Milton Street Park is a 1.2-acre linear urban park alongside the Ballona Creek Bike Trail in Los Angeles, California. The plan incorporates numerous green-design elements, including the use of recycled materials, native planting, flow-through planters and treatment alongside the 1,000-foot-long, 45-foot-wide stretch of land. A variety of special elements such as bird-watching platforms, bike trail enhancements, seating and outdoor picnic areas enhance the visitor experience along the trail. The promotion of alternative transportation and the creation of an interpretative ecological habitat for birds, insects, and reptiles creates a sustainable network within an existing urban environment. SWA, in conjunction with the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, conducted community meetings, including a public design workshop to ensure that the design and safety needs of the residents were acknowledged and addressed in the plan conceptualized and presented by SWA.
Greening Houston’s Freeways
As Houston’s Downtown has developed and expanded over many decades, public green space has been increasingly constrained by several interstate routes: primarily I-59, -45, and -69. These thoroughfares, while essential for commuters, have left little room for workers and nearby residents to enjoy unimpeded access to their locale’s adjacent trailways and bayous,...
Thousand Oaks Urban Forestry Master Plan
While residents and businesses are clearly proud of the City of Thousand Oaks’ two-decade-long “Tree City USA” designation, recent drought conditions created an urgent need for the City to decrease grassy landscapes and update maintenance practices. As a key part of these efforts, the City selected SWA, along with team partners Planning & Energy/Entitlemen...
Martin Luther King Jr. Square Water Quality Demonstration Park
The City of Conway received local and federal grants to create a water quality demonstration park in a flood-prone, one-block area of its downtown to educate the public about Low Impact Development (LID) and Green Infrastructure (GI) methods and how they can enhance water quality. The project transformed a remediated brownfield site, ...
Golden Shoal Riverfront Park
Located along Chongqing’s Jialing River, this new linear public park offered unique challenges: a 30-meter annual river fluctuation, steep topography, and low-impact maintenance of a continuous riparian corridor. Adjacent new urban development, with attendant needs for green space, called for a flexible and resilient approach to the park’s landscape and infras...