The Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainable Green Infrastructure and Community Design is about a green approach to neighbourhood design.

It is a design methodology that combines ecologically sensitive rainwater management techniques with community design principles. Sixty-four tools make up the Light Imprint matrix for projects ranging in size from the lot to the block to the neighborhood to the region.

“Alignment of the change agents in the ‘New Urbanism’ and the ‘Engineering Infrastructure’ worlds would surely result in a pretty powerful combination.” – Patrick Condon quotable quote

“Established in 2006, Light Imprint is a design methodology and operating system for consideration and incorporation of ecological performance with place-making.  The basic premise is to recover and maintain the pre-development natural hydrology of the site when land is developed or redeveloped,” states Thomas Low, architect-planner and author of the Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Community Design.

“The Light Imprint methodology has expanded its educational outreach and professional contributions to become a recognized rainwater mitigation practice. Light Imprint green infrastructure is compatible with urban design that emphasizes compact, mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented design, and environmental efficiency. It is designed to reduce community infrastructure costs.”

“We have also created the Mixopoly game system to create New Urbanism designed neighborhoods and calibrate the green infrastructure with the Light Imprint toolbox.   The workshop goal is to quickly create a concept master plan using our Mixopoly templates and then to develop a Light Imprint toolbox of paving, channeling, storage, and filtration approaches combined into treatment trains that are context specific responding to rural to urban character, slope, climate, soil quality, initial costs, and long term maintenance costs.”

“When I reflect on what is involved in leading change, this Patrick Condon quote comes to mind: Alignment of the change agents in the ‘New Urbanism’ and the ‘Engineering Infrastructure’ worlds would surely result in a pretty powerful combination,” concludes Thomas Low.

[Professor Patrick Condon is chair of the Urban Design Program in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities.]

To Learn More:

The Light Imprint Handbook lays out a common-sense set of principles for sitting lightly on the land, and also a set of very precise patterns for how to implement those principles.

Suggested Reading: Click on https://waterbucket.ca/gi/2011/05/29/light-imprint-handbook-integrates-sustainable-green-infrastructure-and-community-design/