WIPO magazine issue -1 - 2024 World Intellectual Property organization.
Atlanta urban design and stormwater
1. Johanna McCrehan, Urban Designer,
Georgia Conservancy
Richard Dagenhart, RA, Associate Professor of Urban Design,
Georgia Institute of Technology
March 31, 2014
Park Pride Parks and Greenspace Conference
Urban Design
and
Stormwater
and
Urban Design
Georgia Conservancy + Georgia Tech Urban Design
Studio
2. Urban Design and Stormwater
1. Why Stormwater?
2. Understanding Stormwater Management
3. Conservancy Blueprints + Urban Design Studios
Colonial Homes, Bobby Jones Golf Course and the
Peachtree Creek Watershed
Maddox Park, Boone Boulevard and the Proctor Creek
Watershed
Pittsburgh, University Avenue and the McDaniel Creek
Watershed
Ansley Mall and the Clear Creek Greenway and
Watershed
4. Conclusions: Urban Design and Stormwater
3. STORMWATER IS AN URBAN DESIGN
PROBLEM
AND
URBAN DESIGN IS A STORMWATER
PROBLEM
4. Georgia Conservancy
GC - Blueprints for Successful
Communities
Sponsored by
The Home Depot Foundation
The Sartain Lanier Foundation, Inc.
Georgia Tech Urban Design Studio
School of Architecture, School of City and
Regional Planning
Richard Dagenhart, RA, Associate Professor
Dr. Tom Debo, PE, Professor Emeritus
5. Why Stormwater?
Research-based Blueprints for Successful
Communities
Education through partnerships
Statewide initiatives and technical
assistance
7. Understanding Stormwater
Management
Stormwater problems have been defined
as the control of peak rates of runoff
from new urban development
The engineering solution: control post-
development runoff from specific
rainfall events (5-, 10-, 100-year storms)
so they do not exceed pre-development
runoff
The design solution: construct a storm
detention basin at the development site’s
drainage outlet
8. Criticism of Stormwater Management
Practices
Evidence shows that end-of-pipe
stormwater solutions do not address
the hydrologic changes induced by
new development, nor do they
consider stormwater quality
The problem in previous approaches
was to focus on individual
development sites rather than the
processes of water flows … as they
move from the individual
development sites into the larger
ecological system of urban
waterways or into the equally
9. Low Impact Development (LID) – The New
Approach
Stormwater management focuses
on both water quantity and water
quality
Stormwater management
incorporates natural processes
with mechanical processes to
design hydrologic solutions
Attention is directed as close to
the source of stormwater as
possible, not the exit from the site
10. Stormwater and Urban Design
The LID goal is to allow urban
development to occur in most
situations, but require that the
project be designed to limit
hydrologic impacts
The LID objective is to have urban
development approximate the
hydrologic characteristics of rural
or undeveloped land
When LID is broadened beyond a
single parcel of land, the design
challenge expands from site design
11. Urban Design Studio:
Research + Design
Questions
HOW CAN URBAN DESIGN ADDRESS
STORMWATER SOLUTIONS?
HOW CAN STORMWATER ADDRESS
URBAN DESIGN SOLUTIONS?
12. Stormwater in Context
Four sites along the BeltLine,
where the BeltLine Subarea Plans
did not specifically address
stormwater issues
Pittsburgh, University Avenue and the
McDaniel Creek Watershed
Maddox Park, Boone Boulevard and the
Proctor Creek Watershed
Ansley Mall and the Clear Creek
Greenway and Watershed
Colonial Homes, Bobby Jones Golf
Course and the Peachtree Creek
Watershed
Urban Design, not engineering, is the focus
of the projects – the concern is the
relationship of stormwater solutions,
environmental quality, and the future of
public and private developments for
housing, commercial and other uses.
58. CONCLUSION 1
EVERY project –
public or private, no
matter how large or
how small, must
begin with an
understanding of its
associated drainage
basins.
For urban design –
watersheds always
come first!!!!
GEORGIA’S 52 WATERSHEDS
59. CONCLUSION
2
The location of a
project in its
watershed shapes
both urban design and
stormwater
decisions.
For urban design, site
based solutions are
the wrong approach.
Stormwater policies
and regulations must
recognize this fact. UNIVERSITY AVENUE, PITTSBURGH
AND McDANIEL BRANCH GREENWAY
60. CONCLUSION
3
High performance site
design, for urban
design and
stormwater, can
combine greenways as
incentives for
revitalization and
new development.
MADDOX PARK, BOONE BOULEVARD AND
THE PROCTOR CREEK WATERSHED
61. CONCLUSION
4
Urban design can MANAGE
stormwater when
flooding cannot be
eliminated.
Combine retention and
detention in greenways,
swap land out of flood
plains, create new
development
opportunities.
COLONIAL HOMES, BOBBY JONES
GOLF COURSE AND PEACHTREE CREEK
62. STORMWATER IS AN URBAN DESIGN
PROBLEM
AND
URBAN DESIGN IS A STORMWATER
PROBLEM
I’d mention this as a Blueprints for Successful Communities project that is more issue/research-based than a public involvement process focusing on one community (the more traditional model). Our hopes for the end product are to not only put this information on our website and give more presentations but work through organizations such as GPA, AIA, GMA, ACCG, and professional engineering groups to advertise this approach as more cost-effective, productive and site and environmentally appropriate, etc. The theme of this blueprints process is to develop urban design recommendations for four sites within the City of Atlanta. These recommendations will specifically address complex stormwater issues, taking into account the nearby stream or creek at each site. Urbanization has caused the loss of wetlands, vegetative cover, forests, an increase in impervious surfaces and changes in the soil that constitute a watershed’s carrying capacity to slow, spread, and stock stormwater. Low impact development solutions promote the use of pervious surfaces to remediate non-point source pollution and peak flow or runoff after a storm. Each project must be one that involves new development or redevelopment so that the students must prepare a framework for development, and then integrate stormwater within that. This helps ensure that the project is not just a retrofit of stormwater applications, but helps provide realistic solutions for other applicable sites.
I’d mention this as a Blueprints for Successful Communities project that is more issue/research-based than a public involvement process focusing on one community (the more traditional model). Our hopes for the end product are to not only put this information on our website and give more presentations but work through organizations such as GPA, AIA, GMA, ACCG, and professional engineering groups to advertise this approach as more cost-effective, productive and site and environmentally appropriate, etc. The theme of this blueprints process is to develop urban design recommendations for four sites within the City of Atlanta. These recommendations will specifically address complex stormwater issues, taking into account the nearby stream or creek at each site. Urbanization has caused the loss of wetlands, vegetative cover, forests, an increase in impervious surfaces and changes in the soil that constitute a watershed’s carrying capacity to slow, spread, and stock stormwater. Low impact development solutions promote the use of pervious surfaces to remediate non-point source pollution and peak flow or runoff after a storm. Each project must be one that involves new development or redevelopment so that the students must prepare a framework for development, and then integrate stormwater within that. This helps ensure that the project is not just a retrofit of stormwater applications, but helps provide realistic solutions for other applicable sites.
Atlanta’s watersheds (7) and the Atlanta metro area defined in black. John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is: “that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community”