Make it New: Designing Around Cultural, Historic Resources

Multimodal transportation improvements often confront older infrastructure that must be avoided, dismantled, or repositioned to allow for new trails, connections, parks, and contemporary facilities. Determining the value of those resources, whether they are historic or just plain old, requires research, community engagement, thoughtful design, and leadership to consider alternatives and make difficult decisions.

This presentation reviews and discusses trail and open-space projects, including the Firefly Bridge over Trail Creek/REM Murmur Trestle (Athens, Georgia), Philadelphia Rail Park, and High Line Canal (Denver). Hear about hard knocks encountered as those municipalities conducted significant public engagement and design efforts and how they learned to breathe new life into culturally or historically significant infrastructure.

NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Intermediate. For more on learning-level descriptions, visit our General Information Page.