PARK-TO-BAY PROJECT
The Park-to-Bay project aims to inspire, heal and empower the community to become more resilient. The project’s main goal is to make people fall in love with their city by creating connections between the person, community, nature, art, history, culture, and tradition. The project is a green corridor with a linear park. The two-aisle trees, linear park, will decrease pollution, encourage walkability and promote safe cycling. It aims to create the best environment for healthy sustainable living that positively changes San Diego’s image.
The Park-to-Bay project will link Balboa Park to the San Diego Bay through 25th Street and Cesar E. Chavez Parkway spanning 2.1 miles. It reunites 3 underserved communities that were divided by freeways (Golden Hill, SouthEastern San Diego, and Barrio Logan). It also connects four main parks together (Balboa Park, Grant Hill Park, Chicano Park, Cesar E Chavez Park). The project creates a continuous park link system in the city.
The Park-to-Bay project tackles urban discrimination in terms of green, social and transportation injustice; especially in underserved communities. The Park-to-Bay project expected outcomes and impacts are far more than imagination. Economically, the project fosters job creation, real estate appreciation, promotes innovators and entrepreneurship, flourishes tourism and reduces the economic burden of chronic disease.
“The Green Network, a promenade linking San Diego Bay and Balboa Park, connecting the neighborhoods of Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and Golden Hill, along Cesar Chavez Parkway and 25th Street.
The proposed link implements the philosophy and recommendations of City Planner John Nolen, who wrote over 100 years ago in San Diego: A Comprehensive Plan for its Improvement, that a network of Green Streets be built to connect the city’s two greatest physical assets, the bay and the park. He also recommended that we must provide parks where people can connect with nature, even if only some trees and grass, and places where people can stop and get to know your neighbors.
The Green Network thesis proposal by Noura Bishay brings Nolen’s recommendations to fruition and as important links and engages three diverse neighborhoods of San Diego.”
Michael Stepner
Socially, the project fosters social cohesion and builds more vibrant, healthy, sustainable, and inclusive communities where all people can engage in decision-making that affects their day-to-day lives. Environmentally, the project decreases the carbon footprint by planting more than 3000 trees. It encourages people to walk and cycle thus depend less on vehicles. The projects adopt innovation in terms of green energy, water reuse, recycle and reclaim waste.