The winner of a competition to design the Chouteau Greenway in St. Louis hopes landscape architecture can inspire a larger conversation about race and class.
Zach Mortice reports in detail on plans for the Chouteau Greenway, under development by the Great Rivers Greenway, a regional public agency. The ambition of the project is undeniable:
The Chouteau Greenway (pronounced “show-toe”), which is planned to run about five miles from Forest Park on St. Louis’s western edge to the newly rejuvenated Gateway Arch National Park at the Mississippi River, is not a park. It’s not even a park system. It’s a landscape-driven development strategy for an entire swath of the city. Its goal is to break down the city’s stark north-south racial divide [pdf] by attracting St. Louisans from across a socioeconomic spectrum toward a corridor defined by a tangle of transit infrastructure. Along the way are some of the region’s most eminent education, medical, and cultural institutions.
The Great Rivers Greenway recently concluded a design competition, won by the Boston- and Los Angeles-based urban design firm Stoss. The Great Rivers Greenway "hopes to have a refined concept from Stoss by midsummer, though there is no money yet for implementation," reports Mortice. The article includes a lot more on the ambitions of the project as well as renderings and other visual materials included in the Stoss's winning submittal.
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