Instead of “treating landscape as a passive backdrop” Kate Orff designs to “connect people and ecosystems in an immediate and direct way.” She is “passionate about the role of landscape in cities” and believes design “has a huge role to play - not just to beautify - but to literally reset ecosystems, to reconnect people to each other through these social spaces that can also perform ecological services.”
For 50 years, Erie’s development has framed by an auto-focused vision.
The 2018 proposal by PennDOT support additional traffic along the city’s waterfront arterial highway (one that now attracts 16,000 cars, trucks and tractor-trailers - 80% of which don’t stop in the city) runs counter to the 2015 Erie Refocused Comprehensive Plan by Charles Buki of czb.
Penn DOT’S multi-lane expansion for the Bayfront arterial highway.
Penn DOT’s proposal for 2-lane round-about at State Street that will require pedestrians to navigate up to four lanes of traffic,
PennDOTs vision of roundabouts, and underpass, and a few pedestrian overpasses will further isolate the city residents from the waterfront. Michael Furhman described the proposed roundabout as “pedestrian Russian Roulette” in his Erie Times News essay “PennDOT trying to solve the wrong problem.” Let’s call Kate before it’s too late!