about the project
For South Sacramento, Florin Road is a significant commercial thoroughfare for the local community. Over the last century, Florin Road has experienced significant changes to its landscape. From once thriving agriculture fields, to a booming commercial corridor in the middle of the 20th century, Florin Road’s landscape is a composite of fragmented commercial strips, razed retail centers, and vacant large-scale auto dealerships, resulting in 6 million SF of paving area. The large parking areas that dominate the landscape, contribute to heat island effect, disconnected urban tree canopy and reduced open space. Moreover, climate change challenges and regional issues of drought in the California valley have called for an unprecedented need for innovative design solutions to tackle the suburban landscape (i.e. shuttered retail properties, extraneous paving and lack of planting).
In response, Florin Road is in a unique position to redefine itself and leverage the nearly 200,000 residents, within a 3-mile radius, to create more vibrant, sustainable and active areas for the community. Flowers on Florin proposes to strategically re-occupy the mono-functional paving along Florin, with colorful, water efficient and ecologically rich plantings that support vital habitat for birds, bees, insects etc. In this scenario, Florin Road’s parking lots become templates for native planting areas to re-establish a healthy and sustainable community, both ecologically and for the local community to connect, play and enjoy.
