Each month, City Parks Alliance recognizes a “Frontline Park” to promote and highlight inspiring examples of urban park excellence, innovation, and stewardship across the country. The program also seeks to highlight examples of the challenges facing our cities’ parks as a result of shrinking municipal budgets, land use pressures, and urban neighborhood decay. “We selected [...]
Filed under: economics, funding, partnerships, renewal | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, planning, renewal | Tagged: new york city, seattle, staten island, stormwater | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Filed under: economics, employment, green infrastructure, health, renewal | Tagged: LWCF, natural resources | 1 Comment »
Washington, D.C.’s Union Station is a major destination for tourists and commuters, with about 29 million people visiting it each year. As a first glimpse of the city for many people traveling by rail or car, Union Station was designed as a grand entryway to the nation’s capital. It’s classical Beaux-Arts architecture influenced other popular [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, planning, renewal, transportation | Tagged: transit, washington dc | Leave a Comment »
Urban rivers, though cities often owe them their very existence, are accustomed to neglect. The enduring image of the 1969 inferno on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, a catastrophe that helped launch the modern environmental movement, is perhaps the most striking example, though many others have suffered through less dramatic but equally devastating decay. Washington, DC has [...]
Filed under: funding, planning, renewal, transportation | Tagged: Anacostia, rivers/streams, washington dc | Leave a Comment »
A tenth 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 capped landfills. New parks can be fashioned out of old garbage dumps. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Balloon Park in Albuquerque, Cesar Chavez Park in [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, planning, renewal | Tagged: fresh kills, fresno, landfills, new york, portland, seattle, virginia beach | 2 Comments »
Each month, City Parks Alliance recognizes two “Frontline Parks” to promote and highlight inspiring examples of urban park excellence, innovation, and stewardship across the country. The program also seeks to highlight examples of the challenges facing our cities’ parks as a result of shrinking municipal budgets, land use pressures, and urban neighborhood decay. Parks are [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, partnerships, planning, renewal | Tagged: brooklyn, new orleans | 1 Comment »
A ninth 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 converting abandoned railroad corridors into rail trails. In 1963 famed Morton Arboretum naturalist May Theilgaard Watts wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune. [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, planning, renewal, transportation | Tagged: chicago, minneapolis, new york city, seattle, st. louis, trails, washington dc | 1 Comment »
Each month, City Parks Alliance recognizes two “Frontline Parks” to promote and highlight inspiring examples of urban park excellence, innovation, and stewardship across the country. The program also seeks to highlight examples of the challenges facing our cities’ parks as a result of shrinking municipal budgets, land use pressures, and urban neighborhood decay. August’s Frontline [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, maintenance/management, partnerships, planning, renewal | Tagged: bronx, houston, waterfronts | Leave a Comment »
There are many stories across the country of neighborhood groups working together to reclaim blighted and underused space. Marvin Gaye Park, in Northeast Washington, D.C., is exemplary of how a revitalized park can catalyze change in a long-struggling neighborhood. Originally named Watts Branch Park, for the nearby stream of the same name, Marvin Gaye Park [...]
Filed under: green infrastructure, partnerships, renewal | Tagged: playgrounds, washington dc | 1 Comment »
