Making the case for green infrastructure investment in your community
We need to be able to envision a greener and healthier future for our communities and understand the cost and benefits of green infrastructure implementation. The Green Infrastructure Charrette Program is designed to help community leaders and policy makers to examine how living green infrastructure investment might work on the streets, roofs and walls of their own communities.
The program consists of the following elements:
A one day Green Infrastructure Design Charrette with multi-disciplinary volunteers to redesign specific neighbourhoods in need, with fifteen generic types of green infrastructure as their tools
A cost-benefit matrix of values, tailored to your community and to be used to generate an aggregate financial analysis of the proposed designs
The combination of engaging visuals and financial analysis help to articulate a compelling vision for green infrastructure investment, opening the eyes of community leaders and policy makers to the possibility of transforming their communities.
Charrettes have helped catalyze green infrastructure investments, informe policy decisions, influence development, and build municipal staff capacity. To learn more about hosting a Charrette, please contact David Yocca at dyocca@gmail.com.
So far the Charrette program has been hosted in over a dozen communities:
Brapton, London, Mississauga, Oshawa, Toronto, and Vaughan, ON as part of a ‘Reinventing Growth’ project funded by the Metcalf Foundation (2013-2014)
Harlem, NY, as part of the CitiesAlive Green Roof and Wall Conference (2015)
New Bedford, MA, in conjunction with ImpactLABS, looking at the integration of Green Infrastructure and the Internet of Things (IoT) (2017)
Seattle, WA, as part of the CitiesAlive Green Roof and Wall Conference (2017)
Mississauga, Toronto, and Richmond Hill, ON, as part of a ‘Green Infrastructure Education, Engagement, and Valuation’ project funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation (2017)
Barrie, Brampton, Guelph, London, Toronto, and Waterloo, ON, as part of a ‘Green Infrastructure for Climate Adaptation’ project, funded by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (2018-2019)
Philadelphia, PA as part of the CitiesAlive Green Roof and Wall Conference (2022)
