John King of The San Francisco Chronicle examines the installation of mobile planters around the Yerba Buena District in San Francisco; part of a 10-year revitalization initiative to bring new meaning and boundaries surrounding public space.
King describes these so-called "parkmobiles" as "portable landscapes in red steel bins 6 feet wide and 16 feet long, intended as a shot of mobile nature offering passers-by visual relief from asphalt and concrete."
"The parkmobiles signal San Francisco's most ambitious effort yet to improve the large, urban landscape in small, fluid ways - an effort set, tellingly, in a district that symbolizes old-school urban renewal."
At $6,000 a piece, the mobile landscapes are an example of an innovative, low-cost initiative taken on local property owners and CMG Landscape Architecture in the Yerba Buena District.
"The hope is that the bucolic bins will draw people onto blocks that otherwise get little foot traffic – and that the design and vegetation will survive the moves and the crowds."
FULL STORY: 'Parkmobiles' bring taste of nature to urban S.F.
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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
New York City School Construction Authority
Village of Glen Ellyn
Central Transportation Planning Staff/Boston Region MPO
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions