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 [...]

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

Olmsted Park and Potomac River Waterfront Park Selected as “Frontline Parks”

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Angelina

Each month, City Parks Alliance recognizes two “Frontline Parks“ to promote inspiring examples of urban park excellence, innovation and stewardship across the country in the face of shrinking municipal budgets, land use pressures and urban neighborhood decay. March’s selections celebrate historic design and new innovations. Depending upon where you live in the United States, the [...]

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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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Is There Room for Wildlife in City Parks?

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Elissa Hoagland

ASLA’s The Dirt recently covered the 2010 Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Study Symposium. This year’s focus was “Designing Wildlife Habitats,” which looked at ways to preserve biodiversity in rural and urban environments. America’s cities are an appropriate laboratory for such a movement, given that many city-dwellers’ encounters with wildlife are limited to rats, raccoons [...]

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Educating the Public on Cycle Tracks

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Ben Welle

Portland, Oregon has begun to install separated bicycle lanes called cycle tracks, a move that has also recently taken place at varying levels in New York City, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and Indianapolis. We’ve promoted the idea of using cycle tracks to provide safer and more bicycle-friendly routes to parks, and to connect parks and other [...]

Filed under: planning, transportation | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Getting to Park Connectivity in Built-Out Cities

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Ben Welle

Planners have long held up the idea of connectivity – links between people and places that tie everything together.  Within park systems, the concept goes back at least to when the walls of European cities came down, as many of them (e.g. Paris), were turned into grand boulevards ringing their cities and linking up places. [...]

Filed under: planning, stimulus funds, transportation | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Parks & Public Spaces in Abu Dhabi

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Ben Welle

Interesting article here on parks and public spaces in Abu Dhabi, a city of almost one million in the United Arab Emirates. Basically, the city was designed around the car, and now the most popular public spaces are not the parks but so-called “leftover spaces” that appear where people are but weren’t really meant to [...]

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The Benefits of Connectivity

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Ben Welle

A mini-travelogue on Seattle’s trails and bike network in the Post-Intelligencer recently shows the value of park connectivity — something Olmsted knew the value of and something cities across the country are still trying to achieve. But the coolest things about this ride are the water and the string of parks along the way — [...]

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