Electronic Town Centers:
Media Crossroads

Neighborhood
Alienation and fragmentation increasingly define urbanism in America. Economic and social isolation is often reflected in the physical form of the city. Poor neighborhoods are increasingly segregated from the mainstream of middle class economic activity and amenities. The MediaPark project attempts to reconnect inner city neighborhoods to the economic and social world at-large.

The Project
The MediaProject uses communications technologies to allow neighborhood concerns to be heard in places that might ordinarily have no contact with or knowledge of Atlanta and to give the neighborhoods access to the diversity of the entire metropolis, country, or world.

The project is about social and economic empowerment and the inscribing of public space as a tool for its accomplishment. Only through communication can the wide gaps (physical and psychological) between the diverse groups that define society be bridged. MediaPark proposes using communications technologies to re-introduce disparate members of that public to each other, fostering tolerance and understanding across a diverse public realm.

MediaProject proposes a series of workshops to be held at the local community center which would provide a creative foundation for incorporating the personal, family, and community histories of its residents into a communications site and information library for the neighborhood. The workshops would assist children and adults in developing personal stories, photographs, and art works that illustrate their thoughts and feelings about life in their community. Following the first round of workshops, additional workshops would address the basics of using a computer, how to send electronic mail, how to navigate the Internet, and how to convert the materials from the initial workshops into a form compatible with storage and access by computer. By creating an active communications/information site, a dynamic electronic representation of the life and times of the community of Mechanicsville will be established. The site will provide residents with access to the global community, and will provide the global community with knowledge of Mechanicsville. Eventually, the site couldbe expanded to include plans for community redevelopment, and could be used to facilitate neighborhood activism and revitalization.

MediaPark
MediaPark is conceived as an ongoing series of neighborhood projects. Each area of the park as outlined by the initial design will be executed as a individual project to be designed and produced by neighborhood residents. The space will equipped with electronic screens, message boards and projection equipment. This equipment will be used to present the creative work done by residents during the workshops. Other areas of the park, surrounding those designated for electronic viewing, would allow for more traditional park related recreational, neighborhood, or political activities.

The park will be an evolving record of both the changing neighborhood, and the outside world's relationship to the community. The park will also be a representation of the electronically mediated public space of the Internet, and will serve as a public information center and gathering spot. Park elements include a neighborhood history and genealogy video wall (perimeter wall), a jobs message board, a community event message board, an interactive electronic plaza, community gardens, surfaces for projections and recreational/assembly space.

Maps of the neighborhood and a world map will be inscribed on different surfaces in the park defining specific areas. A neighborhood names project will record the names of all residents at the start of the project. Several large inscriptions of text expressing neighborhood residents ideas, frustrations and dreams will dominate two of the main plaza areas.

WWW Site:
http://noel.pd.org/architecture/mediapark.html