An urban park situated in Washington D.C., The Yards Park, neighboring the Washington Navy yard represents riverfront revitalization with an award-winning design, high-end restaurants, spaces for recreation and community gatherings, and river views. As an urban park, its landscape has been altered for centuries. Now designed for leisure activities within the city; the park features a canal basin with a water-wall (low-level water feature/pool), dancing fountains, dog run, great lawn (grass/open space), park bridge, overlook pavilion with bistro-seating, light tower, terrace green lawn steps, boardwalk, river street garden, and areas between the large restaurant buildings with green space and seating. Signs throughout the park space highlight the park’s history to preserve what buildings and structures have been lost over the years. The park also features signs describing locations and guidelines to abide by while at the park.

Source: http://www.capitolriverfront.org/yards-park

The park presents itself as more of a passive visual access in the city; this passive visual access features sidewalks and the Anacostia Riverfront Trail (a boardwalk) running along the river from the Navy Yard to the Nationals Park allowing the public to have direct visual contact with the river. This promotes the river as a natural resource or characteristic of the environmentalism in D.C. The low-level water feature, seating along the boardwalk, and docks for boating, kayaking, and other water-activities provide additional water significance to the park’s landscape. The park can also be thought of as a form of corporatization landscape because of the business and service sector buildings within and encompassing the park. Planners that designed the park may have thought that combining the two, a park and business center, would create a stronger urban economy for the city, while also providing an atmosphere for environmental tourism along the Anacostia River and/or urban nature-enthusiasts to enjoy.

While it is important to study the physical aspects of the park, it is constructive to mention the casualties of the park’s design which were observed: [1] a lot of trash overfilling the bins and thrown onto the ground at the overlook pavilion, [2] chalk drawings had been drawn onto the stone at the overlook pavilion and on the boardwalk, and [3] a homeless person was using the lounge chair in the river street garden to sleep on with a sleeping bag.

Source: http://www.capitolriverfront.org/yards-park