Houston Parks Board has reached another milestone in their plan for a 150-mile network of connected parks and trails along the major waterways of Houston. Construction is underway on a new two-mile segment, the first of a series of greenways along the Greens Bayou.
Philadelphia’s highly-anticipated Rail Park project is on track to open this spring. The project is currently working to ensure the park is a welcoming place for neighborhood residents, an issue that Rail Park leaders have have been exploring at High Line Network gatherings.
A UN-Habitat initiative is pioneering the use of the popular Minecraft video game as a tool to engage the community to design new public space in the Gaza Strip.
Following the purchase of all 27 acres of land required for Bushwick Inlet Park and a $17.5 million commitment to its development, Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park is launching a discussion series this month that will focus on what the world-class waterfront park should be.
Baltimore addressed its trash problem in its Inner Harbor with a floating water wheel. But it got public buy-in by giving it a personality. According to the director of the clean-up initiative, this is just another example of how new infrastructure in cities these days has to have multiple uses.
When announcing that a Google corporate sibling company, Sidewalk Labs, would create a city of tomorrow, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada promised the project would create “technologies that will help us build smarter, greener, more inclusive” communities.
The City of Charleston announced the purchase of more than one-and-a-half miles of railroad right of way as part of a plan to turn the defunct tracks into a public linear park. Friends of the Lowcountry Lowline will work with the city to plan and design the project.
New social, environmental, and technological forces are transforming the field of urban design. While growing income inequality in cities highlight the need for more inclusive and equitable urban design processes, the realities of climate change are making resilient design a priority for cities everywhere.
Prioritizing equity isn’t just a trend in public spaces, it’s critical to the future of cultural institutions as well. The Frick Collection is just one of many venerable art institutions making strides to better connect with their local communities.
America’s fourth largest city is built on an ancient river network that flooded catastrophically after Hurricane Harvey. With 400,000 homes in the watershed, achieving resilience is the Texan boom town’s greatest challenge.
