Chicago, USA (GLOBE-Net) - A publication released by the University of Illinois contains dozens of sustainable design concepts that could guide the revitalizing of urban areas around the world.

The publication - "Green Schemes: Sustainable Urbanism for Garfield Park" released by the University’s City Design Center in Chicago, presents 80 concepts such as filtration gardens, narrowed roadways, and an elevated bikeway adjacent to the Green Line tracks. Graduate students and faculty in urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture developed the schemes in five studios taught at the Design Center.

Their designs for urban agriculture, public walkways, building technology, manufacturing, transportation and other planning elements, address four scales of development: building, street, neighborhood, and the two-square-mile urban community around Garfield Park, a mixed-income neighborhood in Chicago with many underused properties.

The proposals presented in "Green Schemes" demonstrate how green neighborhood design can include propositions for many interrelated urban elements, including transportation, building technology, urban agriculture, manufacturing, and green public ways.

What’s most interesting about Green Schemes is the ideas brought forth in the publication are not limited to Chicago or to Garfield Park.  City planners and developers from across North America could easily adopt the amalgamation of rehabilitation of brown fields, public transit infrastructure, storm water management and green spacing to their own settings.

"Green Schemes" shows that planners, architects and landscape architects can make green design feasible by collaborating, said Susanne Schnell, research assistant professor in the City Design Center. "We generated ideas that we call ’park-centric’ by working with landscape architecture faculty from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign," Schnell said. "Some ideas might be demonstrated in pilot projects with city departments, and all are intended to inspire greater dialogue about green design in Chicago neighborhoods."

Design Concepts

Like many cities, Chicago’s urban area contains several empty parcels of land which are either abandoned lots or empty spaces between buildings.  Too many open spaces fail to enhance sustainability and instead waste energy and leave vacant land that could be used productively.

Green Schemes proposes reusing this land to reduce heating and cooling losses, water runoff and to grow valuable natural food sources. The process of reusing this land could also become a source for additional community knowledge that could be applied to other growth areas in the community. The work is low cost and could begin immediately, with little ongoing expense.

Green Schemes also recognizes that parking lots, roadways, and alleys generate excess heat, stress the storm water system, and exhaust the eye with acres of pavement and concrete.

The document suggests landscaping abandoned lots and returning swales and retention ponds to the neighborhood while simultaneously softening the edges of streets and sidewalks with vegetation.

The report also stresses the addition of traffic calming measures to reduce automobile pollution, permit easy, safe, and predictable paths for pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles and to increase transit use.  Measures could include an increase in walk ways and bike paths and establishing a low speed limit which would also eliminate through-traffic.

Such measures are low-cost, easy to construct, and proven effective.

Green Schemes takes a life cycle approach to design and by analyzing the energy loss, cost and environmental damage caused by contemporary demolitions and subsequent reconstruction of buildings.  The report emphasizes the importance of preserving and reusing old yet stable buildings, thereby encouraging a reconsideration of these structures’ environmental and esthetic value.

Integration rather than demolition is one of the principles behind Green Schemes. As part of the report, a strategy was developed to convert an existing factory into a vibrant urban node.

By breaking down the factory complex into different usage areas, Green Schemes proposes a combination of education, health and culinary activities within the existing structure. In addition to housing a high school, a technical community college, a bookstore, an organic grocery shop, and a community health clinic, the green spaces surrounding the building generate several gathering nodes that contribute to the urbanity of the community.

Green Schemes also states that making a sustainable community goes beyond just design concepts and there is a requirement for incorporating best practices into new development.

Three possibilities would have particular impact:

• Recycling waste into energy would return capital, materials, and employment to the neighborhood economy;
  
• Enhanced green guidelines for new development would increase density around transit corridors while reducing the incremental impact of such construction; and
  
• Reducing energy waste in the existing housing stock will save money for residents, but cost little to implement.

The designs concepts presented in the report promote a strong pedestrian environment, which according to the report, ultimately gives way to a healthy community, a high quality of life and job creation.

Green Schemes suggests local residents would be the initiators, maintainers, and users of the spaces created by this decentralized design process.

The people are a crucial component of revitalizing a community. 

More information and the full document can be found here.

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For More Information: University of Illinois