The Meaningful Place: Transforming Taman Sari Banda Aceh as City Park

City Park is a public space which should be utilized optimally by the community. One of the city parks intersecting with the center of facilities and infrastructure of Banda Aceh city is Taman Sari. The condition of the urban park in Banda Aceh city is not comfortable enough. Therefore, people tend not to use public space optimally, in this case, as a place for interacting and holding the certain events. This research was intended to conduct a systematic observation on the utilization of Taman Sari (the city park) to maximize its function as public area and manage the efforts for the improvement of the area related to transformation of recreational area as the local playground into more meaningful, purposeful and useful site in term of social, economic, and environment sectors. The data obtained through field surveys, interviews and the study of literature as well as providing documentation about the activities of the community by analyzing the qualitative descriptive methods. The result showed that the city park which was also as the representative public open area in Banda Aceh did not provide public facilities sufficiently. Therefore, the existence of the city park would not only act as a playground but it could be more functional and beneficial in accordance with social and recreational activities, community creative art and entertainment, entrepreneurial activities as well as environmental conservation. The Availability of public facilities would provide more attracting values to invite public to utilize the area as the center for many activities.