that I include more of the areas around the park to show how it’s an oasis in the middle of everything. I extended the map to include The Grove, 3rd Street Farmer’s Market, the Town & Country Shopping Center, and more of the residential areas to the east of the park. I colorized the commercial buildings as light blue and residential areas as dark grey. I decided to include high traffic areas, because I wanted to show how congested and busy certain main arteries are close to the park.
In the park itself, I cleaned the map up and simplified it a bit. I added sports icons to easily reveal key group sport areas. I found this was more effective than numbering each baseball field and redundantly writing, “Baseball field” three times on the map key. I also removed the picnic tables and BBQ grill icons, because I felt they were too small to see. Instead, I added a dark green transparency over the green field to show popular leisure areas where people congregate to have picnics, celebrations, and play fetch with their dogs.
PROJECT 2 – PART 3 – FINAL
I decided to take Serena’s advice and reduce the perimeters around the park. My Part 3, V1 map had so much extraneous space around the park, that the park was dwarfed by its surroundings. I also decided to just number the important buildings inside the park instead of important areas inside and outside the park so that the park had more prominence.
Hi Cassandra,
As Serena also mentioned, your map is so incredibly detailed. I also really enjoyed reading your post, your struggles with the assignment, and your revisions. You did an excellent job mapping out your forces. I think narrowing the the focus of your map in the 2nd revision helped me undersetand what you found important. The first combined map had a lot of the surrounding area, making it not immediately clear what was important. However you were able to keep the surrounding area, as suggested by Jesse. Which is great, since that adds context to your site. I wonder if you could take it one step further and mute the the surrounding area a bit more so the park really pops out. Perhaps something lighter for the surrounding buildings. Excellent job on this. -Joe
Thanks so much for your feedback, Joseph! I’m glad you liked my second Part 3 version better and that the final version helped narrow the focus of what forces where important.
Hi Cassandra,
I love how detailed your map is! You’ve clearly put a lot of thought and time into it.
I don’t think you need quite so much surrounding stuff. Your map could just be the park alone and it would work well. If you do decide to keep some space around the perimeter, maybe consider reducing contrast on the roads in particular so they set the scene but don’t distract.
In your descriptions, you paint a really vivid picture of the types of use each area gets, as well as some atmospheric stuff. You mention “solitude” a couple of times and I think it would be brilliant to depict some of your forces as areas of “solitude”, “community”, “learning”, etc. For an introvert like me, having a map that shows me how to navigate around areas of noise and activity to access quiet, contemplative spaces would be pretty amazing.
Me again! Your combined map turned out great!
Looking at it with this new scale and focus, I still feel like the areas to the left are not really important enough to keep. There is so much going on within the park that I’d either expect the map to focus on the park, or include the same forces and level of detail throughout the surrounding neighborhoods as well.
Personally, if I were using this map I’d be most interested in the park itself and all of the things you’ve mapped within it, especially areas I could visit for quiet, recreation, education, socialization, etc.
Hey Serena!
Thank you for following up and contributing more feedback! Yeah, I think you may be right. The park got a bit swallowed up by the surrounding areas. At least I gave it a try!
I just updated it. What do you think?
Repost feedback for Office Hour 11/8 (Th):
Your key is your basemap (though this is not expected or not necessary) but basemap is typicall just the field, don’t automatically use a roadmap (becuase this is designed to understand the road) so you should gray it out.
Definition of basemap vs. forces: basemap is “the map for common materials in all maps” or “whatever you choose to include in every map and whatever stays in your other maps”; Forces “identification of build environment. Know that your mapping can also reflect relationship between specific buildings and space nearby.
Hi Grace. Ah The Grove. ;-). I think you need to center your field on the Grove, so as to capture the surrounding neighborhood more evenly. As it is currently the map implies some special importance to the buildings to the west of The Grove.
Other thoughts:
-Could Exercise and Sports be collapsed into one force? Varying types of Physical Activity?
-How can you better differentiate between the different Education & Enrichment elements? This is a nice broad force that will probably pay an important role in any insights you derive from your final map.
-This questions applies to all mall maps: why cut the data off at the mall boundary? This is what the mall itself would do as a private property owner. But as a representation of the human experience, doesn’t this space extend out into the street a bit more fluidly?
Howdy Cassandra. What I really like about your maps besides what others have mentioned here, is the fact that there is multiple levels of information shared. We can see clearly the force represented with a color, but then you add more detail with the numbered key which allows us to appreciate the diversity of activities and buildings. Great job!
Hey Cassandra,
I think these maps are fantastic. I really like the use of white space around the main area and the fact that you made the primary buildings a darker gray but kept everything else a lighter gray. I like that you chose bright colors to map your forces, though I’m wondering if the pink, purple, and blue are a bit too similar. I also think #6-11 could be taken off the legend since they’re all identified as exercise and team sports spaces on your third map. But I love the legend, it’s very clear and easy to read. Overall I think these maps are clean, eye-catching, and work well together. Great job!
Hey Joseph,
Thank you so much for the helpful feedback and observations! I’m so happy that you noticed that the buildings inside the park were a darker gray than the ones not in the park — I wasn’t sure if people would see or notice the difference. I went back and forth on whether to include the surrounding areas or not. I ultimately decided to include them, because the park is optimally positioned behind The Grove and prime shopping and restaurants on Beverly Blvd. I think both of those high traffic areas influence the park’s visitors and foot traffic.
I also wonder if I should make team sports and exercise their own forces. If I renamed “Team Sports” to “Sport Fields,” I could use icons to show what type of sporting field it is… and eliminate the redundancy of “baseball field” on my key. Do you think that would be a good solution?
Cassandra,
Thanks for sharing a slice of your neighborhood! And I really liked your use of texture to represent trees. One thing – and perhaps this is just my eyes – but I couldn’t get a sense of the scale of various spaces in the park. For example it looks like the museum is decently smaller than one of the baseball fields. Hoping you could elaborate a little more on the map’s use of scale and whether that does in fact line up with your observations. Or perhaps it’s just me imagining museums as usually being bigger.
Hey Q,
Thanks for the feedback! What an interesting observation and great question. I did do everything to scale (I hand-traced the map over Google Maps) — but I can see where you may be confused. All of the sports fields are HUGE in real life and on the map. The museum is a bit misleading, because it was designed to blend in with the park. Unless you know it’s there, it can easily be missed (unless you pass by the front entrance). The roof of the museum is actually a LEED Gold certified green rooftop with really cool sloping pathways and beautiful landscaping. I think I’ve walked on it once or twice without realizing it was the roof of the museum. The museum itself is mainly underground and has 9 rooms that slowly descend and decrease in light as it reveals the darker parts of the Holocaust’s history.
Hi Cassandra,
You really did a great job on selecting your forces at your site! I like your observation and how each of your forces has its own distinct characteristics. I especially like your second force, “Picnic and BBQ Area”. It is interesting that you combined the two features. I wonder how you plan to layer each feature together. The visual elements, such as line weights, color choices, patterns, icons, and so on will allow your forces be lively and clear on the map. I look forward to seeing how your map will turn out!
Hey Young Sun! Thanks so much for your feedback pre-map! I hope that my iconography for BBQ and picnic table works — would love to hear your feedback.