Landscape Design in Redwood Shores

Yushan Wei
3 min readDec 10, 2020

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The Redwood shore is an area between Foster City and Bair Island. Foster City is facing a risk of sea-level rise, and the Redwood Shore is surrounded by conservation areas. The area opposite Redwood shore and is on the other side of Highway 101 is a priority development area.

Foster City is Facing a Risk of Sea-Level Rise

Bair Island is a state marine park. There are migratory birds, different kinds of marine species. However, the highway and the fence between Bir Island and Redwood shore separated them and influenced the views of people who live there. It reflects the problem raised by our group research that the highway has separated the whole area in different aspects.

The Blue Color Shows the Priority Development Areas.

Also, the dense private houses and yards are problems. They blocked views of the sea and park and are also susceptible to sea-level rise. So the movement of these houses should be one of my strategies. By moving some house units to the other side of Highway 101, and building higher apartments to increase land use ratio, more space will be used communally for the whole community. The residential areas in the district mainly consist of single houses. It is not a tight community. Only when the residents are tied together with the cultural atmosphere, they will work together to make the community better and have a sense of belonging. So I will not only move some houses to the back but also introduce some community centers to this district.

a Sketch of the strategies

As for the houses near the shore, I think it will be better to raise house buildings’ heights as they are away from the shore. Ans also leave some pores between the buildings for wind and birds to travel through. This strategy will provide a better view from the shore and will not influence migrating birds when they are flying towards Bair Island.

In the bird's eye view above, we can see some creaks in this district. And the bird’s eye view below shows the groundwater level in this district is very high which means it will easily get wet when raining. So I will open them and add more rain gardens along the streets because they are all crucial for groundwater runoff.

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