Speaking of National Parks in urban areas, there’s some news from the Presidio in San Francisco that the park is experimenting with some road closures. Devising ways of reducing car use and encouraging non-motorized transportation within parks is becoming more popular with concerns about climate change, obesity and mental health and just a general interest [...]
Filed under: planning, transportation | Tagged: road closures | 2 Comments »
The New York Times ran an editorial yesterday on the debut of Ken Burns’ new documentary on the National Parks called America’s Best Idea. The editorial calls for this “best idea” to be “protected and celebrated” as well as to look at opportunities for new parks. Now may be a good time, especially with the [...]
Filed under: funding, planning | Tagged: federal policy, national parks | Leave a Comment »
For the park “friends,” conservancies and advocacy groups out there, you may have heard of the website, Guidestar.org, where donors can learn about non-profit organizations. Increasingly, those wishing to give money to their preferred causes are researching groups through on-line resources that can give them access to IRS 990 forms and the like. Many organizations [...]
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Mayor Daley at American Society of Landscape Architects annual conference: “The future belongs to cities. People want to live in metropolitan areas. They also want open spaces — parks, bike paths, beaches.” (The Dirt) Affordable, compact and well-located housing is critical to achieving the nation’s transportation policy objectives. (NHC) Boosting cycling means finding ways to [...]
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A recent article in the Wall Street Journal looked at making suburbia more livable for people in their later years. The piece notes the work of the planning firm Duany Plater Zyberk in Mableton, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb trying to reduce the isolation that suburban street layouts and single-use zoning often bring. The plan has [...]
Filed under: planning, renewal | Tagged: suburbs | 2 Comments »
Allison Arieff of the By Design blog at the New York Times commends the programs in New York City and San Francisco to create small plazas and promenades out of excess street space and land. Example: in San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks program, a triangle of land at the convergence of two streets was turned [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, planning, renewal, transportation | Leave a Comment »
Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett unveiled a proposal to increase the local sales tax in that city to pay for $770 million in big downtown improvements from transit to a new $130 million, 70-acre park to entice development. From The Oklahoman: The plan unveiled Thursday by Cornett and council members includes a massive downtown park, [...]
Filed under: economics, funding, planning | Tagged: downtown, oklahoma city | 2 Comments »
Park(ing) Day 2009 was last Friday, September 18th. Streetsblog has some videos up from these temporary parks in New York City and San Francisco (seen below). more about “Streetsblog New York City » Streetfil…“, posted with vodpod Originally created by Rebar, San Francisco art and design collective, PARK(ing) Day, according to its official website, is [...]
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Infrastructurist bring us a nice post on great urban parks in North America and Europe. Everyone knows what a urban park looks like, right? It tends to be a parcel of green space in a sea of asphalt and concrete and glass. But, of course, there are innumerable variations on that principle. We thought it [...]
Filed under: international | 3 Comments »
As usual, Kaid Benfield offers some great thoughts on parks, this time on what makes the Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris such a gem. First, it’s a great size for a large city park, at 60 acres. That means one still feels in the city when there, but in an especially tranquil part. Second, like [...]
Filed under: international | Tagged: paris | 1 Comment »
