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OPEN SHORE A lively and inclusive downtown with a new iconic waterscape experience West Palm Beach, Florida Students: Jose Isidro Pastor Tormo + Marina Patón Ballester

This project imagines the future West Palm Beach as a dynamic and inclusive downtown where activities and spaces are closely interrelated, providing access to a new urban waterscape, enhancing the city’s connection to the lagoon and bringing infinite possibilities of urban culture, economic development and leisure. ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

#multilayered #public life #renaturalization #resilience #fostered connection #walkability

West Palm Beach is a city from the state of Florida whose tropical temperatures and line coast call out people from all over the world to go on holiday and experience a southeastern experience in the USA. WPB has a total population of 150000 inhabitants that live from the touristic attendance and whose climate change effects are destroying the existing waterfront of the city. One of the most important problems of the city is the centralized economic system located at the city center and their progressive desertion of the rest of the neighbourhoods as the downtown.

The project takes into consideration the needs of youth and elders alike in order to make a positive impact on the city as a whole and create a healthier living environment for all residents and visitors. The ecological and resilient design proposed here allows people to

enjoy a more comfortable environment all year round: by coordinating natural elements and bioclimatic devices, each space will be characterized by a specific microclimate matched to the activities that will take place there.

Moreover the existing and the increasing tourist population suppose an opportunity for them to live in WPB. One proposal that they achieve by giving an important leisure, cultural and economic place for the resident people and attracting to new tourists or residents into a new way of living.

Downtown’s people disconnection has lead to an economic and ecological problems where the project itself has been responsible of projecting a new paradigm where the lack of green spaces is solved with a new smart program that helps people to find a proper parking lot, reducing by the way the parking areas. Also the lack of water and the contaminated lake water pretends to improve by the implementation of new permeable roads that carries water to the lake and improve by the other way and with the help of technologies the quality of the water. In addition WPB find the way to improve the downtown economy by the mix of different uses and the investment into local and innovative shops.

One the one hand we count with the human agents from children to elderly creating som diverse spaces where all can convive and have a grateful leisure time. In the waterfront we found a variety of canopies where there are a lot of diverse and interesting activities that everyone could do without problems of connection, age or mobility.

From the other hand the non-human agents are the different species of the local trees which are supposed to cover all the different installations by reducing the sun and sound impact. Moreover the technologies re taking the main role of the project because they condicionante and share all kind of information to their users for having a proper approach to the different installations.

First of all we have a proper approach to the waterfront project that finds the way to unify all the different neighbourhood of the city to the coastal zone, creating several ways of introducing them into the water by pierced platforms and gives every platform a bioclimatic condition with the addition of a characteristic nature and open orientation and view of every one of them. In this part we considered every canopy as an independent structure with different uses for the people.

In addition the project has a resiliency and adaptation working with topography building a waterfront that remains usable regardless of the sea level, even in the case of very high tides or even extreme weather events like storms or hurricanes.

As a part of a process of renaturalization, the waterfront explores many possible relations between construction and vegetation, letting it grow on top of structures, under artificial covers, in vertical surfaces or in hybrid, permeable pavements, blurring the limits between an urban space and a natural one.

Finally we count with a new technological experience where enabling a digital layer for information, control and communication opens a wide new range of possibilities for responsive and actively controlled public spaces. That would empower a generation of conscious “smart citizens� that use their digital data and tools to adapt their urban environment to their own needs.

While all these is happening inside the neighbourhood we find some small scale projects that take profit of the deficient state of the zone and offer some big possibilities to the resident and tourist population. These projects found exclusive opportunities to call out their attention and give an ecological, economic and interesting point of views that encourage the city into a new paradigm which offer good opportunities and leisure places.

WPB highlights the next main strategies.

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Connection the downtown with the suburbs, attracting neighbourhoods to promote a multi-layered city center.

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Upgrading public transit and sustainable mobility, improving public transport to allow people from the suburbs to reach downtown without the need of a car.

Optimizing the management of existing parking lots would make navigating through the city easier for users as well as would allow the city to gather real time information about parking needs to progressively reduce the space used for parking Increasing walkability for a more lively center Introducing an ecological perspective in existing parking lots. Using landscaping techniques it is possible to progressively increase the permeable area while at the same time treating the runoff water Increasing street permeability and improving stormwater management Enhacing lagoon metabolism would improve the water cycle and bring people and activities to the water Adapting to sea level rise with a global resilience strategy Introducing functional mix and managing a wider urban development Adopting an ecological and pedagogical approach

In a city scale the project counts with a great communication with the different neighborhoods and the waterfront to achieve a ecological and sustainable connection. An important point here is the way of catching, cleaning and recycling the water as the main attraction.

In a installations scale we reach some different canopy, open plazas and passageways that leds a good communication, qualified leisure zones and an economic recovering that invite people to stay in the city and to participate in the public and social life.

In an human scale people found a place where the magnificence and heterodoxy of the activities avoid people to get bored and to have a qualified lifestyle. You could count with a big diversity of places and variety of experiences 24/7.

The big dimensions of the project has complicated the compliance of every part of the project and finding some insufficient solutions in the resiliency part where the water level supposes a problem in 2100 because the sea level will continue rising and could flood all the different parts of the waterfront.

WPB project has meant a new paradigm to the future cities and citizens that are adapting themselves to the climate change complications taking profit of their own resources to promote an ecological and technological approach to the citizens and visitors. The different part of the project shows different solutions that could help and will evolve the way of seeing and living the city, adding a lot of activities, leisure zones and an economic recovery. Nevertheless all these particular designs led us to a situation where the details only could serve in a city like WPB and not movable to another city where the solutions should another climate and ecological approaches.

In conclusion we find a complete project where humans and non-humans as animals, plants and technologies are intimately related between them. People and visitors discovers a different place to live and experience. IN relation with our project we could stand out the idea of taking profit of their local economy and to make a diversity of public spaces to make the residents stay and call the attention of the visitors, but always in a pedagogical and ecological sense to make them learn and enjoy at the same time.