Season 2 Episode 03 Podcast Transcript
Interview with Cory Parker
Episode Title: Landscapes: Designing For and With People
Host: Grace Aaraj
Audio Engineer and Editor: Mary Anne Funk
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Grace Aaraj: Welcome to Design For Spatial Justice Podcast Series launched by the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Environment. 2020 changed the way we live and how we connect with one another. This season, we recorded episodes from our offices, home offices and living rooms, sometimes surrounded by a baby born mid August 2020. She is mine and her name is Joy.
Through our remote discussions among colleagues and friends, we are bringing you insights from design for spatial justice fellows who taught on campus or remotely from other parts of the world, and from sponsors who made the design for spatial Justice initiative possible.
We are talking to you from and about Beirut, Oregon, California, Michigan, Namibia and Sudan. Our spatial justice realities and concerns could be your own as well. With each episode of the podcast, you are brought a little closer to understanding spatial justice and how it is practiced and taught.
Episodes were prepared with hope, pride, but also frustration by the injustices we are surrounded with. This is Grace Aaraj Design For Spatial Justice Fellow 2020 and 2021 and for the upcoming episodes, I am excited to be your host.
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Grace Aaraj: Today in this episode of the podcast, we’re happy to have with us Cory Parker. Cory Parker is a landscape architect and scholar working at the intersection of poverty, movement and landscape. His research examines transportation exclusion and public space, and has been funded by the University Transportation Center, the Social Science Research Council, and the Blum Center For Poverty. This research informs teaching and the design of dynamic places focusing on analysis, social interactions, mobility and cultural diversity. Cory was a visiting Fellow for Spatial Justice at the University of Oregon, and the School of Architecture and Environment from 2019 to 2020. Hi, Cory.
Cory Parker: Hi, thank you for having me.
Grace Aaraj: Cory in 2020, you were interviewed by the College of Design at the University of Oregon, along with Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Yekang Ko, and the title of that interview was: how landscape architects can contribute to the fight for spatial justice. From your point of view, how do you think landscape architecture as a discipline and landscape architects can fight against injustice?
Cory Parker: Part of that is really recognizing both the things that we can do as designers and the things that we can change, but also recognizing the sort of limits to our ability to change things like, for instance, design and landscape. Architecture is not going to solve the problem of homelessness, certainly by itself and that underlying root of that problem is that traditionally, both architecture and landscape architecture really have worked for people of wealth, people with power, cities and large organizations. And so we’ve really been part of the problem in the past. Now we need to look at like, Okay, how can we sort of insert ourselves into this process of opening up our public spaces for everyone, and then also dealing with some of the issues of racism and class and things that we’re tackling in the environment.
Cory Parker: And that is really the key to some of the sort of design roles in dealing with spatial justice. Some of that work is being done at the University of Oregon, which is great in the architecture department.
Grace Aaraj: What do you think is one thing that people misunderstand about your field?
Cory Parker: Well, that’s easy for landscape architects, it is that landscape architects come in at the end and plant plants. And that’s the sort of extent of our knowledge. Obviously, we work with land form and space and gathering spaces and larger projects and regional stuff. So in that sense, that is usually associated in the public eye with mapping. And so one of the preconceived notions about geographers is that we make maps. And certainly we do make maps, but there is much more particularly in human geography regarding spatial awareness and things like that. So I think that would be the preconception I would pick.
Grace Aaraj: What are you currently working on?
Cory Parker: I am writing an article on spatial justice, a literature review with Michael Rios here at UC Davis, he’s a faculty here. And then the bigger project that I’m working on is a book that will be on field work, and how you dialogue with the landscape.
Cory Parker: I’ve got the first three chapters written; a couple more started. It’s been really an interesting project, because I’m able to take my practice of landscape architecture, and my PhD fieldwork, and sort of combine them into sort of understanding a place by being out in the field. And not only that, but I’m talking to people as well. So that’s been really fun to write.
Grace Aaraj: Who are the three people who have been the most influential to you?
Cory Parker: I think that probably the first person I would say is my undergraduate advisor. A long time ago, Robert Thayer, who is still a good friend, who lives in the town that I live in now. His influence has been regarding the landscape, regarding seeing the landscape, and being empowered by it. I’ve been reading some stuff on Native American spaces in the United States. That has been really influential, because I’ve done a number of projects on tribal lands in the past, and the way that they see space is so different than the way I do and that’s probably the most impactful, I think, is when you really differ from how you’re seeing things. So the book on my desk right now is Keith Basso’s, Wisdom Sits in Places, regarding the spatial ideas of the Western Apache in the United States here.
Grace Aaraj: So Cory, 2020 wasn’t a very kind year to a lot of people around the world. I’m not sure how it went for you, but I’m wondering if that changed your perception or your understanding about spatial justice and the need for it?
Cory Parker: When the pandemic started, in some ways, in my research with homelessness, and spatial justice, the pandemic served as a way of like, Hey, we can try new and creative things, particularly in terms of temporarily housing people in small little communities that we weren’t willing to try before. But now there’s an impetus for that. Spatial justice is just people having access to space and people thriving in that space. So not just having access, but there is some amount of just sort of living their best and living in relationship with others.
Grace Aaraj: So Cory, I just received the letter and it seems like we’re giving you a gift of a time machine. To what phase of your life would you go and what advice would you give yourself?
Cory Parker: Yeah, I would go to the late 20s. I’m just finished with a master’s degree, I’m starting my career. My advice to myself would be to network more. Just spend more time with people drinking coffee. Now, it’s hard because we’re all in this pandemic, and I can’t meet anybody for coffee. I wish I had done more of that with people that are maybe peripherally oriented with my career, but also dealing with spatial issues and some of these people that are active in creating spaces in different ways. So I guess that would be my advice.
Grace Aaraj: If you were to choose one project, whether research or publication or landscape architecture projects that would define you, what one project would you choose to represent your career whether a project that’s been done or a project that will be in the future?
Cory Parker: I did some work early in my career on a highway that goes through the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana that I just love. We did all these wildlife crossings, and worked with engineers, which was a tension point. For a lot of people, we had a different way of thinking, different worldviews, I guess you would say. But I’m really proud of that work, and in many sense, working with many different people on that. But I think what I would most like, now that I’ve sort of shifted, I guess, to teaching and research would be working with people to bring students and people experiencing homelessness together. And so if I can get students out into the urban landscape, engaging with people asking questions and learning what it means to sort of design space, but also live in spaces that are not designed for shelter, for instance, that would be the best.
Grace Aaraj: What career advice would you give to people or emerging professionals who want to practice in any of the career chapters that you had in your life, whether working on local projects, on national projects,or transitioning into academia?
Cory Parker: When you are in your early career, and you are learning about a field, particularly design, I think it’s very important to work somewhere for two or three years and then move, and then go to a different firm. Because that’s where you will, as an early career person, will be challenged, learning things in different ways and moving into fields. Now, if you are later in your career, if there’s a way that you can tap into your previous career while you’re moving into your new career, that’s a wonderful thing that’s worked well for me.
Grace Aaraj: So Cory, now it’s time to play a little bit, you’re allowed to have a little bit of fun as architects. Are you ready?
Cory Parker: I’m ready.
Grace Aaraj: It’s basically just a simple game where I say a word and you have to tell me in very few words, what do you think this is and what do you think this isn’t?
Grace Aaraj: Cory Parker, comma, PhD?
Cory Parker: Exploring issues of homelessness and landscape and space with an eye towards improving things for a more just world
Grace Aaraj: What about the isn’t part?
Cory Parker: No longer do I design as much and that is a frustration sometimes. But it also really makes it fun when you’re teaching design with students coming alongside them. So it’s good and bad.
Grace Aaraj: So what do you think the best compliment is, and isn’t?
Cory Parker: You are in general, relating to other people in a kind, and I guess listening way. And isn’t, would be that you are sort of arrogant.
Grace Aaraj: Practicing locally versus nationally is and or isn’t?
Cory Parker: Yeah Practicing locally would mean that you are more involved in a community. And there’s also a material part of that with a sort of a systemic part of that, where you’re using maybe local labor, local materials and sources. And isn’t or designing globally or nationally usually has sort of a connotation of some sort of outside expertise which can be a positive thing, you can look at things in a different way, but also can be a negative thing if you trend towards what I said before, which is the arrogant.
Grace Aaraj: What is your favorite music?
Cory Parker: I listen to a lot of different things. I listen to blues and jazz in the car. But you know, honestly, when I’m looking at a blank sheet of paper, and I want to start writing on whatever it is, design or homelessness or something, I tend to somewhat embarrassingly listen to pop and unchallenging music that’s lively so I don’t have to wrestle with the music, and I just am inspired.
Grace Aaraj: Is food part of your productivity routine?
Cory Parker: I would say that tea is part of it. When I get stuck, I go down and make some tea and come back. And by that time, I’m good to go.
Grace Aaraj: Do you have a secret recipe for it?
Cory Parker: Chai is kind of difficult to make from scratch because there’s a number of different spices and things like that. So I just buy a mix but yeah,
Grace Aaraj: With our conversation coming to an end, Cory, you can ask one question or talk about any topic that you think should be addressed.
Cory Parker: The question I think that is most important for designers, architects, landscape architects to address is: are you going to be in the spaces that you’re creating? Are you going to spend time with people that are living in those spaces? So, if you are an engineer designing a highway, are you not only driving that highway, but are you talking to maybe the people experiencing homelessness underneath the bridge of the highway?
Cory Parker: The research that I do tries to do that “practice what I preach”: involving everyone in the use of space so that everyone has access and it’s involving everyone in the decision making regarding space.
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Grace Aaraj: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Design For Spatial Justice Podcast Series. This is Grace Aaraj, your host signing off from Beirut, Lebanon, and Mary Anne Funk, our editor from Portland, Oregon. The music you hear in every episode is by Chicoco Radio—all the way from the waterfront settlements of Port Harcourt Nigeria.
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