Can landscape design help communities promote social justice and climate resilience?

Charlottesville, Virginia

The redevelopment of an 8.5-acre district on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville had a mandate to manage and treat all stormwater on site. Located on higher ground than the surrounding area and on a campus edge, the new buildings and street design of the master plan were slated to add impervious surface area, thus exacerbating flooding problems downstream.

“We have a history of innovation on campus, so creating a working landscape that performs in concert with the LEED-designed buildings is important to us,” says Julia Monteith, associate university planner at the University of Virginia. Rather than build an underground cistern or nondescript retention area filled with riprap, the university went with a plan that transforms the main circulation route, Brandon Avenue, into a “green street” that celebrates stormwater infrastructure.

Built-in seating, a shaded promenade, and a bosque of cypress trees and adjacent park spaces surround the basins, allowing people to gather and enjoy nature in an urban setting. “If you have the space, it’s a great way to create a landscape that’s educational as well as functional,” Monteith says.

Louisville, Colorado

The initial redevelopment plan for a 400-acre site in Colorado’s Boulder County received pushback from the community, whose concerns included traffic, sustainability, and public access. After purchasing the site, developer Sterling Bay decided to start from scratch and create a new master plan for a life-sciences campus. “We wanted it to be truly sustainable, with a lot of open space that would be an amenity for both the workers and the surrounding community,” says Ryan Amos, former vice president of development services at Sterling Bay.

The master plan for the site, which is open to the public, was designed to meet Fitwel standards, a third-party certification program for healthy communities. “Fitwel drove a lot of design decisions, and showed how we would hold ourselves accountable to the community—that we weren’t just ‘talk,’” Amos says. “The new plan blew the certification team away.” Along with outdoor work areas and staff locker rooms with showers, the plan includes 19 miles of trails with stormwater ponds that the public can enjoy. The landscape will be transformed with native plantings that support pollinators, retention ponds for stormwater management, and a dog park. Wildlife, as well as people, can freely access the site: Instead of fences, posts with bird nesting boxes will demarcate the area that is under private management versus county management.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Like many cities in the U.S., Oklahoma City has an aging stormwater system and existing flooding problems, including two historic floods in recent years. Anticipating many more days of extreme heat and increased flash flooding as a result of climate change, city staff applied for help from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greening America’s Communities program. “We identified five project areas that suffer from routine flooding and are also located in or near lower-income neighborhoods,” says T.O. Bowman, program planner in the Oklahoma City planning department’s office of sustainability.

The EPA commissioned a design toolkit, completed in 2017, that gave the city a jumpstart on thinking about infrastructure as green infrastructure. In addition to specific recommendations for each neighborhood, the toolkit is centered around “green roadways,” which prioritize stormwater management and walkability. “Instead of intersections with no curb cuts and large storm drains that could eat small dogs, we can have bump-outs with vegetated bioswales that also shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians,” Bowman says. “It helped the community see the vision for what could be. As we get funding lined up for projects, we have this integrated approach already in place, so it’s not just about new asphalt.” The recently completed $4 million streetscape upgrade in the historic Paseo District, which improved sidewalks and added rain gardens, is among the first to showcase this strategy.