New York City’s green infrastructure plan, which will rely on parks to control stormwater runoff, is certainly forward looking, but its roots can be traced back two hundred years (The New York Times)
With tighter budgets, parks departments are looking for ways to maintain parks for less. Enter what might be described as the “Ziptrailer” model, a program in Omaha, Nebraska that will allow local volunteer groups to rent trailers full of tools to help with park upkeep (KETV Omaha)
In another example of volunteer-led park stewardship, the “Detroit Mower Gang” is leading an effort to replace broken swingsets in Detroit parks (The Detroit Regional News Hub)
Madrid has completed a far-reaching project to reconnect with the Manzanares River by replacing a freeway with a six-kilometer linear park. Though the product is beautiful, the process has been arduous and has contributed to Madrid’s monumental public debt (Sustainable Cities Collective)
On the other end of the freeway park spectrum, Seattle has made clever use of space under an interstate for an urban mountain bike course, as illustrated in this new series of photos (Free Association Design)
Connectivity makes a park system more than the sum of its parts, and elevated parks are all the rage since the High Line came into being. An innovative, 240-foot pedestrian bridge is being constructed in New York City to connect Squibb Park to the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, providing access for a neighborhood which would otherwise be cut off by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (Popular Mechanics)