TY - JOUR TI - From landfill to park: the experiment at Freshkills DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-7fbp-xf85 PY - 2021 AB - The Freshkills landscape has endured many different ecosystems for the last 100 years. From freshwater marshes, to landfill operations, to now park development. After over 50 years of garbage dumping for New York City, Fresh Kills was left with over 2,200 acres of waste by 2001. In 2006, after an international design competition James Corner’s Field Operations landscape architecture firm released the Freshkills Park draft master plan for the site to transform the former landfill into a park. This thesis investigates the culture change for Staten Islanders, and what now becomes a community asset in the 2020s. This thesis is a supplement to the Freshkills Park draft master plan for North Park and includes a proposed plan for an area near the Travis-Chelsea neighborhood of Staten Island. This post-industrial landscape provides an opportunity to create research plots to see what will happen to particular vegetation over time. This thesis includes a greenhouse bench study experiment to find out if locally sourced and brownfield adapted plant material will survive at Freshkills Park. The results of the bench study are then applied to a field study to develop a design proposal for Freshkills North Park. These research plots can help guide and influence the future plant palette at Freshkills Park, with the goals of creating a process that results in a more biodiverse ecosystem. The design proposal includes living laboratories at Freshkills Park with the intention to create positive interactions at the park for locals through citizen science while simultaneously investigating the site’s urban ecologies. KW - Landscape Architecture KW - Ecological design LA - English ER -