LinkedIn Posts: A Pair of Posts on Urban Renewal

(The following texts are anonymized)

Cities are living systems and as with every living thing, they age. Enter urban renewal, which is fast becoming one of the central conversations in city planning. It’s not just about revitalizing outdated infrastructure, it’s about rethinking how cities breathe, function, and grow. For example, as climate change intensifies and populations swell, cities around the world are recognizing the need to transform grey infrastructure into vibrant, green, and community-centric spaces. Bringing engineering and ecology together, urban renewal offers visible, tangible solutions to the ailments of aging cities, and the benefits are many, including restored biodiversity, enhanced livability, and neighborhoods that not only work better, but vibe better.

The Presidio Park Waterway Renewal in Boca Raton exemplifies the essence of urban renewal. Transforming a concrete stormwater channel into a natural creek and lush community space, the project redefines flood management through the lens of recreation, sustainability, and social well-being. Leveraging daylighting techniques and flood modeling software, and introducing green pathways and wildlife habitats, the project balances functional hydrology with ecological beauty. The result? A park reborn, a creek revived, and a blueprint for wining urban renewal.

My client and I collaborated on the outline and underlying information for engaging texts to be posted on LinkedIn, deciding that the topic was best served in a pair of posts, the first describing the quandary, and the second the urban renewal solution.

The beginning of the first post:

Striking a Balance between Built and Natural Environments - Waterway Renewal
Part 1 - The Urban Dilemma: Navigating the Hardscape of Stormwater Management
“The engineers 100 years ago had one focus, which was flooding and drainage and getting water away as quickly as possible. The local collection group realized they could do better.” – Alan Cobalt, Director of Stormwater USA.

As cities evolve, so do the challenges of managing their infrastructure. Take waterways. In the past, engineers focused on preventing flooding by quickly moving stormwater out of cities. The result:
concrete channels and culverts that prioritized function over form (and rightly so). In retrospect, these designs often neglected their broader ecological, social, and aesthetic value. The Presidio Park Waterway renewal in Bocca Raton exemplifies a new approach, transforming a legacy system
into integrated spaces that balance function with community and environmental needs.

Such projects, as with urban renewal in general, pique my interest as they mirror my own principles that I follow in residential development projects. I believe society, as we grow, can find a balance between functional over-engineering and benefiting the community and environment while
ensuring economic viability and appeal.

The Hidden Costs of Aging Waterways
Over time, we have come to understand that older waterway designs, while functionally practical, are also, well, impractical. Prioritization of water movement can often lead to pollution and loss of biodiversity. With growing urban populations and climate change, outdated infrastructure can paradoxically increase flood risk. Over time we see such concrete channels become unsightly and underused, dulling and degrading urban spaces. What was once a solution is now outdated and requires modernization.”