As you roast in the record summer heat, here's hoping that Henry Grabar's slide show of improvised urban beaches from across the globe gets you motivated to create one in your city. Hop to it, global warming isn't going away any time soon!
Sparked by Paris-Plage, the project that provoked the urban beach movement with its construction in 2002, "temporary or permanent parks that offer the pleasures of the seaside without the cost of getting there" have been popping up across the world.
Grabar has collected a tantalizing slide show of seven prime examples, including: HTO Park in Toronto, the year-round destination "sandwiched between an expressway, an airport and a ferry line," and Plage de L'Hotel de Ville - "the first modern artificial city beach" - built in 1996 in the Parisian suburb Saint-Quentin, and copied by the French capital six years later.
Read the full story: The Fun Is Real But the Beach Is Not
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