Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Melanie F. Klein / Cities and nature are often popularly viewed as polar opposites. Many American cities are seen as “destructive of nature, gray and natureless, distinct and separate from natural systems” (Beatley 2008, 189). Cities lacking in ecological functions can benefit from the application of Green Urbanism theory. Green Urbanism incorporates ecological features as central design elements, cities, and to restore, nurture, and celebrate urban ecology. Unique ecological features can affect a place in positive ways while adding and establishing an identity for the city. One city that has been stuck in a gray and natureless state is St. Louis, Missouri, in particular, the Central business district. In order to transform St. Louis into a more ecologically rich city, an eco-boulevard will be implemented. An eco-boulevard is a green ribbon that collects stormwater runoff and connects people to surrounding local amenities. In addition to stormwater benefits, the eco-boulevard will serve as a visual and physical connector for pedestrians to public destinations, and connect pedestrians with other pedestrians by serving as its own destination. The eco-boulevard can also provide multiple ecological and social benefits to promote healthy places with a high quality of life. In order to achieve the implementation of an eco-boulevard, a thorough analysis of watersheds, key low points, transportation hubs, public destinations, and established pedestrian traffic routes were considered. The design of the eco-boulevard is concentrated in areas where low points in elevation, transportation hubs, public destinations, and highly traveled pedestrian traffic routes converge. At the intersection of these elements, unique features capture and store stormwater runoff. As a whole, the entire eco-boulevard improves urban ecology through the use of vegetation, street trees, and the recycling of water.

Denna studie syftar till att ta fram lösningsförslag som kan komplettera Hemlingbys befintliga avvattningssystem som består av VA-ledningar och dammar. Lösningsförslagen som presenteras i rapporten har tagits fram med hänsyn till nulägesanalysering samt bedömning av nollalternativ. Studien omfattar en kartläggning av dagvattenhantering inom distriktet, via en sådan undersökning har författarna lokaliserat två problem områden som bör ses över. Dessa är Hemlingbybäcken och Kryddstigen. Recipienten tillstånd d.v.s. Hemlingbybäcken påverkas av mänskliga aktiviteter. Föroreningar som drabbar bäcken utgörs av tungmetaller såsom koppar, bly och zink. Brist på dagvattenmagasiner har medfört att bäcken innehar kapacitetsproblem med dagvatteninflöde från närliggande fastigheter och industriområden. Kryddstigen är ett område där det bedrivs företag inom teknik och handel, dessa aktiviteter bidrar med föroreningar som försämrar grundvattnets och recipientens tillstånd. Norra delen av Hemlingby utgörs till största del av hårdgjorda ytor, vilket reducerar möjligheten för en naturlig infiltration och avvattning av nederbördsvatten, detta har i sin tur orsakat att översvämningsrisken ökat i distriktet. Gävle kommun har via tidigare utredningar identifierat problemet och försökt förebygga dessa genom att implementera fördröjningsdammar, våtmarksdammar och rondelldammar. Uppföljningsarbete har gjorts som konstaterar att dammarna har ett större avrinningsområde än tidigare beräknat, vilket påverkar verkningsgraden negativt. Kapacitetsproblem har därför uppkommit t.ex. våtmarksdammarna är dimensionerade att omhänderta ett 10-årsregn från ett avrinningsområde på 19 hektar. För tillfället klarar våtmarksdammarna endast av att hantera 2-årsregn för ett avrinningsområde på 2400m3. Studien presenterar öppen dagvattenhantering som lösningsalternativ för dessa områden, detta görs med hänsyn till befintliga VA-ledningar och dammar. Öppna dagvattenlösningar tillämpas oftast i urbana miljöer för att fördröja, lokalt omhänderta samt för att få en samlad fördröjning av dagvatten. Detta sker med hjälp av växtligheter som gör det möjligt att uppnå en naturlig infiltration. Allmänheten kan dra nyttja av att implementera öppna dagvattenlösningar. Det kan förvandla en tråkig stadsmiljö till en livlig sådan genom att omhänderta dagvatten ovanpå ytan. Det blir fördelaktigt för allmänheten eftersom öppna dagvattenlösningarna bidrar med en estetisk tilltalande miljö samt ökad biologiskmångfald. Alternativen redogörs på följande sätt: Gröna tak – LOD för privat mark, Permeabla markytor – Fördröjning nära källan & LOD, Svackdiken med makadammagsin – Trög avledning & Samlad fördröjning, Biofilteranläggning i form av Regnbäddar – samlad fördröjning. Lösningsförslagen har sedan bedömts ihop med nollalternativet utifrån inre och yttre aspekter som berör omhändertagande av dagvatten. Yttre aspekter omfattar lagstiftning och dagvattenpolicy, inre aspekter tar hänsyn till faktorer som ekonomiska, tekniska, sociala och miljömässiga förhållanden. Bedömningsmetoden som presenteras i studien syftar till att utvärdera och ta fram underlag som är relevanta vid beslutsfattning och framtagning av tekniska lösningar. Värderingsmetoden är inspirerad av PESTEL-analys modellen. I denna undersökning har denna metod anpassats för att bedöma dagvattenlösningar. Övergripande beskrivning av vad en PESTEL-analys är ges i rapporten samt tolkning och tillämpning av bedömningsmetoden. Bedömningsresultateten för enskilt alternativ presenteras och diskuteras med hänsyn till nollalternativet samt tillämpningsområde i rapporten. / The aim of this study is to propose appropriate solutions that can complete Hemlingbys existing stormwater treatment systems. The solutions presented in this study has been developed with regards to the current situation, which includes water drainage systems and ponds. The study includes a survey of the current stormwater management within the district, as a result, the authors have localized two problem areas that should be investigated, i.e. are Hemlingbybäcken and Kryddstigen. The stormwater recipient i.e. Hemlingbybäcken is affected by human activities. Contaminates that affect the stream consist mainly of copper, lead and zinc. Due to the lack of stormwater storage capacity problems associated with stormwater flooding occurred from nearby buildings and industrial areas. Kryddstigen is an area in the district where business in technology and trade are located, these activities contribute to pollution that degrades groundwater and recipient conditions. The northern part of Hemlingby consist mostly of hard surfaces, which reduces the possibility of a natural infiltration of rain water, this in turn has caused an increased risk of flooding in the area. Gävle municipality have through earlier investigations identified some of the problems and tried to prevent them by implementing ponds that can delay incoming stormwater. Follow-up works proves that the ponds serve a larger catchment area than previously estimated, which adverse the ponds efficiency. Capacity problems have therefore arisen, for instance wetland ponds are sized to handle 10-yearsrain from a catchment area of 19 hectares. However, the existing wetland ponds can only handle a 2-yearsrain from a catchment area of 2400m3. This study presents open stormwater management as alternative solution, this has been proposed based on existing sewerage systems and ponds. Open stormwater solutions are applied mostly in urban environment to delay and locally dispose stormwater. This is done by vegetation which makes it possible to achieve a natural infiltration. The public can also take use of open stormwater solutions by turning an unattractive city to a beautiful one. It can also be beneficial to the community because open stormwater solutions contribute with an aesthetically pleasing environment and increasing biodiversity. The alternatives are described as follows: Green roofs, permeable ground surfaces, ditch with macadam basin and, rain gardens. These solutions are then assessed together with the existing solutions based on internal and external aspects concerning stormwater management. External aspects include legislation and stormwater policy, internal aspects take into account factors such as economy, technology, social and environment conditions. Assessment methodology that are presented in this study aims to evaluate and prepare documentation that is relevant for decision- making and the development of technical solutions based on the current situation. The evaluation method used in this study is inspired by PESTEL- analysis model. This method has been adapted to assess stormwater solutions. An overall description of what a PESTEL- analysis is given in this study as well as the interpretation and application of the assessment method. The result for single alternatives is presented and discussed with respect to existing solutions in the area of this study.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Mary Catherine (Katie) Kingery-Page / According to Barbara Hendricks, play environment designer and consultant, “If we want children to grow up with a zest for living we need to give them living spaces that express life as a grand experience.” Hendricks emphasizes playtime is important for children to process formal lessons (Hendricks 2011). This applied design research project seeks to facilitate child development through an experiential learning playscape while addressing stormwater management for Bluemont Elementary School. The central research question of this project is: How can school playgrounds be designed to afford children improved social interactions and experiential learning? An exploration of landscape affordances theory (Sanseter and Hansen 2009, Heft 1988) and experiential learning (Kolb 1984), combined with social interactions and cognitive child development (Addo-Atuah 2012), formed a theory base for the project. Playground observations, stakeholder surveys, stakeholder interviews, and site inventory and analysis informed the eventual design. Major factors influencing students’ play include age, playground rules, equipment available for use, and weather. Site conditions, including topography and site drainage, can also influence students’ play. In current conditions, stormwater is a schoolyard liability restricting play and safe site circulation. The researcher gathered insights from student surveys, playground observations, teacher interviews, and site inventory and analysis to complete a comprehensive master plan. The comprehensive master plan and detailed stormwater management plan address the schoolyard over the next twenty to fifty year outlook. The designs resolve practical issues while increasing the variety of site educational and play affordances available to students and teachers for play and learning. A primary goal of the detailed plan is to convert stormwater schoolyard liabilities into amenities and educational tools.

Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional and Community Planning / Tim Keane / The City of Manhattan, Kansas has been subject to intense flooding in the last couple of years. Areas of the city, within the Wildcat Creek Watershed, have been adversely affected. The City of Manhattan and stakeholders from various walks of life are looking for solutions to alleviate flooding within the area. This Master’s Project looks into rainwater harvesting as one of the solutions to help reduce stormwater runoff and contribute to the alleviation of flooding within the Watershed. Rainwater harvesting is increasingly being recognized as an effective way to reduce stormwater runoff. The project explores the potential benefit of using a network of rainwater harvesting elements, namely rain barrels and cisterns supplemented by rain gardens and other infiltration methods to reduce runoff in the City of Manhattan, Kansas. To assess the benefit of using rainwater harvesting in the City, a neighborhood scale site was chosen and divided into land use types. Three phases were used to assess the impact and implementation of rainwater harvesting. Phase I calculates the volume of runoff generated from each land use type and how much of that runoff can be harvested from the rooftops. The values from the neighborhood scale analysis were then extrapolated to see the impact of rainwater harvesting on a larger scale. Phase II looks at the configuration of a rainwater harvesting system for the structures in each land use type and rainwater reuse options. Finally, Phase III looks at policies, regulations and incentives that can be employed by the City of Manhattan to help encourage rainwater harvesting. This Master’s project seeks to educate the City and its residents about the benefits of rainwater harvesting as a stormwater management tool and provide steps towards potentially using rainwater harvesting as a way to reduce runoff, and help alleviate flooding in the Wildcat Creek Watershed.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy Keane / The City of Manhattan, Kansas is looking for possible solutions to mitigate flooding along Wildcat Creek within the Wildcat Creek Watershed. Recent flooding has caused substantial property damage. The project presented here brings recreation into the community by designing a golf course in a location along Wildcat Creek that addresses flooding issues, increases infiltration, and improves water quality. The golf industry has a long way to go to become more sustainable. The world is facing many challenges related to water and hydrology. Much of the opposition towards the golf industry is because critics see it as environmentally unfriendly. Golf has the potential to become a catalyst for change in the way we design and develop the landscape around us. The golf industry can become a leader in sustainable design while taking on hydrological concerns within the community. This project demonstrates the application of a golf course to help mitigate flooding along Wildcat Creek with the use of vulnerability and suitability analysis as a guide to site selection. This method of analysis illustrates the process of identifying and protecting areas vulnerable to degradation by designing a golf course in a suitable location to utilize water hazards to store flood water, provide more floodplain access to effectively increase infiltration capacity, reduce runoff rates, and improve water quality. The report explains the relationship between golf course design and environmental practices as they relate to hydrology on a theoretical site in Manhattan, Kansas. By integrating golf course design theory and environmentally sound stormwater management practices, water hazards on the golf course can become the fundamental elements used in strategizing the design of the golf course. A conceptual plan was created to maximize the infiltration capacity of the site as well as allow increased floodplain access, and provide a place to store flood water. A golf course can then be properly sited and designed hydrologically around the use of water hazards to help reduce flooding and improve water quality within the watershed.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Timothy Keane / Stormwater management within the urban context has evolved over time. This evolution has been categorized by five paradigm shifts (Novotny, Ahern, & Brown, 2010). The current paradigm of stormwater management utilizes hard conveyance and treatment infrastructure designed mainly to provide protection for people from typical 1-5 year frequency storms. Consequently, this infrastructure is sometimes unable to deal with larger sized, 50 to 100 year events which can have serious consequences. Manhattan, Kansas has suffered multiple flooding episodes of severe proportion in the past decade. The dilemma of flooding within the Wildcat Creek watershed is a direct example of the current paradigm of stormwater management. This once ecologically healthy corridor is fed by conveyance systems that do not address the hydrologic needs of the watershed; decreasing the possibility for infiltration and groundwater recharge. Vegetated stormwater management systems must be implemented to help increase infiltration and address flooding problems within the Wildcat Creek watershed. The aesthetic performance of designed landscapes has a tremendous effect on the appreciation and care given to them by the surrounding population (Gobster, Nassauer, Daniel, and Fry, 2007). Landscape architecture has the ability to aid in the visual appeal and ecological design of vegetated stormwater management systems (SMS) by utilizing existing frameworks that address aesthetic reaction of the outdoor environment (Kaplan, Kaplan, and Ryan, 1998). This document evaluates design alternatives of vegetated SMS in order to discern a set of variables that inform the relationship between each systems aesthetic and amenity performance and their ecosystem and hydrological performance. Identified variables are combined into a set of guidelines for achieving different levels, or patterns of aesthetic performance found within the Understanding and Exploration Framework et al. (Kaplan, Kaplan, and Ryan, 1998) and amenity performance listed by Echols and Pennypacker’s Amenity Goals et al. (2007) through vegetated SMS. These design guidelines illustrate how aesthetic theory can be applied through ecological systems in order to increase the coherence, legibility, complexity, and mystery (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) of existing sites. Creating spaces where ecological and socio-cultural activities can coexist addresses the local characteristics of aesthetics with the universal dilemma of stormwater management.

Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Huston Gibson / Green infrastructure is an emerging concept which utilizes vegetated systems rather than traditional gray infrastructure for stormwater management. Conducting a literature review revealed the effectiveness of incentive based planning, the benefits of green infrastructure, information on bioswales and wetlands, stormwater management, Portland, and planning implementation strategies. Portland, Oregon, was selected as the area of study because of its widespread application of green infrastructure. Seeking to understand the reasoning behind the implementation of this atypical civic infrastructure, existing policies in the city’s Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Code were analyzed. A policy analysis was conducted through itemizing the relevant policies in the Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Code. Additionally, six in-depth phone interviews were conducted with Portland base planning-related professionals utilizing a snowball sampling technique to qualitatively understand the policies and circumstances that enabled the implementation of the city’s bioswales and wetlands. Findings were revealed through using the grounded theory methodology of coding and memoing to analyze the responses from the interviews. According to the policy itemization and phone interviews, the Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Code were not the reasons for Portland’s green infrastructure implementation, as hypothesized. Instead, green infrastructure was evident due to a need for compliance with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act, and a resulting Stormwater Management Manual created by the city. Additionally, other reasons for implementation included strong leaders, active citizens, and incentives and grants. The city encountered several challenges with implementation including costs, a technical lack of information, and opposition from members against using green infrastructure, which were all ultimately overcome. Lessons learned from this case study of Portland point to four policy recommendations for other cities wanting to implement green infrastructure to help alleviate pollution and flooding: the need for design having a general Comprehensive Plan and detailed Stormwater Management Manual, experimentation to generate and monitor data, collaboration, and funding.

Managing stormwater sustainably in the face of extreme weather events has increasingly been recognized as a strategy for climate adaptation in the urban planning context. Sustainable stormwater management intends to reduce urban vulnerability while ensuring the overall sustainability and robustness of future cities. To add to the emerging research field of green infrastructure, the objective of the study is to explore the role of multi-functional solutions as a climate change response in urban planning and development. This study has been driven by an inductive research process and draws on empirical data collection through workshops and interviews with City Hall officials in Motala City. The study concludes that despite the lack of preventative planning to anticipate climate change, city renewal and urban development of Motala City presented a window of opportunity to implement potential multi-functional stormwater solutions in the urban environment through urban planning. Further, increased focus on internal and external collaboration through the process of envisioning the future of the city have enabled new forms of governance and facilitated arenas for public acceptance and an integrative planning-approach. Lastly, discourses on attractiveness enabled greenery to be viewed from a social, economic and environmental perspective, supporting multi-functional stormwater solutions as a strategy for climate adaptation and urban sustainability.

Pervious pavements in car parks and driveways reduce peak discharge and the volume of runoff flowing in to urban drains and improve the water quality by trapping the sediments in the infiltrated water. This reduces the risk of pollutants such as suspended solids and particle bound chemicals such as phosphorous, nitrogen, heavy metals and oils and hydrocarbons entering receiving waters. The key objectives of the study are to establish relationships between rainfall and pervious pavement runoff and quantify improvements to infiltrated stormwater quality through the pervious pavement. The field experimental results were used to calibrate the PCSWMMPP model and to develop water flow and quality improvement transfer functions of the MUSIC model for concrete block and turf cell pavements. The research reported herein has demonstrated that pervious pavements can be introduced as a sustainable stormwater management initiative and as a key Water Sensitive Urban Design feature to deliver numerous benefits to the environment. The outcomes from the study will be useful in designing environmentally friendly car parks, pedestrian paths, light traffic drive ways, sporting grounds and public areas in the future. Land developers and local government authorities will be major beneficiaries of the study which has increased the understanding of the use of pervious pavements and explored a number of issues that previously inhibited the wider use of pervious pavements in practice.

Rainfall derived inflow and infiltration (RDII) is a cause of sanitary sewer overflows and sewers exceeding capacity before the end of their design lives, but it is not well understood. Several methods exist to model RDII in existing sanitary sewers. These models are not applicable for design, which is frequently accomplished by applying constant unit rates. Two analytical probabilistic models are developed to estimate the contribution of RDII to peak flow and volume. The analytical models have been tested against computer simulations using long-term rainfall records and parameters calibrated using actual field data. One model relies on calibrated parameters from the RTK method; a commonly used method requiring a time-consuming calibration process. The second model relies on the R-value parameter of the RTK method, and a time of concentration parameter. By providing better information to designers, these analytical models aim to improve engineering decision-making in the design of sewer systems.