Vacant to Vibrant: Creating Successful Green Infrastructure Networks Sandra L. Albro Island Press, 2019 https://islandpress.org/books/vacant-vibrant Annotated Table of Contents
Introduction The question of how to repurpose urban vacant land in ways that simultaneously address environmental challenges and urban decline is of key interest to many U.S. Great Lakes cities. While urban farming has enabled communities to generate environmental, economic, and educational benefits from formerly vacant land, this type of urban greening requires extensive manual labor for low profit margins. In 2010, negotiations between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District established that green stormwater infrastructure would count towards sewer improvements to comply with the Clean Water Act, creating the potential for novel, low-maintenance use of urban vacant land. This chapter introduces the origins of Vacant to Vibrant, a pilot project initiated by staff at Holden Forests & Gardens to convert vacant lots to “stormwater parks,� and provides brief overviews of the later chapters.
Chapter 1: Green Stormwater Infrastructure on Vacant Lots During 2009 and 2010, a series of meetings bringing together professionals from 11 cities in the Great Lakes region established three emerging challenges in urban planning: an excess of urban vacant land, a need for improved stormwater management, and impacts of industrial decline. This chapter describes the interplay among these challenges and describes opportunities for transformative change. Land vacancy rates had increased due to industrial and population decline since the 1970s as well as recent state and federal investment in demolitions. With population declines, smaller local tax bases had made the updates to existing infrastructure for managing stormwater runoff cost prohibitive, leading to enforcement actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The chapter closes with discussion of potential benefits and challenges of using urban vacant lots for the dual purposes of stormwater management and neighborhood stabilization.
Chapter 2: City Dynamics that Shape Vacant Land Use Prior to beginning formal project planning, the Vacant to Vibrant team engaged in a deep exploration of the historical context of the three target cities: Cleveland, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; and Buffalo, New York. This chapter describes both historical patterns common among U.S. industrial cities and the unique features of each of the three target cities. During the 20th century, immigration, class dynamics, and racial dynamics shaped many industrial cities, and these patterns themselves were influenced by changing federal laws and macroeconomic conditions. Exploring the cultural history, physical form, and local context of the Buckeye-Woodland Hills neighborhood of Cleveland, the Aetna neighborhood of
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Gary, and the West Side neighborhood of Buffalo revealed rich stories of how broader, shared urban dynamics have manifested at smaller spatial scales in U.S. Great Lakes cities.
Chapter 3: Vacant to Vibrant Planning As the project entered the planning phase, Vacant to Vibrant set out to explore the question of whether neighborhood recreation and stormwater management were compatible land uses at the scale of a single vacant parcel. This chapter provides a detailed description of how planning was carried out. The project team selected parcels in a top-down manner in Cleveland and Gary, with selection criteria defined at three successively smaller spatial scales from the level of the city down to that of the parcel. Design plans for each of nine parcels show how the design team addressed goals for recreation, stormwater management, plant life, and hardscape in response to stakeholder input. (An Appendix at the end of the book also provides site layout plans, stormwater management plans, and planting plans for each parcel.) The project team engaged local community members using a variety of methods, ultimately identifying personal conversations and connections with community liaisons as most effective. Across the three cities, community members shared concerns about safety, vandalism, and crime, although the demographics and local politics within each community also led to key differences influencing final design plans. The chapter closes with lessons learned from Vacant to Vibrant’s novel planning process.
Chapter 4: Vacant to Vibrant Implementation During fall 2014 through spring 2015, construction was carried out at the nine parcels selected in Cleveland, Gary, and Buffalo. This chapter describes the process of project installation, as well as modifications carried out during or after installation in response to logistical challenges or resident feedback. Agreements with parcel owners established shared understanding on intended use and access to the parcels, and requests for quotes helped to identify small, local companies with capacity for both landscape and general contracting. After a brief overview of rain garden and plant installation, photos and project descriptions help to illustrate each of the nine sites before and after installation. Contractor feedback regarding unavailable materials, options for reducing long-term maintenance, and feature placement within parcels led to design changes during installation. While community feedback during the design phase limited most vandalism, sites designed for young children’s active play were subject to destructive play, trash, and noise. Ambiguities in city policy and liability led to removal or modification of downspout disconnections and curb cuts from most project sites, and resident complaints led to further modifications during maintenance at sites designed for a natural aesthetic. Additional lessons learned from the implementation phase of Vacant to Vibrant close this chapter.
Chapter 5: Sustaining Urban Greening Projects The continued success of green infrastructure projects requires ongoing maintenance, which in turn requires the establishment of key capacities. This chapter explores what physical, professional, and community capacities may be involved in sustaining green infrastructure at the city scale and below. The Vacant to Vibrant project team found that functional roles, rather than job titles, and participation in collaborative local project partnerships were indicators of professional capacity for green infrastructure efforts at the city scale. At the neighborhood scale, maintenance capacity of urban greening projects can 2
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depend heavily on the amount of specialized knowledge required, with limited understanding of native plants among contractors and community members presenting challenges. A social enterprise business in Buffalo, green infrastructure training for park maintenance crews in Gary, and neighborhood entrepreneurship in Cleveland provide models for addressing these challenges through green workforce development. In addition, residents in communities that have historically been subjected to racial segregation and economic disinvestment may be rightfully skeptical or anxious about proposed green infrastructure projects. Open communication between and among urban greening professionals and local residents can support the development of shared expectations, raise awareness of community conflicts, and help uncover mismatches in understanding. Ultimately, such communication ensures that green infrastructure plans and installations are compatible with local needs, desires, and capacity for long-term maintenance.
Chapter 6: Scaling Up Networks of Small Green Infrastructure To reduce stormwater runoff at the neighborhood scale or above, parcel-sized green infrastructure projects must be replicated beyond the pilot scale. The final chapter considers four key themes from the Vacant to Vibrant project related to effective scaling of green infrastructure networks. Physical factors are a central driver of the total stormwater retention capacity, with evapotranspiration and physical location both deserving of close attention during site selection and planting design. Pragmatically, economic benefits must outweigh the costs of green infrastructure projects. Success is more likely when stakeholders holding liability and receiving benefits are closely connected, a broader number of stakeholders can be engaged, opportunity costs for future housing development are low, and project costs per unit of stormwater mitigation are comparable to those for gray infrastructure. Ongoing community engagement provides urban greening professionals a means to broaden public understanding of ecology and plant biodiversity, create closer alignment between aesthetic and ecological landscape functions, and convey respect for the interests of those who have experienced economic disenfranchisement. Finally, systems-level changes such as updates to city ordinances, shifting urban planning towards a pattern of higher-density housing with more green space, and developing alliances among fragmented urban greening practitioners can support the broader implementation of green infrastructure at the city and regional scale.
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