What are the parks like in your community? What do you and your family and friends do there? What is your favorite park? Why

You might say the Seattle waterfront project has faced a few setbacks.

There was the multi-year fight about how to solve the problem of the crumbling Alaskan Way viaduct. The round-and-round debates about tunnels versus surface streets versus elevated highways. There was the time tunnel-boring machine “Bertha” gave up the ghost and sat stone-still beneath the city for two years. And the time Pier 58 fell into Puget Sound.

It’s been more than a year since the American Rescue Plan Act, known as ARPA, was passed into law. This historic, $1.9 trillion package of stimulus funding was designed by Congress to address the ongoing economic crisis resulting from COVID-19, and to build upon the first federal COVID funding package, the legislation passed in 2020 known as the CARES Act.

The chair lifts are gone, and the Bavaria-themed lodge has fallen into disrepair. Val Chatel was once a thriving ski resort in the Mississippi River headwaters near Park Rapids. Nestled in the forested hills around Deep Lake, it was a popular site for wedding receptions as well as short downhill runs.

When the final pieces of the new Seattle Waterfront Park are completed in 2024, it will include a monumental Northwest Coast art piece along Pier 58 called “Family” created by a member of the Puyallup Tribe.

The India Basin Waterfront Park Project partners, made up of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, the Trust for Public Land, the San Francisco Parks Alliance, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute, are excited to share with you the Equitable Development Plan (EDP) for this transformative renovation. The landmark plan, a first for San Francisco, ensures this waterfront park will benefit current Bayview-Hunters Point residents while preserving the culture and identity of the historic neighborhood. It provides a blueprint for delivering a park designed by and for the community while improving economic opportunity and environmental health for its residents.

On a cold Monday morning, Yihua Liu sat on a bench with a friend at the Rail Park. Now a student at Drexel, he’s lived in Chinatown all his life, and he’s noticed the neighborhood changing.

Human beings are hardwired to seek out what we define as “wellbeing”: connection and belonging; safety; familiarity and predictability; purposeful and creative influence on our surroundings and future; and access to food, shelter, and other resources without shame or danger. Wellbeing is about being whole, as individuals and communities. While health and wellness are part of this, wellbeing reaches much further and deeper. It’s foundational.

The past year has served to reconfirm the importance of a robust, nature-rich public realm that is welcoming to all. From health and wellbeing to environmental and economic resiliency, our parks, trails, libraries and community centers are critical civic infrastructure that provide multi-faceted benefits for communities. Today, the eighth in our series of photo essays reflecting on public space efforts in cities across the country, features The Underline in Miami.

Amid the ongoing transformation of Richmond’s landscape and infrastructure, James W. Warren is looking to create bridges in more ways than one.