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.
Guangzhou Innovation Park
SWA’s design for this park, with its collegiate social atmosphere, offers a memorable place of natural respite that functions as green infrastructure.
Innovation City Park project is located at the intersection of three science and innovation corridor axes in Guangzhou International Innovation City, including the core axis of the University City. Becaus...
Suzhou Center
The Suzhou Center is a landmark urban space within the Suzhou Central Business District that embodies the spirit of the city of Suzhou as a gateway for intersecting old and new cultural and historic heritage. The successful combination of high-density development and ecological conservation will allow for Suzhou to transition to a garden city where state-of-th...
Griggs Park Redevelopment
Griggs Park, a historically important open space located in Uptown Dallas, had not kept pace with the ever-evolving culture and artistic neighborhood surrounding it. The new design reflects the changes in urban uses for the now-vibrant neighborhood. Established in the 1940s, the park is the first dedicated to an African American in Dallas. It transitioned with...
Fort Wayne Riverfront
As a city that was built and thrived because of its location as a crossroads between wilderness and city, farm and market, the realities of infrastructure both natural and man-made are at the heart of Fort Wayne’s history. We consider waterways as an integral part of open spaces of the City, forming a series of infrastructural systems that affect the dynamics ...