Posts Tagged ‘water sensitive urban design’
Traffic Roundabout: Award-Winning Civic Space
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on February 1st, 2012
Source: City Parks Blog
Photo: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects
From “A Design that Celebrates the People”: Normal, IL Traffic Circle Wins Smart Growth Award as New Civic Space” by Colleen Gentles:
[In December last year], EPA announced the winners of the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. We are excited to report that Normal, Illinois is the recipient of the award in the Civic Places category for their traffic roundabout.
We’ve written before about how the town’s new traffic circle has successfully managed traffic flow at a busy five-way intersection, diverted thousands of gallons of untreated stormwater away from the nearby creek, and become the town center by bringing residents together in an attractive public space. The more recent news is how the traffic roundabout is spurring local economic development with the construction of a multimodal transportation station adjacent to the circle, courtesy of a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. Both the transportation hub, which will eventually have high-speed rail service and create an estimated 400-500 new jobs, and the circle take advantage of the town’s existing infrastructure, bus service, and the historic central business district to attract even more residents to the new town center.
“The one-third-acre roundabout does much more than move cars. It invites pedestrians with shade trees, benches, lighting, bike parking, green space, and a water feature. People have lunch, read, and play music, and the open space invites community gatherings such as a holiday caroling event. It is the anchor for a community-wide revitalization and is part of Uptown Normal’s LEED-ND Silver recognition.
A popular rails-to-trails conversion, the Constitution Trail, leads to and around the roundabout, helping both to revitalize Normal and to bring people from surrounding areas to Normal’s central district. A new Children’s Discovery Museum on the edge of the roundabout already receives over 140,000 visitors per year, and a hotel and conference enter have recently opened nearby. One indication of the success of the redevelopment is that property values in the district have increased by about 30 percent since 2004.” Smart Growth Awards
According to the short video, this traffic circle was almost banned to pedestrians. It’s a good thing town officials fought back. [Watching the video, it looks like there are weekly farmers markets held on the roundabout too. KA]
Read more about the project here, as well as the other winners from the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.
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The roundabout was designed by Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects. Check out their site for more photos and project details.
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Photo: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects
Integrating biodiversity into water sensitive urban design
Posted in Research by Virginia on June 19th, 2009
Water sensitive urban design is still at an infant stage and there’s been much research into integrating biodiversity values into water sensitive urban design. A model used to increase the water sensitive design of an urban area is through the use of wetlands. Wetlands can act as storm water treatment points whereby wetland plants soak up nutrients and metals from incoming storm water and discharge cleaner storm water back into the waterway. An aspect that is often missing when building these remedial wetlands is the idea of integrating biodiversity regimes into the construction of the wetland.
Wetland projects tend to concentrate on the use of native vegetation and the attraction of wetland birds as an achievement in biodiversity conservation. Whilst that goal can hardly be undermined, nor disagreed with, it is a question to ponder whether such a goal truly reflects the notion of biodiversity conservation.
In itself, biodiversity conservation is much like the term sustainability- vague, ambiguous and lacking a precise quantifiable form of measurement. For what does it truly mean to conserve something? In terms of urban biodiversity, the precise definition of conservation becomes highly problematic in that, to what extent do we conserve the environment? Do we try and restore the environment to a pre-urban settlement environment or to an even earlier era, for example, pre-European settlement? Therefore, in order biodiversity conservation to have some meaning, a reference point must be established.
The problem with many urban sustainability projects advocating biodiversity conservation aims is that many don’t specify what sort of biodiversity conservation they are aiming for, that is, to what extent, if any, are the projects aiming to restore the environment. Using wetland remediation projects as an example, many such developments have cited biodiversity conservation as a result of implementing wetlands, however it is not clear as to what they were trying to conserve. In truth, perhaps the particularities of what was conserved is not important and it’s perhaps the overall picture of a greater presence of species within an area which should be celebrated.
However, the issue of not having a clear idea as to what type of biodiversity conservation the project is wanting to achieve is the result of having species that may not be wanted suddenly appear in the neighbourhood. An example of this is the much maligned kingdom of insects represented by the mosquitoes and associated larvae. There’s been community concern over the spread of mosquitoes in wetland areas and the risks associated with that. As a consequence of community concern, there has been initiatives by local governments to prevent them from establishing. However, mosquitoes play an integral role in both the maintenance and as a provision of food in the wetlands ecosystem. Therefore, whilst the increase in wetland birds have generally been celebrated, the overall increase in lifeforms such as insects must too be embraced if a more holistic view of biodiversity conservation is to occur.