Georgia Green Infrastructure Workshop
Green infrastructure is our Nation’s natural life support system – an interconnected network of protected land, water, and other open spaces that supports native species, maintains natural ecological processes, sustains air and water resources, and contributes to the health and quality of life for America’s communities and people. Green infrastructure differs from conventional approaches to open space planning because it looks at conservation values and actions in concert with land development, growth management and built infrastructure planning.
Why Green Infrastructure?
There are many benefits to utilizing a green infrastructure approach to conservation and development planning. Green infrastructure planning:
• Recognizes and addresses the needs of people and nature
• Provides a mechanism to balance environmental and economic factors
• Provides a framework for integrating diverse natural resources and growth management activities in a holistic, ecosystem-based approach
• Ensures that both green space and development are placed where they are most appropriate
• Identifies vital ecological areas prior to development
• Identifies opportunities for the restoration and enhancement of naturally functioning systems in urban areas
• Provides a unifying vision for the future
• Enables communities to create a system that is greater than the sum of its parts
• Provides communities and developers with predictability and certainty
• Enables conservation and development to be planned cooperatively.
Content of the Georgia Green Infrastructure Workshop
The Green Infrastructure Workshop provided participants with an introduction to a strategic approach for prioritizing conservation opportunities and a planning framework for conservation and development – integrating the green and the gray. Through speakers’ lectures, case studies, and breakout sessions, participants experienced firsthand how the green infrastructure approach can be used to connect environmental, social, and economic health across urban, suburban, and rural settings in coastal Georgia. Participants learned how green infrastructure planning can serve as a tool to inform land use decisions and build consensus among diverse interests. Green infrastructure is a new conservation approach that allows land planners, developers, conservation professionals, and citizens to forge a stronger link between land use and land conservation. William Allen, III, Strategic Conservation Program Director of The Conservation Fund in Chapel Hill, NC, was the keynote speaker.
For more information on Green Infrastructure go to:
Green Infrastructure
The Conservation Fund
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