City wide approach
The Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers along with Pennypack, Frankford, Wissahickon, Mill, and Cobbs Creeks, define a landscape pattern of great beauty. It is vital to have the linkages that would make this system more tangible. Railroad rights of way can serve a similar role in areas of north Philadelphia that are remote from these valleys.

Protocols
For today’s voids, there are critical questions that form a hierarchy: first, does it form a part of a right of way or does it serve a major city-wide need? Second, does the land by its pattern (or potential pattern) or location, offer large sites, or special opportunities that would be very hard to create again? And last, can the site enhance the experience of its most immediate neighbors? The answers will guide the public side of the complex landscapes of contingent events that will bring this land into new uses.

The sites
Vacancy has been produced by diverse urban processes that must be understood and re-directed to public benefit. We have chosen three sites that demonstrate this. At 18th and Berks, a community has been emptied through poverty, racial discrimination, and site plan obsolescence, while at the American St. Corridor, the voids stem from the failure of obsolescent industrial modes, and lastly, at Logan, a vast site has been created out of two linked environmental disasters: first, putting Wingohocking Creek in a pipe, and second, the use of unsafe material to obliterate the site.