One Legazpi Waterfront: Integrated Park System as an Approach towards a Sustainable and Active Urban Edge

Abstract

One Legazpi Waterfront explores the use of waterfront public lands and the new Legazpi Boulevard, converting them into parks to ensure the sustainability of the urban edge of this city. Five parks were designed in this project, all interconnected by the boulevard, a proposed greenway and the Albay Gulf. The urban waterfront faced with issues on change in zoning, commercialization and industrialization that can lead to imbalance of ecological niches and fading of the waterfront’s cultural significance can be developed into a park system providing recreation, livelihood and assembly space for the people.

With the construction of the boulevard eight years ago, the seashore was compromised and lands were denuded resulting to gaps in vegetation and loss of habitats for some smaller species in this coastal to inland interface. With this project, the new greenway can increase waterfront vegetation while acting as a point of connection from urban to rural Legazpi. These parks can be enjoyed by the communities along the waterfront as community hubs, recreational spaces, food and trade hubs and coconut farmers’ alternative planting site.

This design research aims to develop a city’s urban edge and join the rest of the world in integrating its waterfront to environmental systems and to existing urban development and new local tourist destinations through urban intervention by establishing the fusion of landscape architecture, culture, environmental preservation and technology. The waterfront design seeks to increase ideas in waterfront development by revitalizing an urban edge community, preserving its ecology and maintaining its sense of place. The development of a waterfront to an integrated park system also ensures that the city has a resilient and sustainable urban edge through environmental sensibility.