Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
Redesigning New York’s Hidden Public Spaces to Create A More Resilient City
“It’s a little known fact that some 5.3 million square feet of “leftover” space courses through Manhattan, largely wasted. It’s street-related filler space–the concrete medians in the middle of streets, the odd-shaped traffic medians–that few people think about, but it totals up to be the equivalent square footage of about 92 football fields…What if some of the more generous central medians throughout New York’s street system were turned into green infrastructure: parklets that have been keenly designed to absorb and funnel storm water; generate solar electricity; and recycle food waste, which is another matter that Mayor Bloomberg is championing these days in the spirit of saving roughly $100 million a year by diverting organic residential waste from landfills.”
Of Goats And Gardens: Making Sense Of Urban Agriculture In LA
“Lots of people are excited about local food, healthier eating and sustainable cities these days. And that’s sparked a renewed interest in the development of urban agriculture around the country. But few people actually know what it is or what’s already happening around them…Enter a dedicated group of urban planning graduate students at the University of California, Los Angeles. In six months, they waded through the bureaucratic nightmare of urban agriculture laws, ordinances and regulations in each of LA county’s 88 cities, using old fashioned in-person interviews and that device called the telephone, so you won’t have to. The result? A handy assessment of the city’s urban agriculture scene…The students also created an interactive map showing the location of more than 1,200 formal urban agriculture sites across the county, from school gardens to nurseries, farms and community gardens using Google maps.”
Sprouting in Baltimore: A 64-page Urban Agriculture Policy Plan
“Agriculture in Baltimore has boomed, with 13 urban farms and 72 community gardens here now, by the city’s reckoning. But with such growth have come challenges as well. One of those challenges became apparent over the summer when the Baltimore Free Farm in Hampden discovered that a developer was bidding on city-owned land where the collective had been farming and conducting educational activities for years…This week the city released a draft urban agriculture plan, “Homegrown Baltimore,” that attempts to address the issue of land security and a host of other areas, with an eye toward increasing the production and consumption of locally grown food in the city.”
The Green Country Town
“Fishing in the Schuylkill, family fun runs in Hunting Park, hiking in the Pennypack, evening campfires, relaxing on a neighborhood park bench, bird-watching, biking along Cobbs Creek, tending a community garden, enjoying the shade of a street tree – these are just some of the fond experiences we all share thanks to our world-class Philadelphia parks and forests. Philadelphia is an urban ecosystem that includes nature and humans, highways and waterways, buildings and forests, all of which work together as a single system…Everyone has a role to play in ensuring the future of Philadelphia’s forests. No open space is too small to contribute to this important effort. Actions that property owners take in their own yards can benefit their neighborhood and the city.”
