SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
Glenn Eugster, Assistant Regional Director, National Capital Region, Washington, DC
April 14, 2000
Growth Trends:
Water use: The amount of freshwater that is available to people in the US and the world is the same that was available when civilization first arose thousands of years ago, and so the amount of water that should be allotted to each person has declined steadily with time. It has dropped 58% since 1950, as the population climbed from 2.5 billion to 6 billion, and will fall an additional 33 percent within 50 years if our numbers reach 8.9 billion, the middle of the projected range. The Sciences, Troubled Waters, March/ April 2000
Land use :
50 acres of forest lost in Atlanta everyday, Audubon Magazine April 2000; 41 acres of open space is being lost in the Washington DC metropolitan region each day; NCRI/ Washington Post, Green More or Less;. From 1970 to 1990 Chicago’s population grew 4% while its urban land area increased 65%. In Los Angeles, CA the population increased 45%, while its urban land area grew by 300 %. Philadelphia’s population dropped by 3% but it’s land area grew by 32%. Cleveland lost 8% of it’s population and its land area increased 33% National Governor’s Association center for Best Practices.
Not only a Eastern or a urban phenomena—In 1998 nine of the ten fastes-growing small cities were located west of the Mississippi. Micopolitan places such as St. George Utah (34%); Couer d’Alene, UT (25%); Eagle Pass, TX (21%) ; and Elko, NV ((20%) saw major population grow. American Demographics, January 1998.
Forecasts:
Hyperaccumulator species: Certain species of plants will be used to help clean up contaminated soils. Hyperaccumulator plants such as the Alpine Pennycress have been found to absorb zinc, nickel, scadmium, lead, copper and colbalt. Futurist, Nov/Dec. 1997 85 Emerging Technologies
Put Mother Nature to Work: Practical environmentalistis are mimicking natural processes to clean air and water. “Living Machine” ecosystems of rocks, plants and microorganisms are being used to filter stale air or polluted water through Live Better in Big Cities
Phtoremediation—the use of plants to devour pollution—may eventually cost far less than convential cleanup efforts (ryegrass, mustard grass and sunflowers). The Futurist, Jan/ Feb. 2000 50 Paths to a Better Future
Live Better in Big Cities: Super-cities will provide substantial amounts of permanent open space, including parks and forests. Same as above.
Allieviate disasters: US FEMA’s Project Impact is encouraging residents of flood-prone or storm prone areas to relocate, rather than keep rebuilding in risky places. Same as above.
Convergence of Environmental Movement: Merging of the technological waste perspective (environmental repair) with the amenity perspective ( preventive and nondegradation) Explorations in Environmental History, Samuel P. Hays
2000 and Beyond: The response to sprawl will illustrate the blending of issues that have been kept separate and distinct(i.e. traffic congestion, urban reinvestment, farm preservation, land conservation and environmental protection), Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution.
Evolution of Green Infrastructure
The basis for the idea of another infrastructure—or “The Other Infrastructure” is found long ago. The ancient idea of an agricultural belt around communities is mentioned in the Book of Numbers and can be traced back to the days of Moses. As a formula for town planning, green belts appeared even in Plato’s Utopia.
By the medieval period, around the early 1500’s the pattern of green belts emerged closer to modern trends. Towns were surrounded by country belts which made a permanent boundary preventing the town from extending over the green belt. Population shifted from town to town in a way that a town lacking people would take the overspill population until all towns were filled. Once this stage was reached a new town would be built beyond the existing greenbelt.
The first planned attempt at establishing a green belt in Britan was Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Proclamation of 1580. Elizabeth felt that London was too populous and needed regulation to prevent crowded housing and the consequent poverty, although the stated aims of her Proclamation were to ensure abundance of cheap food and to minimize the outbreak of the plague. British Town Planning and Urban Design: Principles & Policies, Eleanor Smith Ross.
More recently, Aldo Leopold in 1941 said: The willingness of the public to accept and pay for contradictory tamperings with the natural order arises from three fallicies of thought:
1. Each tampering is regarded as a separate project because it is carried out by a separate bureau or profession
2. Any constructed mechanism is assumed to be superior to a natural one
3. We perceive organic behavior only in those organisms which we have built. Men too wise to tinker with governments and constituions accept without qualm the most radical amendment to our biological constitution.
Netherland Green Plan—“The difficulty with this fragmented approach is that it addresses a succession of new issues withourt necessarily resolving the previous one, threby creating the impression that it no longer matters. Attention focuses on one subject, overshadowing others which are no less important. This approach also fails to treat the environment as a single system, which makes it virrtually impossible to show people how their behavior effects the environment”.
PCSD Metropolitan & Rural Strategies Task Force Report suggested a new approach to the environmental portion of the sustainablility equation.
The Influence of Olmsted & Eisenhower
Looked to two influential leaders of the past—Frederick Law Olmsted and Dight D. Eisenhower—I like Ike?
Frederick Law Olmsted—Six Principles of Landscape Design (scenery; sutiability; sanitation; subordination; separation; and spaciousness) CHECK ON THIS IN ONE OF HIS BOOKS
“The Other Infrastructure”
“Preserving a region’s ecological capital—it’s forests, mountains, rivers, and open lands, can be one of the most effective economic development strategies”. Tim Beatly, The Ecology of Place
Principles
The Center for Watershed Protection has developed Model Development Principles to Protect Our Streams, Lakes and Wetlands. Through the Site Planning Roundtable. The Roundtable was a consensus process intiated with development and environmental protection interests to create more environmentally sensitive, economically viable, and locally appropriate development. Their report says that “Sustainable development combines economic growth with protection of the natural environment. Communities have long struggled to achieve this goal. However, many have found that their own development codes and standards can actually work against their efforts to achieve sustainable development”.
Concepts:
Sustainability/ multiobjective,
Landscape ecology (an ecological based approach to help create more comprehensive landscape designs which consider biodiversity conservation and water quality protection with ecologically sound, nonstructural solutions);
Step 1:
Context—Location of the project in the landscape; spatial arrangement of landscape elements with an eye toward how pattern influences the ecological integrity of the landscape. May require a reconsideration of traditional patterns of development to promote effective green infrastructure design.
Consider the context of your project at one size larger than what you are working at ( i.e. site plan—neighborhood; neighborhood—small watershed, etc.)
Landscape Elements; landscape structure; landscape function
Seven Principles of Green Infrastructure
A workgroup of state and federal government and private sector representatives, called together by the U.S. Forest Service to help implement the 1999 National Town Meeting for Sustainable America commitment on green infrastructure has been meeting to develop an green infrastructure training program for local governments and communities to use. The following principles reflect their initial suggestions about what the principles of green infrastructure are. The principles are intended to provide design and planning guidance for sustainable development. They are designed to be used by planners, developers, State and local officals as benchmarks to suggest how a green infrastructure approach could be incorporated into existing plans, ordinances and development projects. Examples of State, local and private sector green infrastructure projects and guidance documents are included as a reference for more information. The draft principles, however, are not intended to be national design standards.
1. Recognize the social and natural ecosystem/ watershed context
Describes and defines the natural resource values and
functions of interconnected networks of open space in a holistic, “whole-system,” place-based context that lets communities visualize and understand important ecological, cultural and economic linkages and relationships.
(i.e. Woodlands New Community, Texas values and functions including:
Reduce flooding
Minimize erosoion and siltation
Contribute no increase in off-site discharge during the Design Storm
Retard runoff and maximize recharge to even base flow of streams
Protect wildlife habitats)
Links green space systems and actions across multiple
scales:
--at the project scale, involving individual parcels and occurring within single real estate developments(i.e. Fields of St. Croix, St. Elmo, MN);
--at the community scale, supporting resource conservation and restoration efforts and including park, recreation and other open space projects (i.e. Northern Illinois Regional Greenway Plan involves six counties in and around the Chicago metropolitan region));
--and at the landscape scale, encompassing statewide and national conservation and open space resources as well as smart growth and sustainable communities initiatives (i.e. Florida Statewide Greenway Plan for water quality, recvreation and wildlife habitat).
2. Provide a multi-functional framework for development, protection, conservation, restoration and recreation.
Provides a hierarchy of green spaces at a variety of scales
(i.e. Apply the approach at a variety of scales (i.e. Greening the Portlands of Toronto hierarchy of green space:
Major Parks
Minor Parks
Wide Corridors
Narrow corridors
Development parcel landscapes)
Provides development certainty by clearly designating areas that the community agrees cannot or will not be developed – as well as those areas that can
(i.e. City of Boulder, CO. Greenbelt used to limit urban sprawl, protect natural areas and provide recreational access).
Provides conservation certainty, increasing the community’s ability to protect its resources and quality of life and to prosper
(i.e. City of West Eugene, OR Wetlands Plan which identifies riprarian areas off-limits to development).
3. Protect and regenerate health and biodiversity
Recognizes that environmental and natural resource features provide public benefits and values, goods and services essential to achieving a community’s overall quality of life objectives and to providing for the health, safety and well-being of its people.
Is essential for the conservation of biological diversity and the maintenance of natural, ecological processes over space and time.
(i.e. Ecology of Greenways: Design and Function of Linear Conservation Areas includes: Maintain ecological integrity--natural levels of plant productivity; high levels of native biological diversity; natural rates of soil erosion and nutrient loss; clean water and healthy living resources).
4. Create natural, social and economic linkage
Strives for and depends upon connectivity – between the resources, features, and processes essential for functional natural ecosystems; between the tools and programs that support community action; and between the people and organizations that make it a reality.
Represents a new approach to addressing the interrelationships and interactions between humans and the natural world. (i.e. Keep America Growing, an effort to create partnerships and balance the demands for growth and development with the protection of vital lands).
Emphasizes that it is just as important to carefully protect, plan for and invest in our nation’s natural resource features and processes, as it is to plan for and invest in our capital infrastructure –roads, bridges and waterlines – and our human infrastructure – education, health and social services (i.e. MD Governor Glendening’s goal to have a green infrastructure annual budget similar to budgets for roads, sewers and other public services).
5. Improves the visual quality and sense of place of communities
and landscapes
Defining green infrastructure boundaries use green to define growth areas
(i.e.
Creating and implementing site design and management schemes
(i.e. Amelia Island Development Corporation’s Plan for residential and recreation development along a barrier island system in FL.)
6. Involves and engages the community in planning, implementation, management and monitoring.
Is best developed and managed at the community level, to ensure recognition of (and respect for) natural characteristics of earth systems, while providing public and private uses, with the least adverse impact on economic, community and environmental assets and objectives.
(i.e. West Eugene Wetlands Plan: Involving the Citizens from Beginning to End including:
Direct mailings to landowners
Marketing
Posters
News Releases
Newspaper stories
Public surveys
Bean jar surveys
Public hearings)
7. Provides a multi-functional framework for funding for acquistion, restoration, management and development
Benefits from the involvement of state and federal agencies that can provide programs and financial resources for planning and management activities as well as protected lands that can serve as ecological, cultural and historic building blocks for community action.
Uses a spectrum of approaches, including voluntary methods and incentives wherever possible, which are sensitive to the economic value of land, to private property rights and responsibilities, and to local home rule – rather than depending solely on mandatory regulatory means.
Depends on non-traditional and broad-based alliances for planning, funding,
management and monitoring (i.e. Cooper River Wildlife Corridor Initiative, SC uses an agreement for common land management practices with DuPont, AMOCO, Medway Plantations, Cypress Gardens and the Francis Marion National Forest to benefit wildlife).
Is recognized and supported in annual government budgets.
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