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Governance for Green Infrastructure If managed properly, GI assets can play an important role in increasing resilience. By Jennifer Court, Gemma Dunn and Jeff Matthews
M Figure 1.
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unicipalities across Canada are facing challenges with growing populations, aging infrastructure, degraded ecosystems and the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation, slow economic growth and low social equity. Increasingly, they are turning to green infrastructure (GI) to help address these challenges, given its low cost and wide range of economic,
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environmental, health and social benefits (see Figure 1). GI includes natural assets (e.g. native vegetation, wetlands and parks), enhanced/hybrid assets (e.g. green roofs, bioswales and raingardens) and engineered assets (e.g. permeable pavement, perforated pipes, infiltration trenches and cisterns). If managed appropriately, these assets can play an important role in increasing the re-
silience of a city. Unique challenges As GI assets represent a unique combination of engineered and living elements, they present a number of challenges in themselves: • Natural elements ( e.g. plant or soil systems) need different maintenance to function optimally compared to water-related infrastructure.
November/ December 2023
