Public Employee Press

1st in a series
Building a green city
Oasis in the streets

By JANE LaTOUR

Unexpected pleasures await pedestrians and drivers as they navigate city streets. The green visions of shrubs, plants, groundcover and flowers that greet urban travelers are part of Greenstreets, an ambitious project of the Parks Dept.

Working their magic in the cubicles of Olmsted Center in Flushing Meadows, skilled, committed Landscape Architects create these urban oases under the “Open Spaces” section of PlaNYC 2030.

PEP visited workers at Greenstreets and Capital Design working on the “Designing Parks for the 21st Century” program to get a sense of the complexities involved in creating a greener New York.

The success of these projects demonstrates that DC 37 members are masters of the technology needed for the city’s green future and argues strongly against contracting out the green jobs being created every day.

Assistant Landscape Architect Michael Meric described how the parts add up to a greener urban environment. “There are two basic ideas. Keep the streets green and watered, and capture the street water to keep it out of the sewer system, where it has to be processed.”

Recycling the runoff to keep the new planted spaces in city roadways green means that water doesn’t have to be trucked into the area, using fuel and creating congestion and pollution.

The Landscape Architects, members of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375, must consider many factors. These include design concepts — such as the width and depth of the plant beds and the use of drought-resistant plants and mulch rings around trees — and technological tactics to capture storm water, prevent spill-off and recycle it into the green spaces. Curb cuts, pipe inlets, and trench drains are among their options as they plan to create 800 new Greenstreet spaces by 2015.

In our concrete urban environment, trees create green beauty as they slow global warming, reduce energy costs, improve air quality and cut storm water runoff, flooding and erosion. New York City is rich in parks, but PlaNYC 2030 calls for every New Yorker to be within a 10-minute walk of a park.

Nette Compton, a Landscape Architect Intern, is developing guidelines for the “Designing Parks for the 21st Century” manual. At the completion of the project in 2009, her team will have produced design guidelines for sustainable parks in collaboration with the Design Trust for Public Space.

“We’re looking at managing stormwater and using recycled materials. We’re exploring synthetic turf cover and other options,” Compton said. “We look carefully at the whole life cycles of materials we use — how much they cost, how long they will last and how we will dispose of them.” The Local 375 member, who is also a fellow with the Design Trust for Urban Space, says her team is “coordinating closely” with the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, which is in charge of bringing PlaNYC 2030 to city agencies.

The team’s final product will provide guidelines and a toolbox that may be used for creating environmentally sustainable parks up and down the East Coast — parks for the 21st century.