Botanizing The Asphalt

Botanizing the Asphalt of North Beach Village is a streetscape retrofit with ecologically themed public art streetscapes that improve wayfinding and provide enhanced placemaking for residents and tourists in the North Beach Village neighborhood. Furthermore, Botanizing the Asphalt of North Beach Village pilots City Complete Streets principles to rebalance space allocations between pedestrians and motorists, but goes beyond Complete Streets to explore the street as an independent art-form with reconciliation ecologies that can adapt to current and future climate change and sea level rise. Currently, North Beach Village lacks adequate pedestrian facilities to support safe use of the right-of-way. Oversized travel lanes sponsor inappropriate speeds, while blocks fronted by parking lots lack usable sidewalks, adequate drainage, and sufficient lighting. Botanizing the Asphalt of North beach Village expands pedestrian facilities beyond the sidewalks to form “shared street” configurations and ecological-based water management infrastructure. The design solution creates unique pedestrian landscapes that intensify social and cultural programming along the street without compromising vehicular throughput or major reductions in on-street parking. Since the street right-of-way widths are generous throughout the neighborhood, the project approach is directed toward interventions within the street only. Three contextually responsive phases; 1) Make Gateways and Intersection Gardens, 2) Connect the Blocks, and 3) Create a Network, function to anchor neighborhood identity and wayfinding while addressing immediate and future flooding concerns. Each phase sponsors unique configurations made from salt-tolerant landscapes, lighting, street furniture, surface materials, and architectural structures for segments of the streetscape master plan. These three phases can be implemented incrementally, successively, or all at once depending upon available resources and stakeholder interest.

Botanizing the Asphalt of North Beach Village, Fort Lauderdale, FL

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