Mahoning Valley Workshop - June 2006

As part of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design's ongoing collaboration with TU Dresden, the CUDC hosted Professor Joachim Tourbier and eight TU Dresden graduate students in landscape architecture for a two-week workshop involving the CUDC staff and faculty, as well as public officials, stakeholders and researchers assembled by our partners at Youngstown State University's Center for Urban and Regional Studies.

As a follow-up to the CUDC's Fall 2005 "Shrinking Cities" charrette, the workshop formulated a “blue-green technologies” approach for shrinking cities taking the Mahoning River and its tributaries in Youngstown, Ohio. Students looked closely at two design challenges--the area around the newly built Convention Center south of Downtown Youngstown and the Mahoning's channelized Crab Creek tributary. Based partly on their study of successful examples in Germany, they sought to develop sustainable design solutions that create re-development opportunities and improve water quality in the Mahoning.