Position Title
Assistant Professor of Teaching
- Landscape Architecture + Environmental Design
Cory Parker teaches environmental design at the University of California, Davis in Human Ecology. He studies how cities exclude certain groups, such as unhoused people and youth, from public spaces. His qualitative research examines the experience of the urban landscape, a process of learning about space that is then passed on to design students. How do students learn to “see” space in an inclusive and collaborative manner through course work, internships and field work? He is also part of a consortium of international researchers examining how young people grow up in cities with a specific focus on the Tenderloin in San Francisco – Growing Up In Cities III.
Cory is a Spatial Justice Fellow from the University of Oregon’s Design School. He received his PhD in Geography from U.C. Davis focusing on the homeless experience of movement in several California cities. Prior to that, Cory practiced landscape architecture of public infrastructure for 20 years, primarily working on large transportation and park projects in the United States at Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects.
Teaching and Research Interests:
- How students from different socio-economic backgrounds learn design
- How people dialogue with the landscape in their everyday lives
- How unhoused people make a home in public space
- Mobility and transportation equity in the city
- Urban youth and their experience of place and movement
Recent publications
Parker, C., 2025. Landscape as Dialogue: A New Approach to Site Analysis and Design. Routledge, London U.K. website
Parker, C., 2025. “Landscape dialogue and the design response,” Landscape Research Journal. 1-13.
Parker. C. and Owens, P.E., 2023. “A line through a city: Using transects to uncover patterns, experiences and histories of everyday landscapes.” Chapter in edited collection Handbook of Urban Landscape Research. eds. Kate Bishop and Linda Corkery. Routledge, pp. 415-429.
Parker, C., 2023. “Inhabiting the city without shelter.” Chapter in edited collection: Handbook of Public Space, Use, Design and Management. eds. Karen Franck and Te-Sheng Huang. Routledge, pp. 237-248
Parker, C., 2021. “Homelessness in the public landscape: A typology of informal infrastructure.” Landscape Journal. 40:1.
Parker, C., 2020. “Tent city: the manifestation of urban informality in Sacramento’s floodplain.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 44:2.
Ko, Y., Parker, C., 2020. “Landscape architecture tackles homelessness and shelter in the pandemic.” ASLA, The Field. thefield.asla.org.
Parker, C., 2019. “Bicycle use and accessibility among homeless people in California cities.” Journal of Transportation Geography. v.80.