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  5. Urbanized Wilds and Spontaneous Natures in a Crumbling Airfield: Designed Disturbance at Floyd Bennett Field

Urbanized Wilds and Spontaneous Natures in a Crumbling Airfield: Designed Disturbance at Floyd Bennett Field

File(s)
Sprague_Matthew_Thesis.pdf (154.68 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/124216
Collections
Landscape Architecture Professional Masters Projects
Author
Sprague, Matthew
Abstract

Floyd Bennett Field, an Urban National Park in Brooklyn, New York is a peripheral and patchy landscape whose regulatory and operational vagueness has led to the emergence of novel ecological and social occurrences on the old runways. This decommissioned airfield challenges our notions of what a natural landscape is and how it functions. This research aims to characterize Floyd Bennett Field as a ‘Fourth Nature’ preserve, where plant community associations and recreational uses by the public constitute new forms of ‘wildness’ steeped in an urban context. Drawing from the disciplines of landscape architecture and urban ecology, this research elucidates the heterogeneity of this terrain and speculates on how this quality can inform spatial decisions and management practices through ‘designed disturbance’ in an urban national park.

Date Issued
2026
Committee Chair
Vanucchi, Jamie
Degree Discipline
Landscape Architecture
Degree Name
M.L.A., Landscape Architecture
Degree Level
Master of Landscape Architecture
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Type
dissertation or thesis

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