While Houston does have significant park spaces and trails, the city of no zoning has historically been unable to create enough designated open spaces and the necessary connectivity between them. The key to increasing the open space network lies within the region’s floodplains. Relatively flat terrain, intense rain events, and urbanized watersheds create broad jurisdictional floodplains. With developmental restrictions and regulatory controls, vast land areas are left as unused green space or vacant lands. The Bayou Greenway plan recommends leveraging these underutilized spaces to create trail corridors, new parks, and flood mitigation facilities that will be within 1.5 miles of 6 out of 10 Houstonians. The resulting network will stretch over 300 miles and include 4,000 acres of new land connected to existing neighborhoods, schools, churches, and other community assets. The acquisition areas will allow access where physical or jurisdictional obstacles now occur, increase flood mitigation opportunities, and help reconnect currently fragmented ecologies. Resultant facilities within the greenway corridor will perform as functioning recreation space throughout the year, with just a 1% chance of experiencing a significant flood event during that time. Bayou Greenways addresses numerous health, safety, and welfare issues inherent in the daily lives of citizens in the nation’s fourth largest city. Rated as one of the unhealthiest, park-deficient, most economically divided, ethnically diverse, sprawling, and fastest-growing cities in the country, Houston faces enormous social challenges. Already five times the area of most North American cities, Houston is expected to double in population by the year 2035. The Bayou Greenways are now shaping the development fabric of the city by creating healthy connections that are in close proximity to the outdoor world and between highly diverse populations. As a comparison, Portland represents the next-largest green network in the nation, at half of Bayou Greenways’ distance, with 150 miles of multi-use trails. This is a very popular effort: in 2012, receiving the highest approval of all measures on the city ballot, Houston voters approved $100 million in public funding for the project, with a private match of $105 million.
Park 101
The ambitious Park 101 aims to cover part of downtown Los Angeles’ 101 Freeway with a multi-purpose park that will include playgrounds, seating, festival areas, and a plaza. The approximately four-block cap park will reconnect the two sections of Downtown that have long been separated by the freeway, greatly enhancing the currently noisy, with much-needed shad...
Woodbine Master Plan
The project transforms the largest undeveloped tract within Toronto into an iconic and dynamic, fully integrated, transit-oriented mixed-use district. Capitalizing on the racetrack’s legacy and the site’s natural, cultural, and locational assets, the project is designed to become a new heart in Toronto.
The master plan includes a d...
Wuhan Huafa Capital Park
Wuhan Huafa Capital Development is located in the city’s urban core, amidst the hustle and bustle of busy streets and neighborhoods. The nearly 57,000-square-foot green space, adjacent to the Wuhan Capital Residential Development Sales Center, is envisioned to provide an immersive landscape experience for the sales center’s model housing area during the advert...
Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park
Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park was envisioned as an international model of urban ecology and a world laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. The project is a collaboration between Thomas Balsley Associates and WEISS/MANFREDI for the open space and park design with ARUP as the prime consultant and infrastructure designer.
What was once a ba...