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What is Blue Space?

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Blue space is an urban design term for visible water. Attractive blue spaces such as waterfront parks, harbors, ports, marinas, rivers, open air streams, canals, lakes, ponds and fountains are thought to improve quality of life and help to moderate urban heat islands.
Many cities have highly industrialized waterfront zones that are built out with artificial land. Other cities have disrupted access to the sea with poorly designed seawalls and other barriers.
Rivers have often suffered a similar fate. It is common for historical rivers and streams to disappear as they are forced underground to use their land. In other cases, rivers disappear after their water has been diverted at the source to feed a city water supply. When water is flowing, it may be polluted by industrial waste or agricultural runoff.
Blue space is a valuable resource. Waterfront, riverside and canal-front areas are typically considered a city's most attractive features when they are well designed and managed. It is common for cities to undo the mistakes of the past by converting industrial waterfronts to public space, cleaning up rivers and redesigning sea walls.
Overview: Blue Space
Type
Definition
Visible water in a city such as waterfront parks, rivers, streams, canals, lakes, ponds and fountains.
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Activity Center
Air Rights
Architecture
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Bicycle Boulevard
Blue Space
Brownfields
Business Cluster
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City Branding
City Culture
City Issues
Clean Air Zone
Cosmopolitan City
Creeping Normality
Cycle Highway
Cycling Infra.
Deep Water Cooling
District Heating
Density
Emergent Cities
Fashion Capital
Fashion Week
Freedom To Roam
Genius Loci
Geofencing
Ghost Spaces
Green Facades
Green Roofs
Green Walls
Happiness Index
High-Speed Rail
Hostile Architecture
Human Factors
Human Scale
Induced Traffic
Last Mile
Lighting
Living Street
Natural Surveillance
Night Architecture
Night Economy
Placemaking
Play Street
Public Infrastructure
Public Space
Quality Of Life
Rain Garden
Resilient Cities
Robot Highways
Security Landscaping
Slow Cities
Smart Cities
Soft Engineering
Sponge City
Street Canyon
Superblocks
Tactical Urbanism
Transition Design
Transportation
Urban Agriculture
Urban Density
Urban Design
Urban Forests
Urban Planning
Vehicles
Vertical Cities
Vertical Farming
Vertical Gardens
Woonerf
Zoning
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