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Nov

2011

Could Building Thousands of Parks Fix the Real Estate Market? - Neighborhoods - The Atlantic Cities

I don't know about this. Seems too one-sided...
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“Parks,” she says, “can solve the urban real estate crisis.”
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www.theatlanticcities.com/...397

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atlantic_cities urban_renewal parks

Sep

2011

The Renderings for the Delancey Underground Park on the Lower East Side -- New York Magazine

The idea strikes me as bizarre, but also weirdly appealing...
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“Technology enables us to create an appealing green space in an underserved neighborhood,” says Ramsey. The key, he says, is the “remote skylight,” a system that channels sunlight along fiber-optic cables, filtering out harmful ultraviolet and infrared light but keeping the wavelengths used in photosynthesis. “We’re channeling sunlight the way they did in ancient Egyptian tombs, but in a supermodern way.” Ramsey envisions a stand of dozens of lamppostlike solar collectors on the Delancey Street median, feeding a system of fixtures down below.
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nymag.com/...the-low-line-2011-9

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nyc low_line parks greenspace urban_amenities nymag

Jan

2009

"Half of park, street trees at end of cycle" by Bill Cleverley (Times-Colonist)

City of Victoria has a couple of parks master plan workshops coming up this month, January 09 (tomorrow & on 1/24) to figure out how to manage continuation and replacement of current "urban forest." (See city website for "Urban Forest Master Plan".)

[Note that the statistics given in this article apply to the City of Victoria (which is downtown core and core neighbourhoods, ~80K pop.), NOT the Greater Victoria area nor the CRD (Capital Regional District), which is 13 municipalities. CRD/ Greater Victoria municipal politics is screwy - we badly need amalgamation of the core municipalities (Victoria, Oak Bay, Saanich, Esquimalt, View Royal).]

www.timescolonist.com/...story.html

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urban_forest victoria parks

More than half the 40,000 trees in Victoria's parks and boulevards are reaching the end of their life cycle.
6 more annotation(s)...
- "It's not until you start looking up [that] you see what's there and the impact it has on the city. It's a key part of what makes Victoria the great place it is."
- Managing trees is not as simple as replacing old and rotting trees, Speed said.
  Take, for example, the chestnut trees along Cook Street, many of which are 70 or 80 years old and nearing the end of their lives. "People are pretty attached to them, so cutting them down is a pretty challenging thing for residents and for the businesses there," Speed said.
  The trees are also difficult to remove and affect infrastructure such as water, gas and sewer lines. Then there's the question of what to plant in their place.
  But the chestnuts have to be dealt with. During last winter's severe windstorms, three came down -- one taking out the side of an apartment building.
- Coun. Chris Coleman hopes work now being undertaken will result in a funding strategy for tree replacement.
  He notes the city is responsible for about 40,000 trees, about half of which are boulevard trees.
  "Two thousand of those at the moment are holes," and need to be replaced, Coleman said. More important, however, is developing a series of succession plans for the long term, he said. "A lot of the trees we have were planted in a short period of time. They then all grow up and they all start dying."
- The value of the city's trees is estimated at more than $80 million, a figure that would be significantly higher if trees on private land -- which represent 30 to 40 per cent of Victoria's tree canopy -- were factored into the equation.
- The city has hired Gye and Associates Urban Forestry Consultants Ltd. to review the urban forest and develop the master plan. Key issues to be addressed include:
- - Balancing urban development with tree conservation.
  - Protecting significant treed areas and increasing biodiversity.
  - Creating strategies for communities to best influence the treed character of their neighbourhoods.
  - Determining if the city should be planting more trees and if so, where and what kind.
  - Minimizing negative impacts of existing and new trees.
  - Planning for the effects of climate change on the urban forest.

Dec

2008

"Enhancing city life, one landscape project at a time," by Christopher Hume (TheStar.com)

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For the last 50 or 60 years, urban topography has been a largely accidental creation. Although planned in every detail, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts. As a result, we inhabit a terrain of unintended consequences. Little wonder, then, that landscape architecture could be to this century what architecture was to the last.
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www.thestar.com/556182

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thestar christopher_hume urban_design landscape parks landscape_architecture

For the vast majority of Canadians, who live in towns, cities and suburbs, the geography of daily life revolves around the man-made environments of work, home and play.
We're starting to wake up to the fact that the world we have created – especially the public realm – leaves much to be desired.
4 more annotation(s)...
- For the last 50 or 60 years, urban topography has been a largely accidental creation. Although planned in every detail, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts. As a result, we inhabit a terrain of unintended consequences. Little wonder, then, that landscape architecture could be to this century what architecture was to the last.
- Conditions on the waterfront make the landscape architect's job easier than it would be in already built-up precincts of the city; starting from nothing allows for a seamless integration of the various urban components that comprise the larger community. In such a case, buildings will have to be fitted into the landscape, not the other way around.
- For the most part, however, the task will be to intervene in existing situations with the idea of using landscape to organize the surroundings and reflect the fluidity both of the city and the natural forces within it.
- As we know from painful experience, the notion that there exists a topology of rationality and certainty no longer holds. Instead, we should be talking about the landscape as a stage that enables an endless variety of activity.
  The new landscapists will need to adopt a more opportunistic approach, taking advantage of the unexpected.