Design Review of Hinge Park Based on The Seven Cs Framework for Evaluating Natural Play Environments

Photos from PWL Partnership

This presentation provides an introduction to a new community park that is generally referred to as Hinge Park, although has not been formally named by the Vancouver Parks Board. This park is located next to the 2010 Olympic Athletes Village, or what is now known as the Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood. Overall this park is a wonderful example of a master planned site that provides unique elements for play and relaxation.

The presentation includes a unique site tour created using Google Earth Pro, and it describes the park design elements and how they support the broader design goals of the community. There is also discussion of the artificial habitat island (or beer island as it is often called), the planning policies of the city that are supported by this project. The presentation also describes the Seven Cs, an evidence-based framework for evaluating the quality of natural outdoor play spaces for children. Several lessons for the City of Toronto are also suggested.

This presentation was delivered in an urban park planning class in the Master of Urban Planning program at Ryerson University in Toronto.





The following slide summarizes my own personal evaluation of this space:

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Healthy Built Environment Indicators of Community Wellbeing

I am currently working with DIALOG Design in Vancouver to create a new tool to measure how community wellbeing may be increased through evidence-based urban design, land use and transportation decisions. This decision support tool uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to evaluate ten themes of healthy built environment indicators. Each indicator includes several sub-components such access to a grocery store or community center, access to a protected cycletrack or frequent transit network, and the total area of public parks and natural forest area per capita.

Each indicator is also linked through peer-reviewed literature to physical, social, mental and spiritual, financial, and ecological health outcomes. Results from this tool will be presented along with specific thresholds for each indicator to ensure results can be easily translated into real world impacts that can inform healthy planning decisions.



I am sharing this early draft to collect feedback on the content and wording. What do you like, what would you change? what do you think is missing? Please share your observations in the comment section below. I look forward to sharing much more of this work over the next six months as I develop this work into my masters research project.

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Pecha Kucha Presentation: Mapping Healthy Built Environments

I am very grateful for having had the opportunity deliver a Pecha Kucha presentation at the British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects Annual Conference called 'Depth of Field’. My goal for this presentation was to convey my love for maps and my belief that GIS should be utilized more widely in the practice of landscape architecture to analyze multiple scales and layers of context surrounding site-specific work. I illustrated my talk with many maps I created at the Human Early Learning Partnership and other exploratory projects I created out of personal interest. Please post below the video if you have any questions or comments!

 

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Mount Pleasant Family Asset Map

You may also view Mount Pleasant Family Asset Map in a full screen view

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