Abstract Body

In many cities green stormwater infrastructure has emerged as an alternative to the industrial management regime. Yet stormwater agencies are profoundly unprepared to implement infrastructure that is decentralized, adaptively managed, and dependent on ephemeral biotic systems. Green stormwater engages thorny issues of land use and urban design, topics outside of most agencies’ engineering "pipes and pumps" expertise and requires sensitivity to environmental empowerment.

While stormwater authorities may show deference to green stormwater infrastructure’s (GSI’s) socio-ecological benefits, they find small-scale community-led green stormwater infrastructure (CLGSI) difficult to integrate into adaptive management systems that are driven by data, automated technology, and accountability-seeking financial structures. Studies of the historic shifts in water infrastructure suggest that the integration of GSI will not occur through incremental implementation but through regime change.

By looking at city-wide green stormwater plans from two North American cities, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York, this paper will examine the viability of community-led GSI and possible supportive policies to integrate it into existing agencies and industrial stormwater management systems. This paper will define community-led green stormwater initiatives and how they are informed by landscape-water interactions, the morphology of the natural system, and socio-cultural spatial practices. The paper will also identify the limiting factors of technology, management, and values of the current industrial-scale stormwater system. Lastly, the paper will conclude with a model for regime change, including policies to enable CL-GSI integration within the existing grey practices and how to shift to a tipping point that transitions from grey into a new green-blue regime.