Conservation & Recreation

open spaces

Given the cost and complexities involved in purchasing and setting aside green, open space, no one type of organization can go it alone. Local governments, land trusts, non-profits, and private sector developers must forge partnerships.[read more]

guerrilla garden

In every bio-region one of the most urgent tasks is to rebuild the community of naturalists, so radically depleted in recent years, as young people have spent less time in nature.[read more]

Chicago's Bloomingdale Trail

Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail, the 3-mile elevated rail park may give the High Line park in New York City a run for its money. What makes the park really different from the High Line?[read more]

coastal recovery

Now approaching the three-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we can truly learn a lesson of sustainability. This disaster has exemplified how with each disaster lessons can be learned for the future.[read more]

urban interventions

There’s a limit to the amount of physical change one person or a small group of people can initiate in a city, but what if hundreds of citizens united, each putting in place the projects and changes they want to see all in one day?[read more]

public spaces in Beijing

The role of public space can vary greatly from city to city. In Beijing, public space focuses on health and community, a reflection of Chinese beliefs in balance, prevention and longevity dating back thousands of years.[read more]

cities and green space

Over the last decade, but particularly over the last five years, the concepts of sustainable design and its sub-genre, green infrastructure, have entered into the design, construction, and renovation of urban parks.[read more]

The urban ecology framework of Patch Dynamics has been key in watching how city models such as the megalopolis and the megacity interact and generate urban ecosystem change.[read more]

The city of Lincoln, Nebraska has become a hub of new and innovative designs within the last couple of years. Through the revitalization of an otherwise flood plain, an efficient use of space has been developed.[read more]

rodents of unusual size

Brought to the state from their native Argentina in the 1930s for their fur, nutria are literally “rodents of unusual size” that are also playing a role in destroying Louisiana's coastal wetlands.[read more]

river clean-up

Because the American legal system provides little in the way of actual authority to solve regional issues, collaboration of one sort or another is often the best available substitute.[read more]

city parks governance

The most important element of business model innovation for parks right now is around governance. Park visitors want so much more from their experience than one public agency can manage.[read more]