{"id":3134,"date":"2013-04-17T13:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T17:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=3134"},"modified":"2015-10-02T16:18:03","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T20:18:03","slug":"parks-as-green-infrastructure-green-infrastructure-as-parks-how-need-design-and-technology-are-coming-together-to-make-better-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2013\/04\/17\/parks-as-green-infrastructure-green-infrastructure-as-parks-how-need-design-and-technology-are-coming-together-to-make-better-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Parks as Green Infrastructure, Green Infrastructure as Parks: How Need, Design and Technology Are Coming Together to Make Better Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">In my work at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nycgovparks.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">New York City Department of Parks and Recreation<\/a>, and more recently with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpl.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Trust for Public Land<\/a>, I have been fortunate to be involved at the nexus of landscape architecture, civil engineering, urban design, environmental management, park planning, and many related areas.\u00a0 Over the last decade, but particularly over the last five years, the concepts of sustainable design and its sub-genre, green infrastructure (GI), have entered into the design, construction, and renovation of parks. \u00a0At the same time, many cities in America have taken on the challenge of managing storm surge, storm water runoff, water conservation, and water pollution reduction, increasingly through the use of green infrastructure.\u00a0 That challenge has become even more urgent with the advent of global climate change, and the more frequent and intense storms that have accompanied it.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Many cities face fiscal constraints that don\u2019t allow them to build new parks, but are nonetheless obligated to manage water better\u2014even to the point of creating major new infrastructure to protect themselves from catastrophic damage from storm surge, flooding rivers, and other damaging weather events. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpl.org\/publications\/books-reports\/ccpe-publications\/city-park-facts-report-2012.html\" target=\"_blank\">Parkland in U.S. cities<\/a> makes up between 2.3% and 22.8% (with a median of 9.1%) of city land area.\u00a0 With the opportunity to build new, functionally layered landscapes that serve to process storm water, abate storm surge and serve as esthetic and recreational assets, parks and green infrastructure may be entering a prolonged, perhaps permanent, symbiotic relationship.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">As to the question of whether green infrastructure can <i><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">always<\/span><\/i> be counted as a \u201cpark,\u201d the short answer is no. But properly designed, constructed, and managed, GI can be a park, especially under broader definitions. \u00a0For example, the 2,000 Greenstreets (i.e., greened traffic islands) created by the City of New York, prior to their being formally engineered as GI, were considered \u201cparks\u201d by the Parks Department. \u00a0They were mostly very small properties, but what they had in common was plants and trees, and often sidewalks and sitting areas or benches. \u00a0They played a small role in lowering the urban heat island effect, absorbing carbon dioxide and particulate matter, providing oxygen and habitat, and creating many small islands of beauty in otherwise bleak landscapes.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Perhaps the \u201cmother of all GI\u201d in New York City was the first <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/html\/dep\/html\/dep_projects\/bluebelt.shtml\" target=\"_blank\"><i>\u201c<\/i>Bluebelt<i>\u201d<\/i><\/a> in Staten Island, designed to capture, filter, and slowly release storm water runoff. \u00a0In Atlanta, the spectacular new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpl.org\/what-we-do\/where-we-work\/georgia\/Historic-Fourth-Ward-Park.html\" target=\"_blank\">Old Fourth Ward Park<\/a><i> <\/i>is a major new GI installation, and very definitely a public park.\u00a0 Finally, existing (\u201cregular\u201d) public parks can have new GI elements added to them, and new parks can contain significant GI elements (as will be detailed later in this article), and in a sense all parks that have significant green open space that absorbs storm water runoff can be looked at as a form of GI.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">So the question of whether parks can be considered green infrastructure is a qualified \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>What is Green Infrastructure?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Defining green infrastructure ought to be easy, but type \u201cgreen infrastructure\u201d into a Google search field, and there are 141 million entries; \u201cgreen infrastructure definition\u201d has a more modest 5 million.\u00a0 The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Green_infrastructure\">Wikipedia definition<\/a>, which comes up first, is quite vague and generic: \u201cGreen Infrastructure is a concept originating in the United States in the mid-1990s that highlights the importance of the natural environment in decisions about land use planning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The definition used by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dec.ny.gov\/\">New York State Department of Environmental Conservation<\/a> is more specific, but also perhaps too circumscribed, defining GI as \u201ca variety of site design techniques and structural practices used by communities, businesses, homeowners and others for managing stormwater.\u201d \u00a0On a larger scale, green infrastructure includes preserving and restoring natural landscape features (such as forests, floodplains and wetlands), and reducing the amount of land covered by impervious surfaces. \u00a0On a smaller scale, GI practices include green roofs, pervious pavement, rain gardens, vegetated swales, planters and stream buffers.\u201d Others suggest that true GI is not engineered or \u201cbuilt,\u201d but is \u201cnatural\u201d and in its simplest form consists of trees, plants, and soil.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Even among my colleagues at the Trust for Public Land, there has been a healthy debate about the meaning.\u00a0 Some favor the tighter definition that relates primarily to storm water management.\u00a0 But an argument can be made that natural systems, such as salt marshes, can provide a GI approach to storm surge abatement, and that conserving land around drinking water and watersheds to avoid pollution and the resulting need to build hugely expensive drinking water filtration plants would also constitute a kind of GI.\u00a0 Consider also that a medium-sized tree can absorb over 2,500 gallons of rainwater per year, and a riparian forest in the Chesapeake Bay watershed was shown to remove 89% of nitrogen and 80% of phosphorous before it reached the water.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">However you choose to define it, GI is quickly becoming a major tool in designing and building sustainable cities, and increasingly as a way to both improve park design, and have GI function as parks.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">What follows is neither an encyclopedic nor scientific survey, but rather a highly personal and anecdotal tour of where and how GI and parks are coming together across the US (there is also a great deal going on with GI in cities around the world, but that may be a subject of a future installment).\u00a0 I hope the readers will forgive a focus on projects in New York City and those in other cities being done by the Trust for Public Land, as those are some of the projects I know best.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>A Short History of Green Infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><b><\/b>By the broader definitions, parks have been part of GI systems since they were first created.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frederick_Law_Olmsted\">Frederick Law Olmsted<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Calvert_Vaux\">Calvert Vaux<\/a> captured storm water in an intricate system of underground drainage tiles and pipes, and directed it to the lakes and ponds in their earliest parks in the mid-late 19<sup>th<\/sup> century. \u00a0In Boston\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cityofboston.gov\/parks\/emerald\/back_bay_fens.asp\">Back Bay Fens<\/a>, an early version of GI was first used to clean polluted waters using natural landscape typologies.\u00a0 But for the most part, the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century saw an approach to storm water that sought to get it into storm sewers as quickly as possible.\u00a0 The prototypical urban playgrounds of New York and other cities featured huge areas of impermeable asphalt pitched to drain the water into sewers, and even sports fields were designed to drain away as much of the water as possible. \u00a0That water carries damaging pollutants into water systems, causing combined sewer systems that serve more than a quarter of major U.S. cities to overflow.\u00a0 And when they do, they discharge sewage waste and high levels of phosphorous, pesticides, increased concentrations of a host of metals, including mercury, nickel, chromium, lead, and zinc, as well as organic contaminants such as PCBs and PAHs. \u00a0However, in recent years, landscape architects, ecologists, and horticulturists have taken a new look at park design, seeking to make parks more sustainable.\u00a0 Among the primary ways to make a park more sustainable was to reduce impermeable surfaces and capture the storm water runoff in enhanced and enlarged landscapes.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asla.org\/\">American Society of Landscape Architects<\/a>, following the lead of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usgbc.org\/\">LEED<\/a>, worked with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wildflower.org\/\">Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center<\/a> at The University of Texas at Austin and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usbg.gov\/\">United States Botanic Garden<\/a> beginning in 2005 to develop the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sustainablesites.org\/\">&#8220;Sustainable Sites&#8221;<\/a> and rating systems for sustainable landscape design.\u00a0 And in an unusual partnership, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and the non-profit Design Trust for Public Space worked with professional peers beginning in 2008 to develop and publish guidelines for building sustainable parks, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nycgovparks.org\/greening\/sustainable-parks\/landscape-guidelines\">\u201cHigh Performance Landscape Guidelines: 21st Century Parks for NYC.\u201d<i> <\/i><\/a><i>\u00a0<\/i>Charles McKinney (a longtime planner, designer and administrator at NYC Parks) and Deborah Marton (then executive director of the Trust) led a team of \u201cfellows\u201d and peer reviewers in developing guidelines for the design and construction of sustainable parks and public spaces, with a focus on storm water management.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Sustainable Urban Development Meets Water Pollution Control <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At the same time the guidelines were being developed, some cities were taking macro approaches to sustainable urban development, including Seattle, Portland, New York, and Philadelphia. \u00a0Portland and Seattle were among the first cities to use GI to capture storm water runoff in vegetated bioswales. \u00a0New York City\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/html\/planyc2030\/html\/home\/home.shtml\">PlaNYC<\/a>\u201d and the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.phila.gov\/green\/greenworks\/index.html\">Greenworks Philadelphia<\/a>\u201d were among the ambitious plans developed under the leadership of Mayors Bloomberg and Nutter in the first decade of this century.\u00a0 And many of those same cities were also confronted with having to clean up their storm water runoff to address federal Clean Water Act violations and consent decrees governing the management of storm water and combined sewer systems.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3141\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3141\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3141\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/13.-Greenstreets-Nashville-Blvd-Q-1-610x420.jpg\" alt=\"Greenstreet on Nashville Boulevard in Queens. Credit: New York City Dept of Parks and Recreation (NYC DPR) \" width=\"584\" height=\"402\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3141\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Greenstreet on Nashville Boulevard in Queens. Credit: New York City Dept of Parks and Recreation (NYC DPR)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p align=\"left\">The combination of proactive plans for sustainable cities and ways to comply with consent decrees also led to cities developing plans for storm water management that included heavy GI components.\u00a0 In New York City, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/html\/dep\/html\/stormwater\/nyc_green_infrastructure_plan.shtml\">\u201cGreen Infrastructure Plan\u201d<\/a> was developed by the Department of Environmental Protection, and $1.6 billion was allocated toward the development of GI, from green and blue roofs to water cisterns, bioswales, \u201cBlue Belts\u201d and even small traffic islands, known as \u201cGreenstreets\u201d and specially designed tree planting systems, known by the cumbersome title of \u201cRight of Way Street Tree Bioswales.\u201d \u00a0This commitment by the city represents an unparalleled opportunity to redefine the urban landscape, especially if traditional design approaches and cumbersome regulations and procurement processes can be energized and streamlined.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3142\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3142\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3142\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/13.-Street-Tree-Bioswale-Diagram-DPR-630x353.jpg\" alt=\"Diagram of Street Tree Bioswale.\" width=\"584\" height=\"327\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3142\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diagram of Street Tree Bioswale.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3143\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3143\" style=\"width: 243px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3143\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/13.-Street-Tree-Bioswale-Image-243x420.jpg\" alt=\"Street Tree Bioswale on Dean Street in Brooklyn. Credit: NYC DPR\" width=\"243\" height=\"420\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3143\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Street Tree Bioswale on Dean Street in Brooklyn. Credit: NYC DPR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p align=\"left\">As city officials across the country address storm water runoff issues (there are at least 770 cities in America with combined sewer systems, and more than 60 of them have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epa.gov\/enforcement\/air\/...\/decrees\/coffeyville-cd.pdf\">consent decrees with the EPA<\/a> and\/or state regulatory agencies), many are also struggling to find funds to build and maintain parks and open spaces, or to plant and care for street trees.\u00a0 In many of those same cities, enterprising landscape architects, park agencies, and community-based organizations are developing novel approaches to address both issues.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">In New York City, landscape architect Susannah Drake and her firm, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dlandstudio.com\/\">Dlandstudio<\/a>, have developed a plan to capture and process storm water runoff in street end \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spongepark.org\/\">Sponge Parks<\/a>\u201d before it enters the heavily polluted Gowanus canal\u2014construction for the first of these should begin this year. \u00a0The design itself is complex, but even more complex are the layers of governmental agency oversight and approval involved in the project (see image below). \u00a0Construction is also essentially complete on a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dlandstudio.com\/projects_holds_flushing.html\">prototype system<\/a> Dlandstudio developed with the help of the Regional Plan Association to capture and phyto-remediate runoff from an elevated highway in Queens above a creek that flows through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3194\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3194\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3194\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/OverlappingRegulatoryAgencies-600x420.jpg\" alt=\"Mapping regulatory responsibilities along teh Gowanus Canal, New York. Credit: DLand Studio. \" width=\"584\" height=\"408\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3194\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mapping complex regulatory responsibilities along the Gowanus Canal, New York. Credit: DLand Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3144\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3144\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3144\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/15.-dlandstudio-Sponge-Park-Rendering-630x358.jpg\" alt=\"Rendering of Gowanus Canal Sponge Park.\u201d Credit: dlandstudio\" width=\"584\" height=\"331\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3144\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rendering of Gowanus Canal Sponge Park.\u201d Credit: dlandstudio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3145\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3145\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3145\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/16.-Brooklyn-Bridge-Park-Pier-1-.jpg\" alt=\"Lawns at Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Credit: nycgo.com Photo by Julienne Schaer\" width=\"460\" height=\"285\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3145\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lawns at Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Credit: nycgo.com Photo by Julienne Schaer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3146\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3146\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3146\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/16.-Brooklyn-Bridge-Park-Water-Mgmt-Diagram-630x327.jpg\" alt=\"Diagram of storm water management system in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Credit: Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy\/ Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates\" width=\"584\" height=\"303\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3146\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diagram of storm water management system in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Credit: Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy\/ Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3147\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3147\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3147\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/16.-Pearly-Gates-Picture-DPR-630x352.jpg\" alt=\"Pearly Gates Playground in the Bronx. Credit: NYC DPR\" width=\"584\" height=\"326\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3147\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pearly Gates Playground in the Bronx. Credit: NYC DPR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p align=\"left\">On Brooklyn\u2019s formerly industrial waterfront, landscape architect <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mvvainc.com\/\">Michael Van Valkenburgh<\/a>\u00a0has designed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklynbridgepark.org\/\">Brooklyn Bridge Park<\/a> as the ultimate sustainable park, with among other things hills constructed of stone recycled from a nearby tunnel-digging project, and a vast underground water storage system that captures storm water in the landscape for irrigation purposes (his landscape also performed admirably when much of the park was inundated with saltwater by storm surge from last fall\u2019s disastrous \u201cSuperstorm Sandy.\u201d\u00a0 In Queens\u2019 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nycgovparks.org\/parks\/forttotten\">Fort Totten Park<\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">,<\/span> landscape architect <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nancyowensstudio.com\/\">Nancy Owens<\/a> created a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nancyowensstudio.com\/project_template.php?category=civic&amp;id=1&amp;bgId=03\">new park landscape<\/a> in a vacant site of former army housing, designing a vegetated bio-swale which absorbs and channels storm water runoff away from structures, and creates an enriched park habitat. \u00a0In many other projects, Parks Department landscape architects and architects are designing even humble playgrounds with a large array of sustainable elements, following the guidelines they helped develop.\u00a0 For example, the redesign of a classic 1940s playground in the Bronx, known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gfcactivatingland.org\/explore\/precedents\/pearly-gates-park\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pearly Gates Playground<\/a> (so named by former parks commissioner Henry J. Stern in honor of St. Peter\u2019s church across the street), landscape architects Stephen Koren, Nette Compton, Patricia Clark, and Jim Mituzas reduced the impermeable surfaces by at least 25 percent, using permeable pavement and bioswales to capture storm water, along with other sustainable materials including recycled glass and asphalt and high ash content concrete.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Green infrastructure goes to school<\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The traditional urban playground has long had its equally non-resilient twin in the urban schoolyard.\u00a0 In Philadelphia, where Mayor Nutter and his team have put forward perhaps the nation\u2019s most ambitious and complex plan for a \u201cgreen\u201d city, the Trust for Public Land is working with city officials to transform traditional asphalt schoolyards and old-fashioned playgrounds into \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/cloud.tpl.org\/pubs\/local-pa-wkdick-design-2012.pdf\">green playgrounds<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 The play areas, often not much more than huge deserts of impermeable asphalt and battered play equipment, are being transformed into beautiful new playgrounds with state-of-the-art play equipment, playing fields, and large new planting areas designed to capture not just all the rain water that falls on the playground, but also water that drains in from the surrounding sidewalks and streets.\u00a0 Philadelphia is also adding a range of GI elements to parks including, for example, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phillywatersheds.org\/what_were_doing\/green_infrastructure\/tools\/infiltration_storage_trench\">subsurface infiltration bed<\/a> beneath a new basketball court at Clark Park to manage stormwater runoff on site, as well as from an adjacent street and parking lot; a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phillywatersheds.org\/what_were_doing\/green_infrastructure\/tools\/stormwater_basin\">stormwater infiltration basin<\/a> at Clivedon Park; and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phillywatersheds.org\/what_were_doing\/green_infrastructure\/tools\/stormwater_wetland\">stormwater wetland<\/a> in Fairmont Park. Using a combination of public funds (including a significant contribution from the Philadelphia Water Department) and private donations, the projects create neighborhood amenities that improve the community, expand opportunities for exercise and fitness, and also capture storm water runoff to help Philadelphia meet its ambitious goals for cleaning the adjacent rivers<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">A similar program is under construction in New York City, where the NYC Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Education are providing crucial GI funding for the projects that will allow the Trust for Public Land to transform similar poorly functioning, part-time schoolyards into attractive, multi-functional, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpl.org\/what-we-do\/where-we-work\/new-york\/ny-city-playgrounds.html\">fulltime playgrounds<\/a>.\u00a0 Led by Melissa Potter Ix, the landscape design firm Siteworks partners with Trust for Public Land Project Director MaryAlice Lee to manage a three-month <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/08\/nyregion\/queens-students-get-water-lessons-by-designing-playground.html?_r=2&amp;\">community design process<\/a> at each site, then works to create plans that direct storm water runoff into rain gardens and linear tree pits; water is also collected using porous pavers and in synthetic turf playing fields. And each site is designed to collect the first inch of rain water from every storm, which covers most typical rain events. \u00a0Cities large and small, across the nation, are now considering using playgrounds as part of their storm water management strategies, in which GI use is encouraged by the EPA and state regulatory agencies, and in some cases compelled to do so as part of the consent decrees.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3150\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3150\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-261-Site-Plan-TPL-560x420.jpg\" alt=\"Schoolyard at P.S. 164 in New York after renovation. Credit: Trust for Public Land\" width=\"560\" height=\"420\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3150\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Schoolyard at P.S. 164 in New York after renovation. Credit: Trust for Public Land<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3149\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3149\" style=\"width: 236px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3149 \" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-164-Before-TPL.jpg\" alt=\"Schoolyard at P.S. 164 in New York before renovation. Credit: Trust for Public Land\" width=\"236\" height=\"173\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-164-Before-TPL.jpg 236w, https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-164-Before-TPL-100x73.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 236px) 100vw, 236px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3149\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Schoolyard at P.S. 164 in New York before renovation. Credit: Trust for Public Land<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3148\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3148\" style=\"width: 236px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3148 \" src=\"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-164-After-TPL.jpg\" alt=\"Plan for playground renovation at P.S. 261K in Brooklyn. Credit: Trust for Public Land\" width=\"236\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-164-After-TPL.jpg 236w, https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/18.-PS-164-After-TPL-100x75.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 236px) 100vw, 236px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3148\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plan for playground renovation at P.S. 261K in Brooklyn. Credit: Trust for Public Land<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p align=\"left\">No open space is too small to contribute environmental value.\u00a0 In a perfect evocation of ecologist Rene Dubos\u2019 admonition to \u201cThink globally, act locally,\u201d New York City Department of Environmental Protection allocated funding to the Parks Department to transform striped and paved traffic islands into \u201cGreenstreets.\u201d\u00a0 The idea of turning formerly paved areas into small gardens is not new\u2014it was pioneered by then-Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern and his fellow Department of Transportation Commissioner, Ross Sandler, in the 1980s, following a plan devised by DOT Deputy Commissioner for Planning David Gurin.\u00a0 Approximately 2,000 of these esthetically pleasing transformations were effected over the course of two decades, but the latest GI spin has the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nycgovparks.org\/greening\/green-infrastructure\">Greenstreets<\/a> being designed to capture the storm water from the surrounding streets in specially designed systems with lush planting beds populated by plants that can tolerate both inundation and drought, along with the other indignities of urban street life, such as salt, contaminants, and dog waste.\u00a0 These hyper-performing landscapes are tiny by park standards, but they bring beauty to formerly barren corners, serve as mini habitats for insects and birds, and most of all, soak up storm water.\u00a0 Moreover, these steps are only the beginning of efforts to abate the increasing \u201cheat island effect\u201d that global warming is bringing to our nation\u2019s cities.\u00a0 During Hurricane Irene two years ago, one of the first generation GI Greenstreets captured 25,000 gallons of storm water, and a corner notorious for flooding during normal rain events did not flood.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Emboldened by the success of the Greenstreets, DEP Commissioner Carter Strickland is now working with his Parks and Transportation colleagues to turn the humble street tree planting pit into a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/html\/dep\/pdf\/green_infrastructure\/bioswales-standard-designs.pdf\">Right of Way Street Tree Bioswale.\u201d<i> <\/i><\/a>\u00a0These planting beds are much larger than normal, five feet by twenty, and ten feet deep, with structured soil and drainage materials and infrastructure, with a tree in the middle, and a variety of shrubs and ground covers.\u00a0 Inlets from the street usher in the storm water from the curb, and each bioswales is designed to capture 3,000 gallons of water per rain event.\u00a0 Best of all, perhaps, the DEP is also funding the Parks Department crews that maintain both the Greenstreets and Street Tree Bioswales, addressing one of the essential reasons\u2014chronic lack of maintenance funding\u2014why many city park systems don\u2019t embark on creating new parks and public spaces, no matter how small.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Cities across the country go green<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While the GI\/parks projects in New York City and Philadelphia are among the largest and most comprehensive currently under development, other cities are also embarking on ambitious projects.\u00a0 In a plan that will restore Olmsted\u2019s Back Bay Fens of the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century, the City of Boston is in the first phase of a $93 million project to restore the 3.4 mile <a href=\"http:\/\/www.muddyrivermmoc.org\/\">Muddy River<\/a> and its shorelines, to alleviate flooding, restore the riparian habitat, and \u201cdaylight\u201d parts of the watercourse that have been hidden in huge culverts for decades. And Washington, DC is commencing a $2.6 billion Clean Rivers Project, including GI\/park projects, to comply with a 2005 EPA consent decree. \u00a0Already <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canalparkdc.org\/\">Canal Park<\/a><i> <\/i>is being recognized or its innovative stormwater management, and the National Mall too will become a GI player in the Long Term Control Plan, as the Mall is renovated for the first time in 40 years. Bellevue, Washington, was an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.werf.org\/liveablecommunities\/studies_bell_wa.htm\">early pioneer<i> <\/i><\/a>in a stormwater management partnership<i> <\/i>between the water district and parks department, where the \u201cUtility\u201d purchased the land and built stormwater management features, and the Parks department built and maintained recreational facilities at each location\u2014where a stormwater vault was built, the Parks would place a tennis court over it; and a stormwater detention basin would also function as a soccer field.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">In New Orleans, The Trust for Public Land has worked with local officials to acquire a significant first portion of land that will eventually be part of a 3.1 mile <a href=\"http:\/\/folc-nola.org\/greenway\/sustainable-water-design\/\">\u201cLafitte Greenway,\u201d<\/a> a trail running from the French Quarter to Lakeville near Lake Pontchartrain.\u00a0 A design developed by landscape architect Dan Waggoner envisions not just a traditional bicycle path, but also a complex series of green infrastructure interventions that would help the City of New Orleans manage storm water runoff\u2014a crucial issue for this low-lying city with a history of flooding.\u00a0 In Los Angeles, city officials are likewise looking at the many miles of impervious alleys to transform them into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpl.org\/what-we-do\/where-we-work\/california\/los-angeles-county\/green-alleyways.html\">\u201cGreen Alleys\u201d<\/a><i> <\/i>where light colored pavement could help alleviate the urban heat island effect, and planting beds could serve as rain gardens to capture storm water. \u00a0And Chicago is successfully moving forward with its own <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cityofchicago.org\/dam\/city\/depts\/cdot\/Green_Alley_Handbook_2010.pdf\">Green Alley Program<\/a>, introduced in 2007 to convert more than 1,900 miles of asphalt and concrete public alleys to 3,500 acres of permeable paving, with the goal of reducing stormwater by 80%.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And while green infrastructure has mostly been defined as a natural approach to storm water management, increasingly landscape architects, engineers, geophysicists, planners, and officials are considering natural approaches to creating both barriers and mitigation zones to address the effects of ocean and river storm surge.\u00a0 Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for example, removed a floodwall from the North Nashua River as the first of $39 million in GI in 17 cities across Massachusetts and created a riverfront park on a former brownfields site.\u00a0 And even before the disastrous impact of storm surge from Superstorm Sandy on New York City, ideas had been formulated by these professionals from these diverse specialties.\u00a0 It is been known for years that the low lying areas of New York city would be vulnerable to storm surge damage from both wave action and flooding, that it was just a matter of time before \u201cthe Big One\u201d hit and flooded neighborhoods, highways, subway and automobile tunnels, and other crucial infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Global climate change, rising sea level, and green infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">In prescient <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moma.org\/explore\/inside_out\/category\/rising-currents#description\">\u201cRising Currents\u201d<\/a><i> <\/i>exhibition mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, teams of local landscape architects and architects developed new approaches for addressing rising sea levels and flooding storm surges. \u00a0Based on a two-year research project by the engineer Guy Nordenson, the landscape architect Catherine Seavitt and the architect Adam Yarinsky,\u00a0 the exhibition (curated by Barry Bergdoll) showcased what appeared to be radical thinking about how to soften the traditional hard edges of the city\u2019s interface with its harbor waters.\u00a0 Among the ideas were recreating the historic salt marsh verges of the city, excavating \u201cslips\u201d that allowed the harbor waters to penetrate the street grid, building two-way porous streets, constructing apartment complexes in Venetian style water settings, and otherwise subverting the traditional approach to harbor waters\u2014to build strong, rigid, vertical structures and walls, which work fine until the water goes higher than the hard edge.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Now, as the city recovers from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy and considers options for preventing or mitigating the effects of both gradual sea level rise and catastrophic storms such as Sandy, officials at the highest levels of government are considering both very expensive, gray infrastructure responses including dikes, levees and barriers, but also green infrastructure approaches, including engineered salt marshes, constructed dunes, and other \u201csoft\u201d systems to mitigate the flooding and storm surge damage.\u00a0 As with the <a href=\"http:\/\/charmeck.org\/stormwater\/DrainageandFlooding\/Pages\/FloodplainBuyout(Acquisition)Program.aspx\">expanded flood plains<\/a> created next to rural rivers that flood regularly, these green infrastructure elements can also function as parks, greenways, and natural areas, providing public space for humans and vital habitat for animals.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Green infrastructure as part of the solution to managing that most vital and also most dangerous of all natural forces\u2014water\u2014will likely be an essential component of urban design for the foreseeable future. \u00a0The Trust for Public Land is working with cities across the country to research, design, and construct parks using GI, and to investigate benefits and costs.\u00a0 As we work to create sustainable, resilient cities, green infrastructure, with appropriate planning, will be a way to create new, well-funded, multi-functional public parks and open spaces, large and small.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Adrian Benepe<br \/>\n<\/strong>New York City<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Acknowledgements<\/strong>: I wish to thank\u00a0Marianna Koval, a Fellow of the Trust for Public Land, who is currently pursuing a mid-career masters degree at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and who is doing research on the use of Green Infrastructure in parks, some of which is incorporated in this piece.\u00a0 I also wish to thanks Cecille Bernstein, an intern here at TPL, who helped with the editing and organization of piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my work at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and more recently with the Trust for Public Land, I have been fortunate to be involved at the nexus of landscape architecture, civil engineering, urban design, environmental management, park planning, and many related areas.\u00a0 Over the last decade, but particularly over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":8328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,299,297],"tags":[28,66,33,90],"coauthors":[131],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-essay-place-and-design","category-essay-science-and-tools","tag-design","tag-parks","tag-resilience","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}