As our semester starts to wrap up so have our hospital visits. Since our studio has been focused on Community Health from the beginning we decided to visit Chicago's 606 this week and see how urban planning strategies have increased communities and their individual health. Since this was such an interesting experience I am sure that some of my colleagues will also be reporting on their experiences! For this post I have decided to go in a little bit of a different direction and instead of just reporting pictures and and a small description of my visit to The '606' (mostly because I want you to go and experience it yourself), I will instead be blogging about a key feature of the '606': its ability to act as a charm bracelet within the city gathering other community parks along with it. This was brought to my attention after reading an article in preparation for the visit by Beth White, the Director for Chicago's Trust for Public Land.
In case you haven't been to the '606', and are also wondering about the cover art I have chosen for this blog here is a little bit of an explanation. In 1900, an author housed in the Humbolt Park neighborhood wrote the story that we are all familiar with, "The Wizard of Oz". Fast forward 100 years and now the Humbolt Park neighborhood is part of an almost 3 mile long elevated road that has fulfilled its purpose of connecting not only communities, but also the people inside of them. Thus our experience of "following the elevated road".
But more than just an old railroad line turned park, the '606', like White said, acts as a charm bracelet. It stretches across the northwestern part of the city connecting park after park as it trails down the west side of Cook County. It is this design element that allows Chicago to keep its history of being the city of green space. White commented that each of the Park along the chain, like a charm on a bracelet, is a different size and shape, but together they all make one piece that the city is able to now enjoy.
This idea of the '606' as a charm bracelet is especially interesting to me because it incorporates a lot of the same design ideas that my partner and I as well as some of the students in our studio are hoping to create with our semester final projects. It is really intriguing to be able to see these design ideas brought to life in a full scale project this is also a successful project. Our project is centered around bringing a mobile healthcare solution to the west side of the city. Like the '606' our project also acts as a sort of charm bracelet for community health. Each mobile hot spot (or charm) is a different size and accommodates a different kind of activity, but they all work together to form a closed loop of healthcare for the Lawndale area. I think that we have a lot to learn from the '606', especially in the ways that they incorporate nature into their design. Right now we are working on the 'charm' section of our design project, but having some ideas on how to bring parks and nature along with these health centric areas could really help our project immensely.
So, if you haven't taken a walk down the '606' first wait a week or so until the weather warms up and then ride your bike down it. There are some great coffee and brunch spots along the way so bring friends!
Photo Credit: http://oz.wikia.com/wiki/Yellow_Brick_Road
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