Urban Spaces: Urban Canal Restoration

Up the Creek, With a Paddle: Urban Stream Restoration and Daylighting by Adrian Benepe -- HuffPost

Source: wikipedia.org

Waterplace Park, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1994

Waterplace Park is connected to 3/4 mile of cobblestone-paved pedestrian walkways along the waterfront known as Riverwalk. Venice-styled Pedestrian bridges cross the river. Most of Riverwalk is below street level and automotive traffic. Waterplace Park and Riverwalk together are host to Providence's popular summertime Waterfire events, a series of bonfires lit on the river accompanied by Classical and World music.  -- Wikipedia

Nurtured by a Canal, a Downtown Desert Blooms

Choked with roads, strewn with rubble and crowded with hard-top parking lots, the grim center of this city seemed blighted beyond redemption.

But today this half-mile swath bears a new name, Waterplace Park, and with its new outlook hints of a Venice in New England. Much of the credit goes to the architect William D. Warner, who, though he didn't exactly part the asphalt, has created a model of urban revitalization, turning what was once a desert of hardtop and highway into a canal and promenade. -- New York Times

WaterFire Providence official web site

Source: Taeoh Kim archdaily.com

ChonGae Canal Restoration Project, Central Seoul, Korea, 2007 designed by Mikyoung Kim Design

The ChonGae Canal Restoration Project is an ambitious redevelopment initiative that transformed the urban fabric of Seoul, Korea.

The project symbolizes this political effort through the use of donated local stone from each of the eight provinces of North and South Korea. The individual stones act to frame the urban plaza and the eight source points where runoff is daylighted and represents the unified effort in the transformation of this urban center.  -- ArchDaily