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.
These four strategies can help cities foster environmentally-friendly urban revitalization while lessening the effects of gentrification.
Scientists, in their own version of infrastructure reuse, want to employ the network of dormant cables beneath our streets to predict earthquakes and track environmental changes.
The Toronto City Council approved additional funds to help expand the Bentway further east. The new funds will bring the city’s total contribution to the multi-use public space project up to $24 million.
In their Fourth Regional Plan, the Regional Plan Association outlines steps local governments can take to engage with the public in a more inclusive way.
