The City Parks Alliance has released a case statement to the new congress on funding urban parks. Entitled “Recovering, Restoring and Renewing America’s Great Urban Parks: an Agenda for the Nation,” the statement argues for the following (and more in the above link): Build sustainable communities through smart growth that supports parks and green spaces [...]
Filed under: uncategorized | Tagged: federal policy | Leave a Comment »
NRDC has developed a fabulous visual tool showing how 70 sprawling or desolate urban areas could be converted into pleasant and lovable neighborhoods. The tool shows pictures of sites that step-by-step are converted from sprawl, vacant property or disinvestment into lively, beautiful neighborhoods with parks, plazas, bike lanes, walkable retail and housing and other pleasant [...]
Filed under: planning, renewal | 2 Comments »
From Boston to San Francisco, successful parks have been fashioned out of former factories, home sites, office buildings, railyards, parking lots, landfills, and even highways. Many of these city parks aren’t being created by park and recreation departments but rather by redevelopment and housing authorities. A 2008 survey of big cities by the Center for [...]
Filed under: funding, planning, renewal | Tagged: redevelopment | Leave a Comment »
On Common Ground, a magazine on smart growth of the National Association of Realtors has a great piece (pdf) on urban parks in its current issue. One of the more interesting pieces in the article is how density and parks complement each other. Baltimore’s 155-acre Patterson Park, situated in a neighborhood of tightly-knit row houses [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: baltimore, density, smart growth | 2 Comments »
The New York Times Green Inc. blog writes that roundabouts are increasing in the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including that drivers use 30 percent less gas than with traffic signals, they are safer to drivers and pedestrians, and are cheaper to maintain than traffic signals. But apparently, U.S. drivers have not yet caught [...]
Filed under: transportation | Tagged: roundabouts & circles | 2 Comments »
Gil Penalosa, Executive Director of Walk and Bike for Life has a good message on signage in a letter to the editor in the Toronto Star. Gil is rightly saying that we need to communicate better with people in our parks. The idea seems transferable to many cities: simple changes to signage can make our [...]
Filed under: facilities | Tagged: signage | 1 Comment »
Via Streetsblog we learned of the below video of Barack Obama talking about urban policy on the campaign trail this past year. Most interesting is that Obama knows that the questioner is holding Jane Jacobs Death and Life of Great American Cities before being told so. What this actually means is yet to be seen.
Filed under: uncategorized | Tagged: federal policy | 1 Comment »
Letter from President William H. Taft to Luther Halsey Gulick, President, Playground Association of America: I do not know anything which will contribute more to the strength and morality of that generation of boys and girls compelled to remain part of urban populations in this country than the institution in their cities of playgrounds where [...]
Filed under: facilities | Tagged: playgrounds | 1 Comment »
The Hampton Roads, Virg. cities of Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach and Norfolk are short on parkland, says a new report. Fort Monroe, a 570-acre historic military base in Hampton is being decommissioned and authorities are considering development of the site. (A current plan would set aside 228 acres for parks.) The group Citizens [...]
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Jonah Lehrer writes the other day in the Boston Globe on how cities, as fun, energetic and vibrant as they are, for these very reasons can cause our brains to strain. He notes recent research showing this, but also evidence from studies showing how places like parks and trees can help alleviate the problem. He [...]
Filed under: health | Tagged: mental health, research | 5 Comments »
