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Oct 21 2019

Glorifying Gert Town

This video analyzes the neighborhood of Gert Town, Louisiana and discusses the possibility of implementing an arts district into the community.  It follows a fictional character named Frank and his process through designing the masterplan.  The arts district utilizes neighboring schools such as Xavier University and St. Mary’s High School by encouraging clubs and disciplines to come teach about what they are studying.

From here, more analysis of Gert Town must be done in order to understand the culture of the community.  Taking a deeper dive into who the residents are and what they do for a living will produce solutions that are better catered to Gert Town.

Process work shown below relays the different story board iterations and thought processess that were exercised. 

Written by Matthew · Categorized: Child Friendly City, Proposal Videos, Proposals

Oct 04 2019

Links to Explore involving Child Friendly Design

Child friendly design is something that constantly surrounds us, wherever we are in the World.  See how the following cities are including children in the design process.

 

Children’s Bicentennial Park in Peru, Chile

https://www.archdaily.com/461315/children-s-bicentebnnial-park-elemental

 

Fun Forest Rottendam

https://www.funforest.nl/en/

 

What happens when kids help design our cities

https://www.childinthecity.org/2019/08/05/what-happens-when-kids-help-design-our-cities/?gdpr=accept

 

Boulder’s Child-friendly plan

https://icma.org/articles/article/boulders-plan-become-child-and-youth-friendly-city

 

Planning for children in new vertical communities in Toronto

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2017/pg/bgrd/backgroundfile-103920.pdf

 

UNICEF Child friendly Cities Initiatives

https://childfriendlycities.org/initiatives/

 

Global Street Design Guide

https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-design-guide/

 

 

Written by Matthew · Categorized: Child Friendly City · Tagged: Child Friendly Design, Child-Friendly City

Sep 18 2019

Miami, Florida

Kids in Miami, Florida

Children ages 18 and under make up around 18% of the population of Miami.  This is a large percentage
that is not always thought about during the design phase of many projects.  Designing for children is an important part in a city’s cohesion.  Child friendly design improves a city’s level of safety, as well helps with the child’s ability to learn and grow.  Mara Mintzer is the program director for an organization called Growing Up Boulder.  This initiative began in 2009 as a collaboration between the University of Colorado Boulder, the city of Boulder, and the school district.  The organization uses kids in the design development phase as a different approach for solving problems.  This allows children to grow and realize that their opinion matters too.  But what is happening in Miami that keeps children in mind during the design process?

The Underline

The Underline is massive project currently taking place in Miami that takes the land
below Miami’s MetroRail, and turns it into a 10 mile linear park.  This park connects different parts of the city and acts as a safe, fun corridor for exploring Miami.  Stretching from the Miami River to Dadeland South Station, the park has many different features as well as different planting communities to reflect the multiple historic plant communities of the area surrounding the city.

The different character zones planned for The Underline include active recreation, green tech, art & craft incubator, and nature and play.  All four of these character zones were designed with children in mind. The active recreation zone is located in the widest area of the corridor and will accommodate open areas where children can pass a soccer ball or throw a frisbee back and forth.  The green tech zone will have green infrastructure implemented such as green roofs and rain gardens and will use these features to teach children about the benefits of sustainability.  The art & craft incubator zone will display public art that will have some sort of interactive side of them.  Finally, the Nature and play zone is located in the highly developed section of The Underline, closest to downtown Miami.  This zone will focus on a park-like, nature-based setting that also incorporates play spaces and room for activities such as birdwatching.

Progress

The Underline is a $120 million project that is funded by the Miami-Dade County, the State of Florida, FDOT, the cities of Miami, Coral Gables, and South Miami, as well as a number of foundations.  The project is broken down into 9 phases, each phase estimated to take 1-1.5 years to complete.  The timeline may be expedited if funding increases.  At this point, 3 of the 9 phases are fully funded including phase 1, 2, and 5.  Construction of phase 1, Brickell Backyard, began December 10, 2018 and is projected to be completed come June 2020.

Sources

https://icma.org/articles/article/boulders-plan-become-child-and-youth-friendly-city

https://www.theunderline.org/#design

https://www.theunderline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/The-Underline_Framework-Plan-and-Demonstration-Projects_screen_revised-0205_2016-FINAL.pdf

 

Written by Matthew · Categorized: Child Friendly City

Sep 17 2019

Miami, Florida

Climate Change in Miami

Miami’s population has been steadily rising, regardless of the rising sea level.  Since 2016, the population has risen from 441,003 to 473,914 for an increase of  around 7.5% in 3 years.  Around 75% white, the second largest demographic in Miami is black or African American (18% of population).

 

The average age in Miami is 40 years old (39.1 for males, 40.9 for females).  The ratio between women and men is fairly close to 1 (223,998 females:219,009 males).  With 17.9% of the population under the age of 18, 6.2% under 5, around 1 in every 5 people are classified as children.  This is the fifth of the population that will have the most time on this planet and have to deal with the long term effects of climate change.  Educating the youth on why and how climate change takes place is a crucial step in slowing down climate change.  Although this in an important thing to do, Miami has little youth interaction when it comes to developing ways to make the city more climate change resilient.

Efforts to Mitigate Rising Sea Levels

Problem: Flooded Roads

The main issue that Miami has been struggling dealing with climate change is the issue of flooded roads.  This is a common occurrence, especially during the hurricane season and high tides. 

Recently, the city of Miami has created a team called the Blue Ribbon Panel on Flood Mitigation to head the climate change movement in Miami and help come up with solutions to the rising sea levels.  The main goal for this team was to “dry the street up”. One of the solutions that have been implemented to combat rising sea levels and regular flooding of the streets are

water pumps that transport the water from the streets back out into the ocean.  These pumps have had some issues with becoming backlogged and then basically working in the opposite direction, bringing water in from the ocean and dumping it on the street.This issue has been resolved by raising and expanding the pumps themselves, ensuring that the electrical boxes stay dry at all times. There are 60 new pump stations that are scheduled to be installed throughout Miami and Miami Beach over the next 3-5 years.

 

Another solution that is currently underway in Miami Beach is the raising of the roads in the Sunset Harbor and West Avenue neighborhoods.  This began in the Sunset Harbor neighborhood in February 2015 and was 70% completed as of April 2016. In most places, the street was raised 2+ feet.

Sources

    • https://www.miamirealestateguy.com/miami-beach-to-raise-west-avenue-1-to-2-feet-to-combat-rising-sea/
    • https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/miamicityflorida,miamidadecountyflorida/PST045218

Written by Matthew · Categorized: Climate Change, Climate Resilient Cities

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