URBAN CULTURAL GREENWAYS 1 Urban Cultural Greenways: The Potential of Urban Agriculture as Sustainable Urban Infrastructure GUNDULA PROKSCH University of Washington, Seattle, WA DANIEL ROEHR University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC INTRODUCTION Deserted parks, maintenance intensive lawns, vacant boulevards, over-sized road medians and dog-walkers turf shape the image of contemporary green spaces in North American cities. The large number of under-utilized green spaces is the starting point for re- thinking urban public green space, as an active, social urban infrastructure. Urban greenways, often developed based on formal principles of 'parkways', have lost the original intention of the early parkways to also improve social, health and engineering issues in cities of the late 19th Century. Today developments still follow the same formal principles without design integration of sustainable practices to foster social equity, environmental health, and economic prosperity in communities. On the contrary, these open spaces often show very poor environmental and ecological performance when compared with current international standards, and usually offer little communal value for the residents but cause high maintenance costs for municipalities. This dilemma offers a great opportunity for landscape architects, architects and urban planners to transform the existing under- utilized greenways into new hybridized landscapes providing multifaceted infrastructure. Urban cultural greenways are Figure 1: Ottawa Gardens, City of North Vancouver created by overlaying the existing green spaces with interactive, sustain-able programs, which are latent in the community. Depending on the city, the local conditions of the greenway and interests within the community, different types of greenways can be developed. Programs can range from visual art and architecture, history, performances and temporary events to urban agriculture 1 . The main idea of cultural greenways is that their interventions concentrate on one programmatic theme present within the city to further strengthen community identity and cohesion. The so enriched greenway can even become a figurehead for the city to distinguish and market itself. A re-activated greenway also