One aspect of environmental thinking that has been considered relatively late in the urban ecological network is the importance of the street. In most cities streets, or rights-of-way, represent the highest percentage of urban land use. The City of Portland, Oregon has been a leader in the rethinking the enormous role that streets play in urban ecology.
Portland’s planners realized that a key component lay in the urban runoff coming from city streets and ultimately being piped away into creeks and streams. As part of Portland Metro’s ongoing street research program, Community Design+Architecture, led by Clark Wilson, was commissioned to extend the streets program beyond traffic, pedestrians, and buildings and to consider urban storm water management. A series of standards was put forth and pilot projects began to emerge, forming the Portland Green Streets Initiative.
The simple idea was to allow for streets to drain into a series of small green spaces prior to entering drains and pipes, thus allowing more water back into the earth and slowing runoff during peak rainfalls. This also irrigated plant life, filtered pollutants, increased natural habitat and decreased the need for new sewer pipes. As a result, not only were there aesthetic improvements to what are often perceived as leftover spaces, but Green Streets also engaged society with the notion of water surface runoff and its consequences.
There are many projects and studies dealing with urban storm water management, but the impact of local projects like this (cities such as Chicago and New York, have begun to follow Portland’s lead) has introduced the important notion that infrastructural systems can be manipulated at a local, personal level, which represents a shift in how we as a society relate to our streets, communities, watersheds and infrastructures.
(Jason Hilgefort)
PRODUCT GROUP
MANUFACTURER
New and existing Tumblr users can connect with uncube and share our visual diary.
Uncube is brandnew and wants to look good.
For best performance please update your browser.
Mozilla Firefox,
Internet Explorer 10 (or higher),
Safari,
Chrome,
Opera