pgs.175-194

It is sometimes difficult to find the right method of studying people in a place, especially when you are trying to collect something sensitive, intagible, and variable as cultural values. The best way to start, however, is to understand what tool kit or palette of techniques are available, and what works best in diverse fieldwork situation.

As researchers, we have had to decide what would work best in a range of settings and have adapted our methods to fit the specific site and problem.


Sometimes it was as simple as turning what was to be a focus group into a group interview when surrounded by a group of excited  pre- teens or reworking  an interview into a transect walk or bicycle ride with people on the move or exercising in a park.

The everyday circumstances of fieldwork make it necessary to be flexible and often creative when faced with problems  such as people who don't want to talk.

pgs 101-126

Public urban beaches are places where more socially and culturally diverse populations encounter one anotherwhile engaging in a great variety of activities. In federal parks the government is required by law to cunsult the public and to consider the viability of cultural groups' life ways when managing and making major changes in a park.

Sea Shore parks play important roles in the continuity of cultural practices of a number of urban communuties ; they also support social sustainability and fortify democratic processes.

Yet, little has been written about the cultural ecologyof urban beaches.When beaches are discussed in scholary works, the focus is on the natural ecology of beaches, tourism, real estate value, and development Little is known about how beaches function as social places and as parts of the urban landscape.

pgs 69-100

In 1994 the public space research group was asked by the national park service to find out what local residents thought about building a bridge from liberty state park in new jersey to ellis island.Ellis island was the federal immigration station for the port of new york from 1892 to 1954. More than 12 million immigrants were processed there , and over 40 percent of all US citizens can trace their ancestry to those who came through the facility. In its early years , when the greatest number of immigrants arrived , Ellis island represented an open door policy to the growingcultural diversity in the USA .

After the passage of restrictive immigration laws in the 1920's, however, it became a place of assembly and often detainment.

Immigrants were required to pass a series of medical and legal examinations before they were allowed to enter, and those who could not pass the tests were deported.

pgs 37-68

In their sociability and informal layout, places of working class recreation continue to resemble the vernacular weekend resort, that lay out side every nineteenth century american town. This was an open space with trees, fields, and water at hand, used informally for recreational gatherings by the towns people on sunday afternoons.

Although such places have yielded to urbanization and to the evolution of leisure time activity, parts of brooklyn's Prospect park seem much like the old grove.

For instance, on the peninsula lies a pleasant field of two or three acres bordering the lake on one side and a placid  stream on the other. A dirt path menders along the shore toward the woods beyond the field.

Families gather for picnics under the trees or to sit and look out at the water.  Men and boys fish, young people play ball and children ride their bikes.