Celebrating Green Infrastructure: Summary Report on 2006 Showcasing Innovation Series

The goal of the Showcasing Innovation Series is to build regional capacity through sharing of green infrastructure approaches, experiences and lessons learned as an outcome of ‘designing with nature'. The series is a building block process — each time the objective is to raise the bar when celebrating successes in Greater Vancouver municipalities. The program was launched in May 2006. The Showcasing Innovation Series is organized as a workshop in the morning followed by field tour in the afternoon. The series is structured this way to create opportunities for practitioners to network and share “how to do it” experiences on the ground. The host municipalities set the scene for the field tour by providing comprehensive and in-depth presentations. The program is designed for engineering, planning, land development, operations, and environmental departments in Greater Vancouver municipalities. The first in the series – Showcasing Innovation in North Vancouver – successfully used a lane, an arterial highway and the Maplewood community as real-life case studies that informed participants about the benefits of innovation. For the lane example, selection of porous pavement to infiltrate rainwater runoff was an outcome of an inter-departmental design charrette where the Water Balance Model was a key decision tool. The second in the series – Showcasing Innovation in Surrey – was held in June 2006 and focused on what the City of Surrey believes it can systematically accomplish on-the-ground, at a watershed scale, now and over the next 50 years by building on experience gained from the East Clayton Sustainable Community. The third in the series – Showcasing Innovation in Vancouver and at the University of British Columbia – was held in September 2006 and featured eco-friendly roadways that reflect a ‘design with nature' approach to integrating rainwater runoff management and transportation design.

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2006 Showcasing Innovation Series – Summart Report
KAS

Author Kim A Stephens, P.Eng.

Publisher Green Infrastructure Partnership

Date October 2006