Constructed Climates

As part of the development of Durham’s Urban Open Space Plan, the planning department put together a commission to study the issue and provide input. Commission staff assigned members to visit ten sites in urban Durham and provide comments (see my comment policy) on those sites’ “urban open space” content. Here are the sites and photos of each.

I’ve added Brightleaf Square as a nice example of good urban open space, and a quick hit on the urban heat island. Read more about that phenomenon in Constructed Climates.

Postscript: As it turns out, this exercise by the citizen commission — making honest assessments of open space examples in the urban core as they existed, rather than as their highest potential — might inadvertently  help lead to their demise. Low rankings of some of these parcels in their current poor condition might be used not as a basis and motivation to improve the urban open space but rather provide justification to eliminate the parcels through development. At least one of these sites exists as a future building footprint in the Downtown Durham Inc development plan.