Creating Parkland via Rail Trails

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Peter Harnik

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. [...]

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Walking on Water: Covering Reservoirs Can Create Parkland

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Peter Harnik

A fifth 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 covering their reservoirs. Open drinking water reservoirs have been often-beloved icons in the United States for well over a century. Highland Park Reservoir (1879), McMillan Reservoir [...]

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From Design to Construction: The Making of Citygarden in St. Louis

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Coleen Gentles

Blogging about the 2010 American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Meeting and Expo, September 10-13, held at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C. “We never thought we’d get the job,” admitted Warren T. Byrd, Jr., a principal of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBWLA). “We were concerned by our lack of experience with sculptural gardens.”  But after [...]

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Streetcar Investments Including Recreational Destinations

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Ben Welle

The US Department of Transportation this week awarded nearly $300 in grants as part of the administration’s livability initiative to better coordinate transportation, housing and commercial development investments to serve the people living in those communities. The funds come from the Urban Circulator Grant Program and the Bus and Bus Livability Grant Program. Streetcars were [...]

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Some news from around…

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Elissa Hoagland

Two different ways to design and program public space: 1) “Street Pianos” are coming to New York, and will be prominently placed in a number of parks. The pianos have been successful in London, São Paulo and other cities. (Village Voice); and 2) from Toronto, color and art comes in the form of painted “nature-inspired [...]

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Meet Me in a New St. Louis Garden

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Ben Welle

ArchNews gives an overview of changes to the Gateway Mall in St. Louis. From an urban planning standpoint, sometimes a garden is not just a garden – especially in St. Louis. City planners see Citygarden, which opens tomorrow, July 1, as the first step in fulfilling a nearly century-old dream in St. Louis – creating [...]

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What to Do with Gateway Arch Grounds?

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Ben Welle

The St. Louis Gateway Arch and grounds sits along the Mississippi River but separated from downtown St. Louis by a sunken freeway.  The New York Times reported earlier this month about how the grounds are at the center of a dispute between a group of prominent residents who want to develop parts of the park, [...]

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Parks in the Sky

Posted on November 30, 2008 by Ben Welle

A New York Times article today spotlights the new High Line park built atop an elevated rail line in Manhattan. The High Line offers a retreat from street life, a bucolic space floating 30 feet in the air with Hudson River views. Yet it retains many elements of its gritty past: graffiti is prevalent on [...]

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St. Louis Using Parks as Tool of Renewal

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Ben Welle

In our posts, we’ll be looking for older, industrial cities that are using parks as tools for renewal – both as ways to transform abandoned industrial land and as drivers for economic development. (See our post on Detroit for one example.) In the October, 2008 issue of Landscape Architecture we learn of the many ways [...]

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