DETAILS
Next C Water City is a new, fully self-contained sustainable city planned for 500,000 residents. Water was central to the Next C planning concept, supplied by two adjacent rivers and monsoon rains. The city is a system of wetlands, rivers, lakes, and canals, cleansing the water from up-river communities and managing floods during the monsoon season. Working with SOM’s urban design team, Thomas Balsley Associates strategized an open space plan that consisted of seven primary landscape typologies: Central Parks, Civic Squares, Urban Promenades, Water Edge Parks, Canal Parks, Neighborhood Parks, and Wetland Parks filtering and polishing poor quality water from the Chaobai River prior to discharging into the new city’s extensive waterways and eventually into the Yongding River. Each open space typology collectively provides green links throughout the city, and open space programming relates directly to adjacent land uses. Parks along waterways were designed with each season’s environmental extremes in mind, from dry to flooded, creating unique parks for every season.
Gubei Gold Street
SWA was selected to conceptualize, design, and realize a rare find in bustling Shanghai—a pedestrian mall (Gold Street). The corridor occupies three city blocks, is flanked by 20-story high-rise residential towers with retail at street level and book-ended by SWA-designed parks. Creating an iconic presence and enlivening the area, the mall features plazas, fou...
South Waterfront Greenway
The new urban plan for South Waterfront includes a 1-1/2 mile extension of downtown’s waterfront parks and the reclamation of the Willamette River for public recreation. The design team worked closely with the City of Portland, developers, and natural resource advocates to strike a balance between development, recreation and re-naturalization of this neglected...
Flushing Commons
This ten-acre mixed-use development with parks, plazas, and retail will become the center of social and retail activity in downtown Flushing. Driven mostly by an influx of immigrants from East Asia, Flushing is one of the fastest-growing and most diverse neighborhoods in the US. Abuzz with shopping and socializing at all hours of the day and evening, its stree...
Queens West Open Space Master Plan
Queens West is a new mixed-use community planned for the Long Island City shoreline, directly across from midtown Manhattan and the United Nations. Central to its urban plan is an extensive open space system that includes upland and waterfront parks as well as streetscape. Beginning with conceptual plans the Thomas Balsley Associates team, together with Weintr...