case studies
View from Silver-Line Park boardwalk over wetland toward the playground. EQUINOX PHOTO
Green Spaces that Give Back Parks as Places for Community Resiliency BY JASON SEICKEL arks and other public spaces are hubs for recreation, gathering, socializing, and providing opportunities to strengthen communities. They can also serve to provide greater resiliency within our communities. Sustainably designed and built parks can provide refuge for a community. As part of the planning process for designing a park, a list of program elements, or key amenities, is typically developed that meet the desires and needs of the public. These are then incorporated into the design and the construction of a park. However, many park projects are located along a river or other body of water as these are often more challenging places for other types of development. Based on the location of these parks, they offer great opportunities to provide resiliency from flooding that has increased due to more impervious surfaces and climate change.
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But planning for resiliency can be more than just protection against floods.
Designing for resilience There are several ways a park can be designed with resiliency in mind. When utilizing green infrastructure as a means for building resiliency, there are many community goals that can be met, providing for social, economic, and environmental resiliency. Looking at design with these synergies in mind takes creative planning. Identifying the natural assets that provide a function such as storage during rain events is one example of the planning process. Natural features should be identified as key elements to integrate into a park design. Next, planning for stormwater design that goes beyond the basic requirements is another innovative idea when designing for resiliency because stormwater standards are usually set as a baseline for design and approvals and not
a gold standard. Then, it’s the design itself. The site engineering that integrates the park amenities with the existing topography and drainage patterns can provide for a sustainably constructed park. When all these work together, a park can be designed for resiliency. This doesn’t mean the park will not flood. On the contrary, the park is planned for flooding and is carefully designed so that the flooding does not cause considerable damage to the park. The design allows flood waters to have a place to go, it provides storage and treatment of stormwater runoff, and hopefully allows for faster recovery after a significant storm event, leaving a community hub as a place to gather once again. As alluded to in the above paragraph, the green infrastructure components of a park can be a large part of building a park’s resiliency as they serve many functions.
Innovative green infrastructure Green infrastructure can replace or complement traditional piped water drainage systems. Vegetation, soils, and natural processes capture and infiltrate or evaporate water before it enters the piped system or natural water systems. Green infrastructure can help reduce flooding and water pollution by absorbing and filtering stormwater. It simultaneously provides a natural relief to the built environment, improves the development aesthetic, and delivers social and health benefits to the community. Looking beyond just treating stormwater, innovative green infrastructure considers: n A systems approach to planning, design and implementation n Synergies with other community goals n Climate change and increased storm intensities, such as in cloudbursts n Site-specific demands that may
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