EPA Grant for Community-Driven Design

Status: Ongoing

Temple University’s Center for Sustainable Communities has created a framework for developing a Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) plan through community-driven participatory Geodesign processes. This framework was then applied to the context of the Delaware Direct and Tookany/Tacony-Frankford watersheds.

These watersheds are characterized as “ultra-urban” and are subject to a number of socio-economic and environmental issues, including poverty and vacant housing, impaired water quality, ecological degradation, flooding, and poor stormwater management. The Project Team created a conceptual GSI plan for the study area. This plan visualized three specific GSI project site plans, followed by community-driven design charrettes conducted in lower-income and minority neighborhoods that surround each site. The innovative GSI design features submitted to the “Soak It Up” design competition were used as inspiration and guidance at the charrettes.

Addressing water quality, environmental justice, and quality of life issues through GSI projects and watershed-wide plans has been identified as a community priority in the study area. Three nonprofit organizations served as key partners with specific roles. Other partners provided advisory, advocacy, and other relevant services.

The team proposed six distinct activities:

• development of a typology of GSI design features
• GIS-based site suitability analysis for potential GSI projects in the watersheds
• comparative assessment and selection of GSI project sites
• visioning GSI projects through design charrettes
• development of a conceptual GSI plan
• three detailed site-specific GSI project visualizations.

The project outputs were disseminated through web sites, videos, papers, and presentations. This process is expected to increase community involvement and environmental stewardship and is replicable in other urban areas.