︎︎︎ Group 1: Tactical Regeneration
︎︎︎ Group 2: Catalyzing Connections
︎︎︎ Group 3: Circular City Collective

Within interdisciplinary groups, students began to weave together the systems explored in the first weeks to investigate how the systems interact and create synergies across the focus areas of South Park and the greater Duwamish Valley. This was essential for developing a framework of a circular community where symbioses are created by integrating systems to make them all more efficient and self-sustaining.

Each of the three working groups co-developed the just circular frameworks for South Park based within a grassroots initiative advocating for the transformation or removal of highway SR 99, which divides the South Park neighborhood in half. This initiative has gained strong momentum and secured the support of the City of Seattle and significant federal funding. Based on the scenarios developed by Reconnect South Park and the City of Seattle, the groups worked with the following future approaches:

Mitigation: keep the current SR 99 condition, mitigate the harmful impacts, and focus on building circular city networks

Redesign: keep general SR 99 route, but add intersections, mitigate noise, and air pollution and add multimodal transportation infrastructure

Remove and Reroute: remove the South Park segment of SR 99 and reroute traffic to other existing N-S corridors

“Priority sites” were determined based on these scenarios where co-developed frameworks could be implemented through design strategies for a just transformation of the neighborhood(s). “Priority sites” were also considered in relationship to community and SR 99 through their geographic location, adjacencies, development status (often underutilized), accessibility, and ownership status.