Thomas J. Walsh

Sept. 15, 2009

By Thomas J. Walsh
For PlanPhilly

The Point Breeze and Gray’s Ferry sections of southwest Philadelphia, riddled with urban decay, declining populations and an increasing vacancy rate, were re-certified as officially blighted by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission Tuesday.

The agency also approved new design guidelines for the North Delaware Riverfront Greenway (to be a part of the East Coast Greenway system), approved amendments to the fiscal year 2010-2015 capital program and the fiscal year 2010 capital budget and gave the go-ahead for two neighborhood redevelopment projects.

FULL STORY HERE (with videos of meeting).

From PlanPhilly

Governor's Island, New York City

An “urban-planning Rorschach.” Wish we had thought of it first, regarding the re-do of Penn’s Landing. But here we’re referring to Nutten Island, a.k.a. Governors Island, a 172-acre anomaly in the mouth of New York Harbor profiled in the Aug. 31 issue of The New Yorker by writer Nick Paumgarten.

The place sounds less like our Petty’s Island than our Navy Yard, with its former off-limits-to-the-public nature, its stately old residences, ghost town ambiance, military bearing and location at the foot of the city between two rivers. It is a seven-minute ferry ride from the South Street Seaport or from Brooklyn – about the same amount of time it would take you to drive from Washington Avenue straight down Broad and into the Navy Yard.

Paumgarten has some interesting things to say about the designs in waiting, and the zeitgeist marrying green ambition with urban re-use, “the kinds that involve the clever transformation of dilapidated postindustrial wastelands or garbage dumps into useful and conscience-easing recreational space.”

READ FULL TEXT HERE.

A Friday afternoon in the park, August 2009.

Photos copyright 2009, Thomas J. Walsh