Cities Can Have Health Promoting Park Systems Through Proximity, Accessibility, and Co-Location

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Peter Harnik

The closer the park and the easier to get to, the more likely it will be used. Conversely, people who live far from parks are apt to utilize them less. These obvious truths have implications for public health, but recognizing the problem does not automatically offer simple solutions for mayors, city councils, park directors, or [...]

Filed under: green infrastructure, health, planning, transportation | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Proceed Without Caution: Cities Add Parkland by Closing Streets and Roads to Cars

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Peter Harnik

A thirteenth 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 added parkland by closing streets and roads to automobile traffic. In every city there are hundreds of acres of streets and roadways potentially available as park and recreational facilities. While parks [...]

Filed under: planning, programming, transportation | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Bringing Life to Cemeteries

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Aric Merolli

Older private cemeteries, where plots are mostly full and burials are too infrequent to provide adequate income, often wind up as public land managed by city park departments. A recent article, published in Landscape Architecture Magazine and American Cemetery, explores how public cemeteries can offer more to a community than a final resting place – [...]

Filed under: green infrastructure, planning | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Pavement in the Park: How Removing Parking Adds Acreage

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Peter Harnik

A seventh 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 removing excess parking spaces. Do you park in your park? Does it seem to be a parking lot more than a park, a lot? Urban park [...]

Filed under: green infrastructure, planning, renewal | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Turning Cemeteries for the Dead into Parks for the Living

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Peter Harnik

A second excerpt from the recently released book published by Island Press called Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities. In this post, we look at cemeteries used as parks and some best practices. In the past, before official parks came into being, cemeteries were the principal manicured greenspaces for cities – most famously Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, [...]

Filed under: green infrastructure, planning | Tagged: , , , | 7 Comments »

MLK Historic Site a Unique National Park

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Ben Welle

Will Rogers pens a piece for Huff Post on balancing preservation and change, citing the story of the MLK National Historic Site in Atlanta, where another piece of the civil rights leader’s childhood street has been preserved. Rogers was in Atlanta recently to celebrate the event: As a group of us stood watching children jumping [...]

Filed under: renewal | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

The Beltline and Affordable Housing

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Ben Welle

This month’s issue of Next American City has a great article on Atlanta’s Beltline project, a 22-mile loop of parks, trails, transit and medium-density, mixed-use development encircling Atlanta’s urban core. Usual write-ups about the Beltline talk of the transformation potential of the parks, transit and trails of the project. This one goes a bit deeper [...]

Filed under: uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Atlanta Beltline Roadblock Removed

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Ben Welle

Another interesting development from the Nov. 4th election was passage of a constitutional amendment in Georgia allowing more money for Tax Allocation Districts, a form of tax increment financing. The amendment came about after Atlanta’s Beltline parks, trail and transit project was set to use the tool. Says the Atlanta Journal Constitution: TADs encourage development [...]

Filed under: funding | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Atlanta’s Beltline: Add Stormwater Management to the Benefits

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Ben Welle

Progress is being made on Atlanta’s face-changing Beltline project, as a two-mile segment of trail recently opened, and groundbreaking just occurred on the project’s first new park. We’ll be posting on the Beltline’s progess and different aspects of what it is all about — trails, parks, economic development and transit. But today, we’d like to [...]

Filed under: green infrastructure | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34 other followers