SAT-A04: Bridging Divides: Integrating Parks and Infrastructure to Connect Communities

Saturday, November 12, 2022

11:00am – 12:15pm PT

Location: Moscone Center, Room 205-206

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW, AIA/HSW, AICP, FL, NY/HSW

Lead Speaker(s)

Mary Lydecker, ASLA, LEED AP

Principal
Hargreaves Jones
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Speaker(s)

Deborah Weintraub, AIA, LEED AP

Chief Deputy City Engineer & Architect
City of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Melissa Guerrero, ASLA

Design Senior Principal
Kounkuey Design Initiative
Los Angeles, California

Twentieth-century urban highway and bridge projects divided neighborhoods, disproportionately impacting communities of color. Contemporary reconstruction of this aging infrastructure offers an opportunity to rethink silos of investment to integrate significant public open space, recreation, renewed pedestrian and bike connections, and resilient ecologies in order to stitch cities back together.

Learning Outcomes:

Understand the historic and contemporary conditions that have allowed significant transportation/highway infrastructure to be planned and constructed through existing neighborhoods, disproportionately impacting communities of color.
Learn about projects that integrate significant public open space with the replacement or rehabilitation of aging infrastructure, creating new connections between neighborhoods that have been historically divided.
Evaluate the opportunities and challenges of public landscapes associated with highway infrastructure – including physical constraints, pedestrian / bike and vehicular safety, public health, and community perception.
Recognize how diverse efforts to re-vision urban infrastructure at multiple scales and engagement of communities in the design process are advancing more equitable distribution and access to public open space.