City Concealed: Staten Island I previously featured a video from the online video series "The City Concealed" produced by Thirteen, a project of New York station WNET. The series offers glimpses into some of the terrain vague of the metropolis by: "...exploring the unseen corners of New York. Visit the places you don’t know exist, locations you can’t get into, or maybe don’t even want to. Each installment unearths New York’s rich history in the city’s hidden remains and overlooked spaces." The alerted me to a recent video on the Staten Island Greenbelt, which is 2,800 acres of passive natural area and more traditional parkland, a short distance from Manhattan. A bit of context from a location map shows the full extent of this agglomerated green zone slicing through the center of the island. A close up shows some of the detail of the connected areas and the juxtaposition of the active and passive elements. THIRTEEN is owned by the New York public media company WNET.ORG.
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Goldhagen: “Democracies Need Physical Spaces” Sarah Williams Goldhagen, architecture critic for The New Republic, argues that America’s public realm is best served by physical urban spaces that can enable “non-structured and non-goal-orientated” interactions among many kinds of people. The best places for these types of interactions? Great urban parks. She covers the role parks have played in enabling democracy, traces the impact of Frederick Law Olmsted’s pioneering urban parks, explores a few contemporary parks that fit the “great urban park” name, and outlines the rise of landscape urbanism, a theory that may be encouraging designers to better serve the public realm. Goldhagen believes that American society “has become more an archipelago than a nation, increasingly balkanized into ethnic, class, faith, and interest groups whose members rarely interact meaningfully with people whose affiliations they do not in large measure share.” In Boston, Chicago, New York City, St. Read the article Like this: Like Loading...
100,000 Trees For Humanity The Earth’s forests are under assault on a tremendous scale with approximately 30,000 square miles disappearing each year. It is estimated that all the Earth’s rain forests could be gone within 100 years at the current rate of deforestation resulting in habitat loss for millions of species. Unmanaged deforestation: - Threatens the survival of millions of animal and plant species - Destroys rare species that may contain answers for cures to serious diseases - Threatens climate stability - Contributes to global warming and green house gas emission. - Leads to desert lands that emerge from cleared forests - Leads to soil erosion, landslides and flooding threatening communities and the lives of people near deforested regions - Threatens humanity in countless ways including food supply, water supply, and disease. The solution is a systematic effort of RE-Forestation. That means replacing what is being taken away. ♻ Retweet this green story
Sherwood Institute: Beijing’s Green Lungs and Floyd Bennett Field: Recreation in the Wasteland 1940 aerial view of Floyd Bennett Field, part of the Jamaica Bay Gateway National Recreation Area Most parks in New York City bear the mark of those two great progenitors of public space: Frederick Law Olmsted and Robert Moses. Thanks largely to their influence, City parks tend to be either a “pleasure ground” or a “recreational facility,” according to theorist Galen Cranz [ ] . Floyd Bennett Field is neither. Gateway National Recreation Center {*style:<b>History </b>*}The codification of public recreational space in New York City famously began with Central Park and the Greensward Plan of Olmsted and Vaux. Robert Moses began the next great period of park building when he was appointed commissioner of the City’s Park Department in 1930. During this same period, Floyd Bennett Field served the city and nation as a technologically advanced civilian and military airport. {*style:<b>Today Recreation, instead of relying exclusively on the consumption of images and experiences, becomes process.
Ruisseau-de-Montigny: Montréal veut revigorer le parc | Karim Benessaieh Composé de quatre îles et entourant un ruisseau qui coule du boulevard Henri-Bourassa jusqu'à la rivière des Prairies, ce parc de 22 hectares a été créé en 2005. Les chutes spectaculaires créées par le lit de roc calcaire du ruisseau constituent son principal attrait. Des sentiers - peu fréquentés - permettent de longer le cours d'eau. La faune y est particulièrement variée, alors que 62 espèces d'oiseaux et 10 espèces de mammifères y ont été répertoriées. On y retrouve en outre la fameuse et typiquement montréalaise couleuvre brune. «C'est peut-être le seul endroit sur l'île de Montréal où on a d'aussi belles cascades, précise Alan De Sousa, vice-président du comité exécutif de la Ville et responsable du développement durable. Le comité exécutif a approuvé cette semaine le «plan concept» qui va guider la mise en valeur de ce qu'on appelle l'«écoterritoire de la coulée verte du ruisseau De Montigny». On souhaite cependant en même temps renforcer la protection des lieux.
The Secret History of the Edgelands Photograph: Jason Orton. Derelict barn, site of the former Joyce Green Hospital, Dartford, Kent, 2007Edgelands, recently published in the UK, has been getting some close attention from reviewers such as novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer and travel writer Robert Macfarlane. Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts’ book, a startlingly fresh and perceptive read, is subtitled Journeys into England’s True Wilderness, but the phenomenon it describes is not specific to England. These transitional zones can be found anywhere that urban development meets open land. That’s not to say the forms these places take won’t have their own local and national character. Farley and Symmons Roberts, who are both widely published poets, want us to pay more attention to these usually disregarded spaces. Giving them a name might help, because up until now they have been without any signifier, an incomprehensible swathe we pass through without regarding; untranslated landscape. Photograph: Jason Orton.
The Value of Urban Parks The U.S. House Urban Caucus’ Urban Parks Taskforce organized a briefing on urban parks and their role in creating green spaces which can revitalize neighborhoods, improve health, and create jobs. Parks also play a major role in fighting childhood obesity, providing safe and healthy places to play. Caucus members heard from Joe Hughes, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Susan Wachter, Professor of Financial Management, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania; Eddie George, ASLA, former NFL player and landscape architect; and Salin Geevarghese, Senior Advisor, Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Introducing the briefing, Representative Chaka Fattah (PA), who is chair of the caucus, said a new consensus is forming among the administration and legislative branch: urban parks can’t be separated from broader urban revitalization efforts. George argued that maintaining parks will cost local governments.