I’m an engineer, I love to design things, and I’m lucky enough to have a job where I get to design residential and industrial subdivisions. But again and again I’m left as the lone voice to battle for the right to let the water flow, let it out of the pits and pipes into natural channels and creeks, as well as habitat welcoming ponds.
Council’s design criteria rarely include aesthetics, normally quantity and quality of the outflow are all that count, regardless of how the answers were derived.
Today I was cheered by the following article which shows innovation in a large city dealing with vacant lots and way too much stormwater. Philadelphia is built on a natural watershed, originally crisscrossed by creeks and streams which have become polluted, filled in, and replaced with pipes. The new plan aims to return the water cycle to one that employs natural processes and allows for visual amenity through form and function of the system. Read more after the jump…
[block:adsense=3]Right now, Philadelphia has too many vacant lots and way too much storm water.
When an average summer storm slams our old sewer system, the sudden downpour overwhelms the city’s wastewater treatment plants. During storms, oily street sewage is mixed with human sludge, and dumped into the Delaware River. That’s bad for a river where bass, shad and other marine life are finally returning to this city’s shores…..
The plan uses waterworks like pebbled ponds and grassy swales to hold the overflow and purify the downpour. Their sketches of the neighborhood around Parkside Avenue and 51st Street show how canals and streams would carry clean water from neighborhood to neighborhood. Waterwork would displace no one, because the new, man-made waterways respect the existing grid of streets. It’s expandable and scaleable, because one-by-one, households would divert water from their roofs into neighborhood waterworks.
Source: Just Add Water :: Opinion :: Philadelphia City Paper
Sounds like a perfectly sustainable concept. Housing prices should improve through the increased amenity provided, and the fact that the vacant lots would no longer be vacant. The stormwater would be treated, and clean water would follow the age old channels that existed prior to the development of the city.
This project identifies the heart of sustainable stormwater and total water cycle management projects in city or urban areas, space is needed, but often space exists, it just needs to be reconsidered as being available.
- Prime Minister Announces Urban Stormwater Harvesting
- US EPA Fines Construction Firm for Stormwater Pollution
- Adelaide Running Low on Water
- Water Sensitive Urban Design
- LEED Neighborhood Rating and Communities
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d love to see this I’d love to see this proposal, the idea of environmental uses for vacant lots is a good one. I read a story recently, maybe on Planetizen about vacant lot gardens in downtown areas for locally grown produce.
I guess it depends what your problem is as to what the solution is. There is no one size fits all when it comes to planning and design.
Vacant lots are Vacant lots are underutilised space in the urban zone. Council’s have an opportunity (?) to force lot owners who do nothing with the land, to lease it to the council at reduced rates for 1-5 years for urban gardens, stormwater treratment, formalised parking, solar panels, playgrounds. The list is endless.
Council can still reserve the right to accept or reject any proposal that would otherwise force the lot owner to lease the land for these purposes, so there is a safe guard on undesirable development too.