Housing is often treated as a completed architectural object, even though it unfolds over long periods shaped by maintenance, shifting use, and uneven responsibility. This thesis approaches housing as a successional condition, one that must absorb change rather than resolve it at the moment of delivery. Architecture and landscape are read together as systems that evolve through care, governance, and constraint. The work is grounded at the Parkdale community in Edmonton. Parkdale is an area shaped by residential turnover, aging housing stock, and layered infrastructural limits. It is approached as an inherited condition rather than a blank slate. Through case studies, relational mapping, and drawing-based analysis, the thesis develops tools to read how architectural systems facilitate, tolerate, or inhibit change. These tools are used to examine existing programs and relationships at Parkdale, and to identify capacities that could support housing over time. This thesis does not propose a universal model or a finished solution. Instead, it frames architecture as a capacity-building practice that works within limits, expects moments of stall, and remains open to incremental change. Part 1 establishes the conceptual and diagnostic framework. Part 2 applies it through a situated architectural proposal that tests how housing and landscape succession might unfold over time.
Kevin Wong (2026) studied this question.