A paper boat bobs eerily along White Oak Bayou while joggers, cyclists and walkers move with more determined purpose along a path at the top of its banks. The scene is quintessentially Houston: flowing green landscape punctuated by the yellow of black-eyed Susans and the white of other wildflowers and plenty of concrete. Barn swallows swoop past within sight of a freeway where cars move less freely.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Built in the 1950s to speed suburban commuters to and from downtown, Rochester’s Inner Loop destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, replacing them with a broad, concrete trench that separated downtown from the rest of the city.
City residents don’t all have the same access to the benefits of green space. Addressing that inequity requires community engagement at every stage from planning to development to management.
The nonprofit CicLAvia has said it will continue to work with Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to help the city expand its COVID-19 Al Fresco outdoor dining program, which officials are taking steps to make permanent.
Emma Klues with GRG and Asima Jansveld with the High Line Network explain how their group transforms reused infrastructure, and how that approach will be part of the Brickline Greenway.
Monuments matter. To communities, to states, to nations. Monuments are markers of a past or present we don’t want to forget, a visual reminder to future citizens never to forget.
Recent “Inspiring Design” sessions—a partnership between the Rudy Bruner Award and Northeastern University—explored the roles of memory and cultural resources in advancing equitable development.
Largely overlooked in President Biden’s economic recovery and infrastructure plan is a sweeping effort to reconnect communities divided by urban highways. The $20 billion in aid Biden proposed in his American Jobs Plan would be a historic effort to correct the racism in how we built our highway system and lay the groundwork for reinvigorating neighborhoods — such as Anacostia in Southeast Washington — that have suffered for decades because of those decisions.
U.S. parks became crucial during the pandemic as they offered urban dwellers both solace and a safe space to meet with others, and mayors recognized as much. Three-quarters of mayors surveyed last summer said they expected residents to spend more time in green spaces than they did in the pre-pandemic days.
Stretching nearly 3 miles along a former elevated train track in Chicago, the Bloomingdale Trail draws pedestrians and cyclists down its paved path — the centerpiece of a park system often cited as a model urban green space that integrates access, recreation and transportation.
