Greening Growth: A Regional Action Plan

GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
Prepared for Greening Growth: A Regional Action Plan
Alliance for Sustainable Communities
J. Glenn Eugster, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water—Policy Office, Washington, D.C.
12/6/99

SUSTAINABILITY EQUATION
SDCG Program: Sustainability?

Meet multiple objectives simultaneously—an equation.

Issues: Development process/ natural resources residual

Healthful/ healthy communities require a healthy relationship between people and environmental (human ecology is the approach we use to understand the relationship)

PCSD: Metropolitan and Rural Strategies Task Force; Green Infrastructure Approach. Evolved from Chesapeake Bay Program Priorities for Land, Growth & Stewardship and Metropolitan Ecosystems Action Strategy in EPA—Swati Sheladia research.


THE ENVIRONMENTAL LEG
Within a sustainability context, what are the environmental values?

Values and functions: Physical, biological and natural; also social, psychological/ sacred. Place-based context.

How does the environmental piece get integrated into the sustainability equation? Current approach often “Tyranny of Small Solutions” and natural resources which are taken out of a landscape or ecological context.

“Other Infrastructure” Idea. Systems approach to determine what is important; essential; absolutely necessary for a healthful/ healthy community. Dwight D. Eisenhower had
something when he looked at the Nation’s road system and said we need a system of interstate highways!

Green Lunacy you say? A return to the wetlands delineation manual? A disciple of Ian McHarg and a believer of environmental determinism?


EXAMPLES
The answers are on the ground and in the work of landowners; developers; local government officials; land trusts; and State governments.

Let’s look closer:

Private Landowners Master Planning: Natural Lands Trust Work
Individual property owner—Andy Johnson; Private Landowner Master Plans
Cluster of property owners—Fortescue Glades, NJ
Subdivision process—Randal Arendt and PA Growing Greener

2. Planned Unit Developments: Woodlands Development Corporation, Texas

Small to Medium Size Cities:
West Eugene Wetlands Plan, Oregon
Eckernforde Landscape Plan, Eckernforde, Germany

4. Watershed Strategies:
Charles River Non-Structural Flood Loss Reduction Strategy, Charles River Watershed Association and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Boston, Massachusetts
Lower Potomac Watershed: Building Green Infrastructure, Trust for Public Land, Virginia and Maryland
Catskill Mountain-New York City Water Supply Protection Strategy, New York
Nine-Mile Run Greenway, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

5. Metropolitan Regions:
Toronto Portlands; Toronto Waterfront Regeneration Trust, Toronto, Canada
Stuttgart Clean Air Flow Zones, Verband Region, Stuttgart, Germany
Emscher Park Region, Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet,
Rhur Valley, Essen, Germany


6. States:
Florida Greenways Plan; Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee, Florida
Maryland Natural Infrastructure; Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Annapolis, Maryland


CLOSING

For further Information:

Contact J. Glenn Eugster at (202)619-7492 or by e-mail: glenn_eugster@nps.gov until 1/28/2000 and eugster.glenn@epamail.epa.gov afterward.

Also, see “Green Infrastructure Tool Kit” at the U.S. Forest Service Cooperative Forestry web site: http://www.fs.fed.us/spf/coop/