UMore Park: a master planned sustainable community

The University of Minnesota is planning a 5,000 acre development that will house 20,000-30,000 people when it's all said and done. The street layout is a modified grid that includes mixed land use. The plan also includes a jobs and housing balance which will create better walk-ability in order to reduce auto dependency. It's set to be fully built out in 25-30 years. So will it be the northern Seaside, Florida?

Take a look here: http://www.umorepark.umn.edu/

Santa Monica's Green Street

Last week Santa Monica unveiled it's first "green" street on Bicknell at Neilson. I was there to take pictures and kill some office time.

This first picture shows their most valuable installment, permeable pavement. This really does what it says and there are tanks buried underneath which catch the water and let it slowly percolate into the soil. I'm not sure why the tanks are necessary...but they did say that with more money they could have put in a system where the collected water could be redirected for purple pipe irrigation.

This next picture shows two aspects of the green street. The first one is the pipe in the lower left corner. This is a view port into the holding tanks and is the access point for measuring the water level. The second is the curb cut that allows water runoff to easily get to the vegetation (all of which is climate appropriate and done by Tree People). It's hard to tell from this picture, but the vegetation is slightly below grade compared to the street. This allows the water to easily enter the plantings.

Here's a demonstration of the permeable pavement. You can easily see how the runoff on the blacktop is much greater.

The hose pictured above had been running for several minutes at this point. This is about 100 feet down stream from the hose. As you can see, there is just a tiny trickle of water. Normally there would be much more, but the permeable pavement has absorbed it.

Here's a video of Santa Monica makin it rain!