Architecture & Urban Planning

City planners held a “pop-up” event Saturday [June 13, 2015] on Adeline Street to listen to concerns of community bikers and pedestrians about the Adeline Corridor Plan.

Although the price is steep, spending $1 million to buy property across from the Manset Pier and convert it into a parking lot will benefit the town in the long run, Town Manager Don Lagrange told selectmen Tuesday. Officials have been discussing the purchase of the Knote property on the Shore Road. On Tuesday, selectmen voted 5-0 to move toward that goal by authorizing a summary appraisal of the property. ...

“They’re kind of pushing their own limits and starting to think out of the box in terms of where we can put parks and what parks look like,” says Tori Kjer, Los Angeles program director for the Trust for Public Land, which has partnered on several parks. “If you look at South L.A. it’s so extremely dense and there’s really not any big parcels waiting to become parks, so we have to get creative about thinking about the properties we can go after.”

Nathan McClintock, a professor at the school of urban studies at Portland State University, sees a link between the rise of urban farming and a diminishing social safety net. “With the stripping away of the welfare state, there’s a growing dependence on food banks and volunteerism; people can rely less on government assistance,” he said. “People are also moving back to cities and they want a back-to-the-land experience.”

It is easy to overlook the pipes and boxes carrying water under our roads, but these parts of our transportation infrastructure can have huge impacts on freshwater health and road safety. 2003 Fellow Jessica Levine is working in the northeastern United States to replace and upgrade road crossings to benefit aquatic species and habitat along with other community goals.

When 2014 Fellow Karen Andradea arrived at UC Berkeley in 2009, she was surprised to discover how challenging it was for outside organizations to partner with students and faculty on research projects. So she set out to create the UC Berkeley Science Shop, a publicly accessible entity that connects small nonprofits, local government agencies, small businesses, and other civic organizations with undergraduate and graduate student researchers.

Earlier this month [December 2014], a team of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) gave their take on the revitalization of the Brickbottom neighborhood at a gathering of residents and community members at the Brickbottom Artists Building. The team of graduate students from MIT’s Department of Urban Planning worked with City Hall to come up with new ideas and more options for future development of the area. The students wanted to balance the needs of the people living in the area with possible future economic development.