West Palm Beach, Florida, a city of nearly 100,000 some 70 miles north of Miami, is grappling with how to protect itself from sea level rise.
Much of this long, thin 50-square-mile city fronts the Atlantic Ocean. While in the past this form of development maximized its appeal as a waterfront city, now that exposure elevates their risk.
Van Alen Institute and the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency are launching Shore to Core, a design competition and a research competition that uses West Palm Beach as a model to reimagine our waterfront cities and better understand individuals’ relationships to the built environment.
The design competition though calls for interdisciplinary teams of designers (landscape architects, urban designers, architects) along with experts in resilience, economic development, place-making, psychology, and other fields.
Two multidisciplinary teams selected as finalists will be given $45,000 stipends while a research team will be given $40,000.
The design competition seeks two multidisciplinary design teams to envision the future of waterfront cities. The winning design team will work with West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency to develop the first phase of their proposal in West Palm Beach. The research competition seeks a research team to identify ways that the urban environment affects our minds and bodies. The winning research proposal will be developed into a pilot research study in West Palm Beach.
Shore to Core asks: How can we recreate an urban core so its design is intelligent, flexible, and responsive to the needs of residents and visitors? Many aspects of our lives are shaped by the environments in which we spend our time, and by developing a better understanding of these relationships, we can use design to improve well-being in cities.
West Palm Beach is a young city that is growing quickly. Many associate this region with a large retirement community, but there is also a growing population of people in their 20s and 30s, as well as large Black and Hispanic populations. The city’s downtown and 10-mile waterfront present an opportunity to develop new amenities that reflect the city’s emerging populations, and design is a crucial tool for tackling these evolving needs. As the city changes, we want to create a framework for future development and a means to measure how these physical transformations are affecting the well-being of West Palm Beach’s residents and visitors.
Teams are encouraged (but not required) to pre-register by July 27, 2016.
Submissions are due August 21, 2016.
See full article by Jared Green.
See Shore-To-Core website, submission process, & image credit.