Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture and urban planning, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
Downtown Leaders Form Entity to Oversee Green Space
“Minneapolis business leaders have created a nonprofit conservancy to oversee a new urban park that will sprout up beside the new Minnesota Vikings stadium. With the formation of Greening Downtown Minneapolis, business leaders are taking a leadership role on a project that public bodies have struggled to make a reality because of daunting funding and legal challenges…The Downtown Council recently helped form the conservancy with $50,000 in seed money from Wells Fargo. Its bare-bones three-member board is led by David Wilson, an executive at Accenture. If given City Council approval, the organization’s primary role would be to oversee a new 4.2-acre park planned to anchor the multifaceted developments in Downtown East.”
Green Between the Tracks: An Urban Nature Park
“In the minds of the leadership at Kalamazoo Nature Center, there is no wrong side of the tracks. There’s just the green side. Freight trains once moved across railroad tracks through the four-acre parcel in downtown Kalamazoo where now the beginnings of an urban nature park is taking root. The parcel was once a train yard, later a coal dump. Along Portage Creek at East Michigan Avenue and Pitcher Street, adjacent to the Arcus Depot and across from Food Dance Café, the parcel of land still sports tall weeds and patches of bare dirt, but to the knowing eye, great changes are evident. An urban nature park is a natural space found in the city, designed to provide green space to urban residents. Traditionally, this kind of green space is found in rural conservation spaces.”
How Cities Can Help Fight Climate Change
“The new proposals to combat climate change announced today by President Obama will leverage innovative climate strategies which are already at work and which have been proven effective. If successful, these proposals will help deliver powerful nature-based climate solutions from cities to rural communities…The White House plan also offers opportunities for cities to harness nature for climate benefit. Eighty percent of Americans now live in cities, so any effective climate response must include urban areas. Where city parks were once largely focused on recreation, scenic beauty and quality of life, now they also are seen as tools to reduce carbon emissions and protect city residents from the extremes of a changing climate.”
Designing a Way to Live in Boston’s Watery Future
“An image of Boston in an era of rising seas and climate change is part of a new report from the Urban Land Institute of Boston/New England, ‘The Urban Implications of Living with Water.’ The report looks at how the city might deal with rising sea levels by advancing potential solutions for four different neighborhoods representing four different typologies: Revere Beach; Alewife in Cambridge; the Innovation District on the South Boston waterfront; and Back Bay. All the ideas emphasize the role private developers can play in concert with city government to make Boston a safer and more resilient city.”
