Green Infrastructure
Our rural, undeveloped landscapes are naturally suited to channeling and soaking stormwater into waterways and the ground, but our urban environments are not. That’s because urban environments limit how stormwater can soak into the ground with buildings, paved surfaces and compacted monoculture lawns. Our treatment of urban stormwater causes out-of-bank flooding (from waterways), localized stormwater flooding and polluted stormwater runoff.
This one-day course explores issues related to urban stormwater management and how green infrastructure can help address them. In this course, green infrastructure means man-made features designed to mimic how un- or less-developed environments naturally manage stormwater; it excludes green energy infrastructure.
Benefits and Learning Outcomes
- Understand how urban areas have historically treated rivers and streams to enable development. Historically developers have paved over them, lined them with concrete and put them into pipes.
- Learn the basics of green infrastructure: what it is, how it works, what it looks like and how to plan for it.
- Consider the business case for flipping the paradigm. Instead of treating stormwater as a nuisance, treating it as a benefit. Examples will be highlighted from around the country.
- Explore how incorporating green infrastructure into your projects or community can benefit people, planet and prosperity.
Dates and locations to be announced.
