Selected Green Infrastructure Examples

Selected Green Infrastructure Examples
January 2002, Glenn Eugster, National Park Service


Residential Action

Window Boxes

Site gardens and landscaping

Street trees

Rooftop gardens


Private Landowner Stewardship

Community Gardens

Arbormeade Farm, PA. (129 acres conserved with assistance of Natural Lands Trust)

Fortescue Glades, NJ (More than 4,000 acres of tidal wetlands, forests and farmland along Delaware Bay conserved with assistance of Natural Lands Trust)


Land Development Designs

Fields of St. Croix, Lake Elmo, MN. Engstrom Companies. (226-acre residential design with integrated farmland and open space)

Amelia Island Plantation Development, FL (private development on a barrier island)

Woodlands Development, Texas (private development which incorporated natural infrastructure as an alternative to traditional stormwater management)


Local Government Efforts

Baltimore County, Maryland Greenways and Forest Conservation Program



Routt County, Colorado. Community-Based working landscape conservation

City of West Eugene, OR Local Wetlands Plan (developed by locals, EPA, BLM and State in response to a development conflict to give more regulatory predictability)

Eckernforde, Germany (green planning systems approach to local decision-making)


Watershed Approaches

Charles River "Natural Valley Storage" Watershed Plan, MA. (Non-structural flood-loss reduction initiative developed with assistance of COE)

Emscher Park, Ruhr River Valley, Germany (ecological and economic regeneration effort which incorporates green infrastructure into a larger sustainable design and planning effort.)

Catskills--New York City Watershed Agreement


Sub-State (Multi-County)

Albemarle-Pamlico Bioregional Greenway Plan, North Carolina (The Conservation Fund-led effort in eastern North Carolina)

Loxahatchee Regional Greenways Network (Palm Beach County and Martin County, Florida)

Upper Hillsborough River Greenway Plan (Hillsborough County and Polk County, Florida)

Midewin Tall Grass Prairie (not so much a comprehensive GIS-based GI plan, but rather an interesting application of GIS modeling to a community decision making/consensus building process using the "Midewin Prairie Explorer" that was developed by the Conservation Fund and its partners for the planning process).

Southeastern U.S. "Green-Spine" Project (by University of Florida GeoPlan Center, Funded by EPA)




Metropolitan Systems

Metro Greenprint: Greenways and Natural Areas Collaborative, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota

San Francisco Metropolitan Region, California, "Lands at Risk"

Regional Plan Association, NY, Building a Metropolitan Greensward

Portlands of Toronto, Canada (green infrastructure plan incorporates recreation, brownfields, phyto-remediation, and open space with land use plan)


Statewide Approaches

Florida Greenways Decision-Support Model (Includes University of Florida Geo Plan Modeling as well as the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's programmatic effort)

Maryland Green-Print Program (links open space acquisition, watershed management/river corridor protection, greenway conservation and GIS assessment and modeling)


Multi-State

Appalachian America (the Benton McKaye concept and the Appalachian Trail project)


International

Y2Y Yellowstone to Yukon (a project affiliated with The Wildlands Project that was written up this year in National Audubon and also reference in The Nature Conservancy magazine)

Paseo Pantera, "The Path of the Panther". Connecting conservation areas in Central America.