Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory Discusses Downtown and New Riverfront Park

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Coleen Gentles

Smart Growth America recently completed video interviews with several mayors and other prominent elected officials nationwide, and will be releasing them over the next several months. The first is with Mayor Mark Mallory from Cincinnati — he speaks to the need to invest in downtowns and to make the right kinds of infrastructure investments to trigger job creation [...]

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Developer Impact Fees Pay for Parks

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Coleen Gentles

Residents in downtown Los Angeles are leaping for joy because a brand new park is coming to the revitalized historic core.  Spring Street Park, which broke ground last October, will be the first public park in the neighborhood.  According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 15,000 residents moved into downtown between 2000 and 2010, without the [...]

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Register Now for the 2012 International Urban Parks Conference

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Angelina Horn

Registration has now opened for this summer’s International Urban Parks Conference!  Join us July 14-17 in New York City for Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities. Presented by City Parks Alliance in partnership with NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, Greater & Greener will take place in the city that pioneered the [...]

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Benefitting From a Cover Up: How Concealing Urban Highways Can Create Parkland

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Peter Harnik

A twelfth excerpt from the recently released book published by Island Press called Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities. In this post, we look at some cities who have created parkland by concealing or burying highways. Urban radicals want automobiles banned. Urban moderates can perhaps live with cars as long as they’re neither seen nor heard. In European central [...]

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February’s Frontline Park: Louisville Waterfront Park

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Angelina Horn

Louisville’s Waterfront Park is an award winning and popular community greenspace situated on 85 acres along the Ohio River. Once a blighted landscape of heavy industry with no public access to the river, the last 20 years have seen the park become a regional jewel that attracts 1.5 million visitors every year, sparking hundreds of [...]

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An Interconnected Park Web: How Greenways Create Healthy Communities

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Coleen Gentles

We recently came across an article by Randall Arendt discussing how greenway networks are the “useful bridge between ‘new urbanism’ and conservation design.”  His article talks about using greenways as the connector to parks, neighborhoods, schools and mixed-use centers, allowing for urban and rural ideas to merge and produce a superior hybrid community form.  He argues that [...]

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Cities with Health Promoting Park Systems Provide Mixed Uses and Adequate Programming

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Peter Harnik

An excerpt from The Trust for Public Land’s report From Fitness Zones to the Medical Mile: How Urban Park Systems Can Best Promote Health and Wellness. We wrote a preview of this report in an earlier post. In this post, we look at a mixture of uses and a maximum amount of programming. Mixing uses in parks [...]

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From Bluebelts to Greenbelts: Converting Wetlands and Stormwater Storage Ponds to Parkland

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Peter Harnik

An eleventh excerpt from the recently released book published by Island Press called Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities. In this post, we look at some cities who have created parkland from wetlands and stormwater storage ponds. For environmental, financial, and legal reasons, urban stormwater management is getting much more attention – and the result is helping to [...]

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“A Design that Celebrates the People”: Normal, IL Traffic Circle Wins Smart Growth Award as New Civic Space

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Coleen Gentles

Earlier this month, EPA announced the winners of the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.  We are excited to report that Normal, Illinois is the recipient of the award in the Civic Places category for their traffic roundabout. We’ve written before about how the town’s new traffic circle has successfully managed traffic flow at [...]

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Parks Breathe Life (and Jobs) into Cities

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Angelina Horn

The South Platte River has become a cherished recreational asset for residents and visitors to Denver. Thoughtful, visionary planning and public-private partnership have restored and transformed the city’s waterfront from what was once called an “urban dump” to refuge for wildlife and people alike. Local efforts to improve the river have created new jobs and [...]

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