In recent years, city parks have become home to several music festivals featuring such bands as Radiohead, Cat Power, Kings of Leon, The Roots, Atmosphere and other mostly indie groups. The Bonnaroo and Coachella festivals, set in rural areas, have catered to this genre for quite a few years, but recently more of them have [...]
Filed under: funding | Tagged: austin, chicago, festivals, music | Leave a Comment »
Travel + Leisure is out with its 2008 America’s Favorite Cities survey, which asked travelers to rank 25 top U.S. cities in 45 categories, ranging from food and shopping to people, culture, nightlife, and more. (Reportedly more than 125,000 opinionated travelers voted.) “Parks and access to the outdoors” is one area the magazine surveys on, [...]
Filed under: uncategorized | Tagged: rankings, tourism | Leave a Comment »
There’s more evidence of parks positive affect on property values from New York City. A new report issued today by the Friends of Hudson River Park found that the $75 million the public invested in a section of the park in Greenwich Village sprouted into an additional $200 million in property values in a two-block [...]
Filed under: economics | Tagged: new york, property values | 2 Comments »
SustainLane is out with its annual ranking of sustainability for the 50 most-populous cities in the nation, benchmarking each city’s performance in 16 areas. The particular category of interest to parks is “Planning & Land Use,” which combines data from the Center for City Park Excellence on parks as a percent of land area in each city with Smart [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: rankings, sprawl, sustainability | Leave a Comment »
Denver’s Mayor John Hickenlooper enjoys a new Denver park, courtesy of Park(ing) Day 2008. See the Mayor and more pictures at TPL’s Flickr pool of the event.
Filed under: uncategorized | Tagged: park(ing) day | Leave a Comment »
This past week City Parks Blog attended the International Urban Parks Conference in Pittsburgh, Penn. We’ll be posting on some of the ideas presented there, but want to first mention the fantastic things going on in the host city, described in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, to turn former industrial space into parks and [...]
Filed under: renewal | Tagged: pittsburgh | Leave a Comment »
What does $170,000 in public money, $26,000 in donated funds, 44,000 volunteer hours and a space under a freeway get you between two of Seattle’s most densely populated neighborhoods? A mountain bike park, what else? (Short article in the Seattle Times.) “The space under the freeway and between Seattle’s Eastlake and Capitol Hill neighborhoods was [...]
Filed under: transportation | Tagged: bikes, freeways, seattle | Leave a Comment »
An article in the Seattle Times describes the city’s attempt to enliven its downtown parks by introducing seven park rangers, “functioning as part security guards, part social workers,” in ten parks in and near downtown. Rangers patrol in pairs between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m……They begin their shifts by rousing homeless people. The rangers ask [...]
Filed under: crime & safety | Tagged: downtown, homeless, seattle | Leave a Comment »
Though small, one of the most exciting new trail projects in the country is the Dequindre Cut, a new 1.3 mile urban greenway just outside of downtown Detroit built in a former rail trench that will connect the city’s new Riverwalk to the refurbished Eastern Market, a public market district. Farther, the cut transitions to [...]
Filed under: renewal, transportation | Tagged: bikes, detroit | 1 Comment »
The Phoenix Parks Dept. just finished a survey of city parks visitors, described in an Arizona Republic article and found the system needed….. More basketball courts? Expanded playground equipment? Extra open space? It’s a little more basic than that: Visitors want better restrooms. The need came out on top as more than 4,500 people participated [...]
Filed under: facilities | Tagged: restrooms | Leave a Comment »
