Urban Landscape Transformation During the Covid-19 Pandemic The Case of Parks in Merida, Yucatan

Vicente F. Zárate-Flores and Lane F. Fargher-Navarro. 

Landscape Journal, May 2024, 43 (1) 27-48

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.43.1.27

Abstract
Merida is the capital and most inhabited city of Yucatan, Mexico, and like many other cities, it suffered drastic landscape transformations during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Urban parks, the focus of this article, are of particular socioenvironmental importance and show some of these impacts. Using a strategic transdisciplinary perspective that facilitates the understanding of the complex socioenvironmental influences transforming urban parks, this study contributes to the theory and methods used to research parks by introducing the landscape of historical ecology as a conceptual framework. The results demonstrate that physical elements in the built environment can serve a peripheral role relative to park space usage and that a dichotomy exists between “green” and “gray” areas in parks’ design planning. We also find that the Covid‐19 pandemic intensified the gulf separating users’ preferences and desire for organic elements from the anemic “green‐areas” offered in Merida’s public spaces. Significantly, the decisions behind the landscape transformation in these spaces was based on political expediency and consultation with architectural specialists but without input from park users. This research strives to inspire future research to integrate a holistic landscape perspective into urban research, observing the built environment’s dynamic transformations with a critical mindset and allowing the social construction of space inside urban parks.