First off, this thread is totally personal speculation & exploration of urban design concepts.  There is absolutely nothing like this actually proposed.

 

 

I’ve been playing around with this for a few years now, just thinking about West Dayton and where it’s going. 

 

The idea here is to accept two or three things:

 

a) industrial abandonment and weak industrial use

 

b) residential abandonment

 

c) public housing is going away and the residents are being vouchered out.

 

These things combined means there is a growing inventory of vacant land in West Dayton.  Yet there are also some pretty solid little neighborhoods in West Dayton too. And sort of a grass roots revitalization thing going on as well, that doesn’t get media attention.

 

So I sort of played around with these trends and what ifs, to come up with a park plan.  The concept is the “regional open space” they have in the Bay Area, but also borrowing from what I remember from Chicago and Louisville, with a bit of Colin Rowes’ design concepts for Berlin from the 1980s IBA show, and as dusting of Olmsteadian planning and other 19th century park designs

 

Most of this stuff should be pretty self-explanatory to most of you.

 

Starting out with the big blocks of empty industrial land and public housing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is sort of a diagram.  The idea is to use plantings to define spaces, and then have the spaces sort of interlock via shared views.

 

The plantings would also work with the buildings to create “gateway

features or events on Germantown Street, passing through belts of woods and open space….but having things like the monument and certain buildings also contribute to the definition of the space.

 

 

Taking this to a regional scale, or maybe just a city scale….

 

 

 

Making the case that this area is emptying out and becoming “park-like “on its own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the garden/ag thing is maybe the most realistic.  People in North America thing “community gardens”, but the Euro “allotment garden” concept could be considered, too.

 

 

“Skyline Drive”.  The inspiration here is Iroquois Park in Louisville and the Blue Ridge Parkway, but scaled down. A drive connecting overlooks over the surrounding landscape.  This idea would be to use the valley situation of Dayton to feature panoramic views of the city, but make stopping to admire the view the main event and easy and a feature of a park system, vs. the accidental/difficult views coming from Woodland Cem. and other spots.

 

The forest preserve woodlands atop the hills would build on the existing McCabe Park, and the topography and street names of the area north of the Lakeside lake: shallow ravines and hollows and names from Civil War Battles.

 

 

The open space system as a way of defining neighborhoods, which would be subject to infill housing (which is already going on) and commercial intensification via mixed use buildings.

 

 

Interesting concept; if I only knew the area better...

Have you brought this idea up to the city?  It's a great idea.

Have I brought it to the city? Lord no....but an idea that could be considered by the priority boards is involving maybe UC, Miami or OSU architecture/planning schools in urban design problems (probably Miami as its closest).  I know UK has storefront design studios in Lexington and Louisville, as an example, and I think Kent has something in Cleveland.

 

The idea would be to institutionalize the type of assistance  the AIA did for South Park, but use it as a teaching tool for students,  which would also provide ideas to the priorty board and act as a sort of advocacy planning/community design center resource.

 

This idea is starting to grow on me, Jeff. I really like the thought of lookout points.