As weather becomes more intense and unpredictable, our infrastructure must adapt. Traditional “gray” infrastructure—gutters, sewers, and tunnels—moves water away from buildings but can contribute to flooding, pollution, and urban heat. In contrast, by working with nature, green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in parks helps reduce flooding and its financial impact to cities while enhancing biodiversity and protecting ecosystems.
Parks, which are among the largest green spaces in cities, have great potential for GSI and can tap into its co-benefits, such as:
- Helping to protect increasingly vulnerable communities during large-scale weather events.
- Saving cities money by reducing the impacts of flooding.
- Improving public health by protecting water quality and adding green space that keeps cities cooler and can be used for outdoor activities.
- Advancing environmental justice by benefiting historically underserved communities that lack adequate infrastructure and green space.
- Providing a prime opportunity for workforce development to fill the gap in green infrastructure maintenance skills.
- Transforming how governmental agencies work together and serve their communities, as well as access new funding opportunities.
- Building trust between community stakeholders and government (when its benefits are effectively implemented and communicated) and inspiring more support for nature-based solutions at all levels.
However, parks are often underused for GSI because of a lack of shared vision and priorities among public agency leaders. More structural and technical implementation challenges include separate funding sources for parks and water projects, silos between parks and water agency planning and operations, policies and regulations that are unsupportive of interagency collaboration, skepticism about nature-based solutions, limited green infrastructure maintenance skills, and the complexity of engaging communities, especially those that are historically disadvantaged, in infrastructure projects.
But by fostering better collaboration between parks and water agencies on funding, community engagement, planning, capital projects, and maintenance, cities can fully tap into parks’ potential for GSI.
To that end, over the past 18 months, City Parks Alliance has worked with a cohort of parks and stormwater agency leaders from eight cities across the country (Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Seattle, and Tucson) to inform how to increase collaboration between the parks and stormwater management sectors. The initiative was launched at the 2023 One Water Summit in partnership with the US Water Alliance and the Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange (with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).
Guided by existing research, the subject matter expertise of our partners, and the experience of the practitioners in our cohort, we’ve created a policy brief to highlight the co-benefits of GSI projects in urban parklands to help inspire more GSI projects in city parks across the country. The brief, Nature-Based Solutions for Managing Stormwater in Parks: Opportunities to Create a Win-Win for Urban Resilience:
- Identifies and addresses the systemic barriers to better collaboration between parks and stormwater management agencies and their partners
- Shares recommendations and calls to action for public leaders and policy advocates to help overcome them
- Shares examples and resources to help cities tap into the public benefits and opportunities that GSI in parks can provide
There are 17 mini case studies in the policy brief that provide examples of projects and partnership approaches to collaboration on GSI in parks. Check out the resource page for more information including presentations from our cohort members and additional technical guidance for practitioners.
How can policymakers and advocates work to change the status quo and expand the use of GSI in parks? Our policy brief includes seven calls to action for public leaders and issue advocates. We’ve also created a two-page fact sheet making the case for nature-based solutions to city leaders, Green Stormwater Management in Parks: A Win-Win for Urban Resilience.
Collaboration between parks and stormwater management agencies, who are not the likeliest partners on funding, community engagement, planning, capital projects, and maintenance, is the key for cities to unlock their parks’ potential for GSI and create a win-win for urban resilience and all the co-benefits that come with it.
