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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Visions of Closing Roads and Creating Parks

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Coleen Gentles

A previous post highlighted a few cities that closed roads through parks to increase pedestrian and non-motorized use. We’ve recently learned about a proposal to temporarily close streets to traffic during weekends and holidays in Buenos Aires and bring in portable playground equipment and benches to turn these roads into parks. A video of this [...]

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Green Gyms and Medical Miles: Promoting Public Health with Parks

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Ryan Donahue

We’ve previously looked at ways in which the medical community is using exercise prescriptions as a way to combat obesity and inactivity.  Park prescriptions are only a portion of the spectrum of exercise prescription programs. Fortunately, the growing awareness of the benefits of outdoor exercise – in addition to the cooperation of parks departments, environmental [...]

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Of Parks, Podiums and Penumbras: How Density Changes Development

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Ryan Donahue

Cities that increase density by building skywards can inadvertently end up with impersonal streetscapes defined by monotonous walls of glass and concrete. Toronto has avoided the issue of dark, canyon-like streetscapes by mandating that buildings offer a human-scale street presence. Most large buildings are composed of a “podium” base, with towers receding from the street [...]

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Urban Parks and Accessibility

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Jordan Thaler

Access to city parks has always been an important and ongoing topic for planners, landscape architects, and city officials. In the early days, urban parks were only found in upper-class neighborhoods, as those individuals realized the potential for city parks and had the means to create these spaces as well. Parks have since become a [...]

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London’s A-Mazing Trafalgar Square

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Coleen Gentles

Sometimes all it takes is an unusual piece of greenery to draw visitors to a part of town not very known on tourist maps. London, England’s Trafalgar Square temporarily received a laurel and thuja hedge maze at the foot of Nelson’s Column earlier this month as part of the West End Partnership’s summer marketing program.  The program [...]

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San Juan: The Walkable City

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Coleen Gentles

 San Juan, Puerto Rico recently released a new plan to make the city more liveable and walkable. Titled The Walkable City, the plan calls for a redesign of the Isleta district, an island which is home to Old San Juan, the oldest planned city in the Americas. Isleta is separated from mainland Puerto Rico by a [...]

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Elevated and Decked: Sydney’s Paddington Reservoir Gardens

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Coleen Gentles

 A recent article in the World Architecture News showcases Sydney’s newest urban park, Paddington Reservoir Gardens. Originally completed in 1878, the reservoir operated until 1899 when it then became a workshop/garage. The site officially closed in 1990 after a roof collapsed. The former reservoir was slated to be capped and decked with parkland, until architects [...]

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Imagining a Better Public Realm in World’s Cities

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Ben Welle

What would our world’s cities be like if they were filled with great public spaces, using human-dominated design instead of auto-dominated design? Our Cities Ourselves, a project of the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) imagines this in ten mega-cities across the globe, from Jakarta to Mexico City to Buenos Aires, asking some of [...]

Filed under: international | 2 Comments »

Tempelhof Airport Park Opens in Berlin

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Ben Welle

DW reports that Berlin’s former 950-acre Tempelhof Airport has opened for the first time under its new use as a city park. The interesting thing about the opening is that nothing has changed – runways, the terminal, the hanger are all just the same as they were before (until the city decides how to design [...]

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