Tag: environment

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Up To Speed

New 5.2-acre park in Dallas caps highway, connects urban neighborhoods

New 5.2-acre park in Dallas caps freeway, connects urban neighborhoods.

Similar to Cincinnati’s plans to cap Fort Washington Way, Dallas has just opened a 5.2-acre park spanning the Woodall Rodgers Freeway. Not only will the park connect Dallas’ downtown with its uptown, but it will also provide a much needed public gathering space for the city which has recently added two other parks to its center city. More from Next American City:

Taking 10 years to plan and $110 million to build, Klyde Warren park is most recent “bridge” to come online in the last seven months, succeeding the newly christened, Santiago Calatrava- designed Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, which opened in March to the tune of $182 million….

Both [of downtown Dallas’ new] parks operate under the auspice of good design as a driver of success. Additionally, they are also regularly patrolled by a private security force and are maintained by private cleaning crews in order to perpetuate the goodness of the design. Though the parks are nice, there is something quaint about them — the prospect of stumbling onto something unexpected is not expected, and raises the question of how to allow an organic “place,” which ultimately defines good public spaces, to evolve.

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Development News

$450,000 donation from Duke Energy to advance construction at Smale Riverfront Park

Thanks to a $450,000 donation from Duke Energy, the Cincinnati Park Board will be able to move forward more quickly with the development of what was previously called the Main Street Garden at the Smale Riverfront Park.

The area is located immediately south of Great American Ball Park, and is now called the Duke Energy Garden. The narrow piece of park space is expected to be completed by spring 2013, and will connect the Smale Riverfront Park with additional riverfront parkland to the east (Sawyer Point, Bicentennial Commons, Theordore M. Berry International Friendship Park).


The Duke Energy Garden will include 12 “family-sized” porch swings, walking paths, and will help connect the Smale Riverfront Park with additional riverfront parks to the east. Rendering provided.

According to Cincinnati Park Board officials, this connection will be further established with the completion of the Ohio River Trail to Paddlewheel Park in fall 2013.

“The Cincinnati riverfront is more than just an entryway into our community,” Julie Janson, President of Duke Energy Ohio/Kentucky, stated at a Monday morning press conference. “It serves as the front porch to Ohio. That’s why Duke Energy, through our foundation, is happy to be able to support the creation of the Duke Energy Garden in the new Smale Riverfront Park.”

According to park officials, the Duke Energy Garden will include 87 trees, thousands of smaller plantings, walking paths, a 150-foot granite seat wall, and 12 “family-sized” porch swings.

The porch swings will be suspended from “undulating” pergolas that will also offer park-users a bit of shade and protection from the elements while enjoying the swings, which have long been anticipated at the park due to their popularity elsewhere throughout the country.


Three additional phases of work are planned to follow the completion of the Duke Energy Garden at Smale Riverfront Park. Image provided.

“Duke Energy’s commitment to the vitality of this region has been demonstrated again and again by the company’s substantial investments in economic development, education, environmental and energy efficiency efforts throughout the region,” said Willie F. Carden, Jr., Director of Cincinnati Parks. “The establishment of the Duke Energy Garden in Smale Riverfront Park is another such gift that will provide a stunning new public greenspace in Greater Cincinnati’s grand new front yard.”

The majority of phase one work at the Smale Riverfront Park was completed in May 2012, but several features of phase one have yet to be funded or built, in addition to future phases of park construction to the west. Some of those features include a transient boat dock, playgrounds, additional gardens and tree groves, a carousel, and more promenades and fountains connecting the central riverfront park with the Ohio River.

Three additional phases of construction work will take place following the completion of the Duke Energy Garden, and it is expected that once fully built out that Smale Riverfront Park will attract approximately 1.1 million visitors annually.

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Up To Speed

What happens when urban farms get too big?

What happens when urban farms get too big?.

Urban farms are all the rage nowadays. Cities across North America have been incorporating them into the cityscape to fill the void left behind by shuttered industry, or abandoned housing. While the benefits seem to have been fully vetted, is there a risk to allowing urban farms to grow too large? More from Grist:

More than a few environmentalists have argued that urban farms must remain small or risk suburbanizing the city. One of the most prominent is Kaid Benfield, a smart-growth guru with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Benfield worries that urban farming, if practiced on a large scale, will dilute the walkability and density that defines cities.

“I support the growing of food in cities, and have even done it myself,” Benfield cautions. But it should be done in ways that support urbanism and not displace it…I’m not sure we’re talking about a city any more if we’re going to have fields of 20 acres and more.” By seeding large farms in the city, he says, “we risk locking in long-term environmental problems in terms of not having a healthy urban core. Central cities are starting to revive.”

One problem is that most of the best para-urban land (or land just outside cities) — which was once seen as ideal for growing food without huge transportation costs — has already been swallowed up by suburban development.

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Up To Speed

The value proposition of large urban trees

The value proposition of large urban trees.

We all know the intrinsic value of trees. They’re beautiful, consume carbon dioxide, provide shade, and help keep us cool. But new research finds that large trees (those over 77 centimeters in diameter) provide even greater benefits to humans than do small trees (those less than 8 centimeters in diameter). More from Next American City:

When we talk about street trees and the urban forest, sometimes we miss an essential truth: Not all street trees are created equal. Mature trees are an order of magnitude more valuable to us than young, small ones.

There is no shortage of scientific evidence supporting the incredible benefits that mature trees provide to urban neighborhoods. Yet many local policies seem to focus only on the quantity of trees being planted rather than the quality…Planting a million trees is great. But planting even 500,000 in conditions that allow them to survive, thrive and mature is exponentially greater.

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Business News Politics

Cincinnati aims to revise plumbing code to allow for rainwater harvesting by November

In early 2011, Cincinnati City Council signed a motion to develop a task force that would oversee the creation of new building code standards to allow for rainwater harvesting throughout the city. The work of the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, however, may now be jeopardy due to a lack of clarity about who is responsible for maintaining such systems.

The initial goal of Cincinnati’s Rainwater Harvesting Task Force was to develop a code to allow for the reuse of rainwater for non-potable uses such as flushing toilets. One of the concerns with such a system is the potential for backflow of non-potable water into potable water sources.

To that end, one of the biggest advances over the past year was the release of a new national standard in March 2012. And according to the Task Force, it is that national standard that is being used as a template for Cincinnati.


Dater Montessori 2009 renovation achieved LEED Gold standards, and also boasts the city’s first, and only, rainwater harvesting system. Photograph by Glaserworks.

“There is no community in Ohio that has a procedure in place to allow this [rainwater harvesting] to happen,” Bob Knight, Green Partnership for Greater Cincinnati and the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, explained to Cincinnati’s Livable Communities Committee on September 25. “Significant hurdles have been resolved in Cincinnati, and we are working on eleven additional items now.”

Some of the eleven additional items that still need to be resolved include the finalization of water quality requirements, inspection processes, certified maintenance protocols, metering, and development of tailored language from the new national code that will work for Cincinnati. Knight, however, is optimistic that the task force will meet the goals of city council and have an amended plumbing code in place by late November.

To date, the only rainwater harvesting system in place in Cincinnati was installed in 2009 at Dater Montessori School on the city’s west side. The Dater system, however, has not yet been used due to lack of agreements between various agencies and institutions. Specifically, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) is concerned about being responsible for maintaining the system once it is operational.

“I’m afraid the direction the Task Force is taking is not taking us in the direction we want to be,” Terry Elfers, Chief Operating Officer of CPS, exclaimed. “CPS does not want to be responsible for treating water.”

CPS is not alone in their hesitation to move forward, as Greater Cincinnati Water Works has also expressed concern about where responsibility will lie in these systems that are envisioned to help reduce water consumption while also helping Cincinnati reduce water runoff as is required by a federal consent decree.

“The heart of the problem is allowing the agencies that are responsible for this decision, to be able to point to a standard that they can defend,” Knight explained. “With this model code, the agencies can now point to it and can say that they will follow this direction.”

The Rainwater Harvesting Task Force hopes to have the language in place for Cincinnati’s plumbing code within 60 days so that they can meet their deadline. Absent that direction and approval from City Council, the activation of Dater’s rainwater harvesting system may have to continue to wait, along with other potential systems around the city.

“It would be wonderful for the City and CPS if we could resolve this so that we could support moving forward with this project,” Eflers stated as he reminded the committee that CPS has served as a leader in the community when it comes to environmental sustainability issues over the past decade.