All Articles

Ben Shirtcliff

Author: Heather Sauer | Image: Heather Sauer

Ben Shirtcliff, associate professor of landscape architecture, authored two chapters of The Routledge Handbook of Designing Public Spaces for Young People, now available for preorder on the Routledge website. Shirtcliff wrote Chapter 15: “How to Use Big Data for Youth Inclusion: Lessons and insights from video-based social media research on adolescent free play in cities” and Chapter 26: “Parisite, New Orleans: Some place to play.” The Big Data chapter is a unique methodological approach he has developed to study the public health implications of built environments and susceptible adolescent populations through Big Data coding of social media; the case study chapter accounts for a DIY skatepark’s success following Shirtcliff’s seven years of field visits, interviews, photographs, collection and analysis of social media, and observation of videos posted online.