Ensemble and master plan
Linear park
riverbank housing complex campus disused railway coastal edge
A long, narrow park that follows a river, a disused railway, a coast or an edge of the city.
What it solves
It links neighborhoods and parks with a continuous path for walking and cycling, gives shade and leaves room for the river’s floods. It also serves as a passage for wildlife between green areas.
Today
Respect the width the river needs in flood and lay out paths with continuous shade and many entrances from the neighborhoods. Design banks with native vegetation instead of channeling the riverbed.
Common mistake
Channeling the river in concrete and turning your back on it with walls, which turns it into a dump and an unsafe place.
Tomorrow
Costa Rica’s urban rivers can become linear parks that link neighborhoods on foot and cool the city. Shared care among neighbors, schools and municipalities keeps them alive.
Fact Along the Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul, temperatures are 3.3 to 5.9 °C lower than on a parallel street a few blocks away.
Where it comes from
- 119th-century landscape architecture Boston, United States, since 1878
Frederick Law Olmsted linked several parks with paths along a stream and ponds, in a green necklace of about 11 kilometers. - 2Urban reuse Paris, France, 1993
A railway closed in 1969 became a 4.7 km elevated promenade, the first in the world to turn an elevated railway line into a garden. - 3River restoration Seoul, South Korea, 2005
An elevated highway was removed to bring back to light a stream almost 11 km long that is now a park.
Masters
- Roberto Burle Marx Flamengo Park, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1965
He designed the gardens of this park of about 120 hectares facing the bay, between the center and Copacabana. He teaches that a city edge can be a long promenade of shade, play and landscape.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Ensemble and master plan
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.