Orange County Great Park launches first phase
A rendering of the Orange County Great Park, including the park's observation balloon. The completed park will implement sustainable design in establishing a canyon, a perennial stream, a lake, botanical gardens and an aviation museum.
The first phase of development is underway for 1,347-acre brownfield transformation project Orange County Great Park. $65.5 million will fund the expansion of a 27.5-acre “Preview Park,” which opened in 2008 and features an observation balloon providing visitors a high-flying view of the entire site. Scheduled to be complete by the end of 2011, the new phase of construction will develop 200 acres and include sports fields, arts and cultural space, a 100-acre farm, a 2,500-tree orange orchard, a community garden and an agricultural pavilion. The park is being constructed on the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which operated from 1942 until 1999.
NYC biking up 26% in 2009
According to the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), biking in New York City has increased by 26% in 2009. This is following a 35% increase in 2008 and corresponds with 200 miles of new striped or separated bike routes developed over the past three years. DOT’s graph, below, shows just how big the uptick has been.
The ‘Indicator Values’ on the Y-axis are derived by dividing the cyclist count for each year by the value for the year 2000 and multiplied by 100 (further explanation of the data is available through DOT). DOT collected their data by counting cyclists crossing 50th Street on the Hudson River Greenway, riding over the four East River bridges, and entering and exiting the Staten Island Ferry at Whitehall Terminal.
(via Treehugger)
Walk Staten Island’s South Shore tomorrow
Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here! presents another Staten Island group walk tomorrow, Saturday, November 7th, roaming 15 miles of the island’s south shore. Lots of beach walking and some rock scrambling involved; dress for the temperature and wear sturdy shoes. Participation is free, and Saturday’s walk will start with a meetup underneath the first S in the Staten Island Ferry sign outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan at 8:45 am.
Parks and immigrants
The New York Times runs down recent initiatives aimed at making New York City parks more accessible and accommodating to immigrants. These efforts have been accelerating as a result of the city’s language-access plan and a report from New Yorkers for Parks called Parks for All New Yorkers: Immigrants, Culture and NYC Parks. The Parks Department has installed over 7000 signs in parks so far in languages including Spanish, Korean, Italian, Chinese, Russian and Haitian Creole, and it has begun an initiative to hire more bilingual and multilingual city parks workers. The City has also begun addressing demand for sports facilities that accommodate internationally popular sports such as cricket, netball and bocce ball through construction of new facilities, and there has been a trend toward more international cuisine among food vendors, to complement more traditional park snacks like hot dogs and pretzels.
First launch into the water
Last week, the Parks Department’s Freshkills Park team and Staten Island Urban Park Rangers took a canoe trip through the site’s creeks and wetlands. We put in at “The Point,” near the Isle of Meadows, and headed east through Fresh Kills Creek to Main Creek, where we got up close and personal with the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. This was our first brush with waterborne recreation at the site, and it afforded some awesome perspective of its scale and beauty. Our thanks to the Department of Sanitation for granting us access and sending us off! We hope to be able to offer public canoe tours in the near future, but for now, be sure to check out some of the photos from our afternoon on our flickr page.
We’ve also put up an album of new photos of the site looking its autumn prettiest.
Staten Island bike advocacy ride tomorrow
A volunteer coordinator from Transportation Alternatives and Staten Island bike advocates will be leading a ride around the borough tomorrow morning, October 10th, ending at Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills. The group will be “discussing the current challenges facing cyclist, pedestrian and mass transit users in Staten Island, and developing some advocacy plans for the future.” The ride is open to anyone, and the meet-up is at Staten Island Borough Hall, 10 Richmond Terrace, at 10am.
Explore Staten Island, this Saturday
Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here! is a series of long group walks exploring various parts of the five boroughs. Tomorrow’s 20-mile exploration of Staten Island will be the group’s 41st walk and its fifth on the Island. Their flickr stream of photos from previous walks is pretty excellent. Participation is free, and Saturday’s walk will be starting with a meetup underneath the first S in the Staten Island Ferry sign outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan at 8:45 am.
Technology in parks roundup
The iPhone application The Hidden Park.
A number of new technology-based parks applications have come online recently: Park Scan allows San Francisco park visitors to report maintenance issues to relevant city officials and to track prior reports; Off Leash is an iPhone app that directs users to the nearest off-leash dog park; The Hidden Park, also for the iPhone, leads kids through site-wide scavenger hunts of ten major world parks, including Central Park. Users “solve puzzles and photograph landmarks in order to reveal magical creatures and save the park from developers.”
The hybridization of personal technology and public spaces is intriguing but might not have yet reached mainstream desirability. A recent TreeHugger poll found that a majority of respondents (40%) would prefer not to have WiFi access in parks–opining that “there should be somewhere you can go and get away from the electronic fog.”
(via City Parks Blog and Making Places)
Gradual greening of recreation design
There are a handful of skate parks built from recycled materials these days, but generally, these massive concrete installations have been as environmentally friendly as golf courses. The Ed Benedict Skate Park in Portland, Oregon is trying to revise that image by managing storm water run-off more responsibly, absorbing it through integrated ‘biofiltration islands’ that have been incorporated as design elements.
Meanwhile, golf courses are trying to turn a corner, too. The newly renovated Mirimichi course near Memphis–owned by Justin Timberlake–has been rated the first Audubon International Classic Sanctuary in the US by implementing “sustainable resource management principles that incorporate wildlife conservation, habitat rehabilitation and enhancement, water conservation, and water quality protection.” The course uses reflective coatings on parking lots to reduce heat footprint; captures and reuses storm water to irrigate its landscape, has reduced its manicured acreage from 195 acres to 100 and introduced lakes and re-circulating creeks to support habitat.
(via Green Inc and Jetson Green)
Emerging resource-sharing models
Two recent efforts at sharing private green space: Hyperlocavore is an online ‘yardsharing’ forum that facilitates sharing of residential yard space, skills and resources for the collaborative tending of gardens and urban farms; Community Supported Forestry is Roald Gunderson and Amelia Baxter’s attempt to build a member base for their 140-acre Vermont forest; membership is $550 for a year’s worth of unlimited recreational access, select access to forest harvests like wild mushrooms and sustainable lumber, and member workshops on topics like beer brewing, beekeeping and natural architecture.
(via unconsumption and Worldchanging)
