‘Green’ infrastructure can be cheaper, less disruptive. It can also address traffic issues

Grey infrastructure is a large-scale and expensive intervention, such as highways or sewers, whereas the green model uses natural resources to achieve multiple ends.

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With infrastructure on the minds of so many Americans and car-centric planning mistakes of the past being corrected all around the country, pioneering landscape-led architecture projects can show cities across the US how to maximize infrastructure grant money. The recent infrastructure law passed by the US Congress set aside $1 billion to “reconnect communities” divided by highways.

Recent green landscape-led architecture infrastructure projects not only reconnect communities, they can also improve biodiversity, air quality and public health. While tearing down highways or capping them are often cited as optimal solutions, green infrastructure, such as a land bridge, is often far less expensive and disruptive.

In recent years, the profession of landscape architecture has taken a leading role in envisioning projects that unite a range of voices around the creative and innovative reimagining of infrastructure. Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, Texas, for example, caps the Woodall Rogers Freeway to create a 5.2-acre public park. The Tunnel Tops Project at the Presidio in San Francisco, a 14-acre park similarly connects the historic Drill Field to Crissy Field along the shoreline of the Bay. These were envisioned and designed by landscape architects, with support from engineers.

This is an important distinction that results in very different outcomes. Grey infrastructure is typically a large-scale and expensive intervention, such as a highway or sewer system, which is engineered to achieve a singular outcome, in these cases moving cars quickly or removing waste to a treatment plant. Green infrastructure utilises natural resources to achieve multiple ends, such as filtering rainwater, increasing biodiversity, providing shade and creating new public use space, while also addressing the quotidien issue of moving traffic.

Thomas Woltz Principal, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

This article was first published in World Economic Forum. You can read the article here.