I chose Balboa Park as the area for this project. It is literally right across the street from my home and is a huge part of the city center in San Diego.
One of the first things you will notice is it is massive and includes a lot of different things within it. It has many museums, activity areas, the Navy medical center and also the San Diego Zoo! I narrowed my area of focus to the central section of the park as that is more easily walkable.
Vegetation
In a town frequently plagued by drought and with a dry desert-like climate, things tend to be relatively brown throughout the city. Water is expensive and gardening in the sandy soil can be difficult. Balboa Park presents an array of greenery that is often not seen elsewhere in the city.
The Park houses a rose garden, Japanese Friendship Garden, Botanical Building, desert garden, Spanish garden and several others. There has been much time and money invested to keep these plants alive in the dry and sunny climate.
Multicultural Tourism
Balboa Park is a tourist destination in San Diego. The draw of the world-renown zoo and large variety of museums along with the unique architecture ensures there is always a tour group to be seen. Tour guides are easy to spot as they generally have some sort of small unique banner on a thin pole. Occasionally there will be larger crowds of people being loaded onto or off of tour buses. A wide variety of languages can be heard throughout the crowds both in organized tour groups and smaller groups of visitors.
Parking and Transportation
There are four parking lots in the center area of Balboa Park, the largest being next to the San Diego Zoo. Despite all being rather large, there is always a shortage of parking spaces, especially on weekends. People regularly have to find street parking along one of the main streets or in a surrounding neighborhood. Because of the number of people who enjoy the various activities and the good chance that there will be a long walk between parking and destination, there have been additional transportation options established. One option is a shuttle tram which takes people between several stops. The electric scooter system that is used around the city as a whole as well as bicycles are popular options as well and also allow one to use them in areas of the Park closed to vehicles.
Music
Throughout the hallways and plazas of the Park you can hear all different kinds of music. People come and play their chosen instruments for visitors. I have heard people singing, playing guitar, flute, violin, drums and other instruments. There is also the Spreckles Organ Pavilion which is home to an outdoor organ where organists play concerts weekly as well as for special events such as holiday celebrations.
Forgotten Spaces
Despite hosting such large groups of people on a regular basis, the size of Balboa Park allows pockets of space around corners and down hills to remain relatively isolated. They are just far enough off the regular path, often down hills and away from the main attractions.
Hey Christine, I really liked how you mapped your forces with different styles of graphics. Each graphic seems to really support the force, especially the music. I second what others have mentioned on how awesome the music mapping is. Also, like Tara, I was confused on the dark grey area, it appeared that you were using it to separate unexplored area from the areas you mapped. I liked the final map with the vegetation, I thought it gave additional context to the rest of your forces. I also liked the green aesthetically. Can’t wait to see what the final map looks like, keep up the great work.
Thanks for the feedback Joe!
The gray force is the zoo and definitely needs some more adjustment from everyone’s feedback. A legend will also help with that, I think! I’m torn about the vegetation. While I think it brings context, I also think it feels like a lot going on. Maybe I can mute the green or somehow shift it to not be quite so prominent compared to the other forces.
Christine, I prefer the map without the vegetation force. I saw your note about differentiating roads from buildings, and I think your base map has some of those bordered rectangular areas that are parking lots? Why is differentiating roads/buildings/parking lots important to the map? I was thinking I would like to see the contrast on those be lower so that I can see your forces more easily. Also, I couldn’t follow what the gray force in the upper left was about, where it gets darker toward the middle. I wanted to understand it. 🙂 Thank you for sharing your work!
Hey Tara,
Thanks for the feedback! The idea of differentiating roads from buildings was a suggestion Jesse made about how buildings are spaces meant to be occupied and roads are not. All of the black filled-in shapes are buildings while the roads are outlines only.
The gray force in the upper left is the San Diego Zoo. It seemed important for me to include it in the map because I think it puts some things into perspective (such as the gathering of so many tourists around the entrance area). I was struggling with how to show it but also segregate it from the main area of focus in my map. The main area is accessible without paying an entrance fee and has a larger variety of sections which I found more of an interesting study.
Exercise 3.1 – Narratives
Hi Christine!
I really like how clean your map is, It is super easy for me to decipher between the different forces which is something I had trouble with figuring out how to do with the forces I selected. I am basing this narratives on the top two combined maps you provided. From your map I can tell that music as a force has a center point and decreases the further away it gets from the center. From your map, it looks like there are seven areas where music acts as a force and some are stronger than others. For your Tourism force I can tell based on the density of purple dots what areas attracted more people than others. I found it super interesting that there were less tourists in the area where music was the strongest. I also found it interesting that the forgotten spaces happen to be in areas where there was almost very little music. This makes me wonder if there is any correlation between those two. I enjoyed seeing where vegetation was on your map because it helped me decipher what was what and shows me more information about why tourism is popular in those areas.
Hi Tiffany,
I’m kind of curious about the music to tourist correlation as well. That’s a really interesting question. I’m wondering if it may be because you don’t have to go into the space from which it originates in order to hear the music.
Christine,
I’m really impressed with your maps – I’m going to have to pick your brain about how you created some of your forces – I’ve been trying to figure out how to do similar depictions! I really love your base map, the black and white makes it clean and clear and there’s enough negative space on either side of the main strip to give the map room to breathe. The black and white aesthetic also allows the bright colors of your forces to really pop. I particularly love the music map. The parking and transportation map is the only one for me that ‘s a little tough to figure out. There’s just a lot going on (especially compared with your other maps, which are all monochromatic). Also, is there a reason you have green space highlighted on the tourism map? Overall, these are fantastic, I’m seriously going to be hitting you up on Slack about how you did the music map.
Hey Joseph!
Thanks so much! I agree with you about the parking and transportation map. The idea was non-vehicle access vs vehicle but that got a bit lost. Definitely one that needs a legend and more refinement.
The green space on the tourism map was me trying to figure out the best way to cordon off the zoo area. I failed in this case obviously and will need to adjust the shading to better blend in as a part of the “background map”. I think it works in the vegetation since it is very landscaped but it just looks like a mistake when applied to the tourism one.
Darling Christine! Balboa Park is such a beautiful, organic spot to choose as part of the mappings projects. I think one force you could dig deep into is taking advantage of elements of seasonality in vegetation, theatre nights, tourist-y areas where they’d be super warm and the “forgotten” areas is cold. I wonder if you could borrow elements of Charles Minard’s “Napoleon’s March” – just as juxtaposing your map on top of sheet music, with beats or rests with periods of ebb/flow in tourist traffic/seasonality, forgotten areas, etc. To make the metaphor cheesier, you can make certain each force a line of music or an instrument that solos or don’t play depending on what’s happening.
Hi Cindy,
Thanks for the feedback! I do like the idea of implementing elements of seasonality but I think the biggest problem that I have with that is that there are tons and tons of events that utilize the areas in all different seasons. If anything it would turn into a sort of foot-traffic map in that case. I do like the idea of combining the forgotten areas and tourism maps into one and they do go hand-in-hand a bit. It will definitely take some thinking about.
Hi Christine,
What a great diverse space to focus on. I really like your music and forgotten places forces, I think those focuses really bring a value to the project that feels personal to the user.
I also like the visual and your base map shows a lot of diversity, however the first three maps show the upper left corner with an overlay. Maybe a legend would help, but I am not sure it is clear what those areas represent and how they fit together with the force your representing.
Hey John,
Thank you for the feedback! I completely agree. I need a legend for sure. For clarification, the large area in the upper left is the San Diego Zoo. I was toying with how I want to represent the area because it is so massive and therefore is a large driving force in the overall area but also isn’t exactly the focus of my maps (though it does play into the vegetation since it’s very landscaped). I’m thinking about making the buildings more gray/faded and shading that whole area to separate it from the rest of the map. I think without it, I lose some perspective but I have to find a better way to represent the separateness on my map. If anyone has a suggestion, I’m all ears!
Christine– love the inclusion of music being represented in the space. Obviously the picture you chose of the world’s largest organ in a venue space is related to music, but I’ll be interested to see how you map out music in spaces where people come and play music for the visitors. Just a few questions to think about: Are these buskers who set up shop in specific locations to play or do they wander? What areas do they tend to play music? Are there qualities of these spaces that afford music to be played?
Christine,
These are all great observations! You’ve explained your forces really clearly, and I especially like your point that the park provides access to greenery that a lot of people might not have at home (or be able to afford) in this climate. Would you say that there are other aspects of the park that might serve as economic equalizers as well?
I love that you’ve included several historical details, especially the former nudist colony. That might be an interesting way to map “forgotten places”. You could research the history of the park and add some of these forgotten places to your map as if they still existed, transporting us back in time!
I also can’t wait to see how you map out music– will you go for location of musicians or illustrate the flow of sound waves across different spaces?
Serena,
I love your idea about mapping music sound waves! I may have to incorporate that into my map. It’s a tad difficult because it changes so frequently with people posting up in different areas every day. It wouldn’t be a very accurate map for a long term but for a single day, it would be great! I guess that could be a design choice I make for that map. How long a period of time do I use for a map of music? The only spots really stationary would be the organ and the area where they have live jazz music in the evenings. Everywhere else is constantly changing.
The idea of economic equalizers is really interesting as well. There a many aspects of the Park that are completely free and open to the public. Others are not. Some are free for locals on certain days of the month. The Zoo is a great example of a location with a rather steep price point for entry. And yet, it’s probably the most visited.