Attracting locals downtown: everyday leisure as a place-making initiative.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Many urban centers across North America represent landscapes of neglect and narratives of tragedy. The effects of suburbanization and sprawl have led to the decay and abandonment of existing, older inner cities and have contributed to the demise of many city centers. The process of urban revitalization recognizes that multiple strategies can be employed to reverse the effects of urban decay and create downtown areas that are more appealing to current and prospective residents. The purpose of this study was to examine everyday forms of urban leisure and their relationship with place-making and urban revitalization initiatives. This examination of recreation and leisure in an urban context acknowledges that successful and vibrant downtown areas are major sites of everyday leisure. Here we argue that parks, green spaces, and recreation facilities play an important role in successful urban revitalization strategies. This study was conducted in Kitchener, Ontario, a fast growing midsized Canadian city. Using a photo-elicitation technique, 21 participants were asked to photograph meaningful landscapes in the downtown area. Findings indicate that everyday social interactions are supported by recreation and leisure spaces and opportunities and are central to place-making and successful urban revitalization strategies in downtown areas. The participants in this study suggested that incorporating vibrant and animated places and highlighting local character in a downtown context served to create landscapes consistent with place-making efforts. These findings are significant because the ongoing emphasis on the economic value of leisure and recreation spaces has led to the widespread growth of impressive, yet often depersonalized, sporting complexes, resorts, shopping and entertainment centers, convention facilities, and amusement parks in urban centers in many urban areas. Instead, efforts aimed at place-making and reversing the effects of urban decay should incorporate the perspective of residents and provide places conducive to social interactions that are unique and important for everyday leisure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.019 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".