Landscape & Hardscape Design-Build

Landscape & Hardscape Design-Build - Jan 2012

Green Street Project Revitalizes Neighborhood Sustainable landscaping reduces flooding filters rainwater into city water supply by Marcia Passos Duffy T ake a working class Los Angeles neighborhood that suffers severe flooding during the winter rainy season and then add 27 million of state of the art sustainable landscaping including catch basins bioswales rain barrels permeable pavers climate appropriate landscapes and solar streetlights What you get is a green street that organizers say has revolutionized the way people are thinking about the interaction of the landscape and water The Elmer Avenue Neighborhood Retrofit project was not simply a restoration project for a flood stricken low income neighborhood but a demonstration research project for the Council for Watershed Health a Los Angeles nonprofit organization The goal for the San Fernando Valley neighborhood nearly 40 acres of residential land with no stormwater infrastructure was to demonstrate that not only could a sustainable landscape reduce street flooding but it could reduce polluted runoff to rivers and the ocean as well as filter rainwater back into the local aquifer and increase the citys water supply The project received funding from state federal and local sources with primary funding from the U S Bureau of Reclamation According to organizers it has fulfilled its mission and more Its a great landscape model for the semiarid regions of the country says Mike Antos research manager for the Council for Watershed Health He notes that the city has already taken lessons learned in Elmer and used the ideas elsewhere Retrofitting a city street of 24 houses required the skills of a landscape architect with certifications in urban forestry and irrigation auditing Guy Stivers of Stivers Associates based in Tustin Calif was awarded the project in 2007 Ive made my career retrofitting existing projects for new uses says Stivers Sustainable landscapes must be maintainable Retrofitting a traditional landscape into a sustainable one requires designing backward for what he calls maintainability You dont know if a landscape is sustainable until you go back to it five 10 years later he says For a project to be truly sustainable the landscape owner must be able to maintain it for many years We have a tendency to design landscapes for the short term Stivers notes and in about five years it starts to decline His work on the project began with extensive research on the land the houses and their occupants I spent a lot of time on the site before conceptual planning inventorying the site resources he says including how people were currently maintaining the property pedestrian traffic parking plus an inventory of all the trees and vernacular landscape that is what was already installed in the landscape by homeowners He also took note of all the existing services coming in and out of the neighborhood from UPS and mail trucks to trash and street cleaners All this has to be taken into account before we start designing he says Based on existing site attributes conversations then began with individual homeowners about their wants and needs Out of the 24 homeowners 13 agreed to private property improvements which were paid for by the project 16 Landscape Hardscape Design Build I JANUARY 2012