[REVIEW OF EVENTS]
Public ConversatioN Series
PUBLIC conversations 2005:
Re-Imagining Vacant Land in Philadelphia
Sponsored by the Urban Studies Program of the University of Pennsylvania , the City Parks Association, and the Community Design Collaborative of AIA Philadelphia
This series of public conversations explored the challenges and opportunities of remaking vacant land in Philadelphia. To date, neighbors, planners, and civic institutions have applied useful strategies for taking care of vacant lots in the short-term, developing community gardens, side yards, and vacant land management plans. This series aimed to take debates and discussions about vacant land to another level, posing a variety of deep ecological, historical, and planning and policy questions. What are the underlying causes of vacancy? How has the reuse of vacant land affected the city’s natural resources? Ultimately, how can a finer understanding of Philadelphia ’s environment help shape new approaches to planning and sustainable development?
For the City Parks Association, this series formed part of a broader “community visioning” phase of Philadelphia LANDvisions, an international design competition intended to generate new ideas for the reuse of vacant land in the city. For the Urban Studies Program, these public conversations are an integral part of the curriculum in courses ranging from landscape design to urban history to economic policy. The series is part of the New Civil Society project, a collaborative initiative of Urban Studies, The Reinvestment Fund, and the Social Impact of the Arts Project that applies research, education, and public dialogue to study civic participation and inform community planning and investment. For the Community Design Collaborative, which arranged continuing education credits for architects and landscape architects, the series helped people engaged in community design and development view our city's vacant land holistically and get in-depth information on new approaches to vacant land management and redevelopment.
Initial sessions in the series examined the broad economic, historical, and policy contexts for re-imagining vacant land and natural resources. Subsequent events explored issues of vacancy, land use, and ecology in a wide variety of Philadelphia neighborhoods, from the brownfields of Southwest Philadelphia and the Lower Northeast, to community gardens of Mill Creek and Kensington, to conservation efforts in Upper Roxborough. At the end of the semester, students from City Planning courses at Penn presented their semester projects on vacant land and community development, looking forward to the design phases of the City Parks competition.
Urban Studies Program: www.sas.upenn.edu/urban
City Parks Association: www.cityparksphila.org
Community Design Collaborative: www.cdesignc.org
Philadelphia LANDvisions, an international design competition: www.landvisions.org