Stormwater Greenstreets

What are they:

Green street infrastructures are implemented into sidewalks to work towards the goal of preventing damage to the sidewalk itself and also the area nearby. Green streets have multiple components: street trees, permeable pavements, bioretention, and bioswales. By adding green streets to urban areas, the environment will be positively affected.

Advantages:

Green street infrastructures protect downstream water quality and also reduce quantities of CSO.
Decreases damage to sidewalks
Takes advantage of sidewalk space that is not being used for anything necessary
By planting trees within the area of the green street infrastructure area, it will decrease the amount of the urban island heat effect.

Disadvantages:

It is a relatively new design, thus there is still much to research on how to make it better.
Location. Different areas in the country experience different types of storms. Green street infrastructures work best in locations that experience low rainfall and long durations.
Budget constraints, especially in an urban community.
The necessity of regular maintenance.

How they work:

During a rainfall, the water usually collects in a specific area that has been degrading for a while. But, green streets act as guides for the water.

Depending on the design of the green street, the water will follow a pathway to many different options. In our case, we are planning to guide the water to rain gardens.

Once the water is captured within the infrastructure, the green street implementation will slow, filter, and clean stormwater runoff from the surface of the sidewalk, road and nearby areas.

Over time, green streets will then reduce sewer overflows that damage and infiltrate the waterways of the community, which is a huge problem in urban areas.

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What We've Been Doing From Lab 4 to Lab 5

This week, we decided to focus on familiarizing ourselves with SketchUp, Philadelphia's Native Plants, and the area we are renovating. In Sketchup, we created the building, which is the basis of our area. That was difficult because we had to place each window on individually, but it helped us to gain a better understanding of how to use Sketchup, which we then used to created the right-of-way bioswale and sidewalks. Ina created a thread detailing the drainage in our area, and Carolina posted about the deterioration of the drain in the area we are in. Unfortunately, we didn't correctly draw the bioswale, so we will be re-doing it, but now we know how to create GSI's in SketchUp. Below are some pictures of our progress!

What We've Been Doing From Lab 6 to Lab 7

Hey guys! This week, we've been hard at work on the final report draft, so we have not had much time to work on the design. However, we were able to create a piping system extending into the sewer grate, and we taught ourselves how to create curved pipes in SketchUp. Along with our progress, we conducted more research on native Philadelphian plants, and implemented some of the ones we could find as 3-D models in the design. This week, we also started to conduct runoff calculations for our problem area. Next week, we will focus exclusively on creating the drainage area map, as well as doing calculations for the drainage, and we will complete the addition of the native plants into the design. Below are some pictures of our progress!

What We've Been Doing From Lab 7 to Lab 8

Hey guys! This week we've been working on putting the finishing touches on the 3D model, such as adding the beehive structure and pipe to the stormwater bumpout, taking pictures of the structure to be used in the engineering drawings, finishing the drainage area map in AutoCAD, and adding appropriate plants in all of the GSIs. Next week, we hope to work more on the final draft, to finish the drainage area map, to create the presentation, and to finish the calculations. Thanks for following our development, and below are some pictures of our progress!

Group 073-09: The Deterioration of 32nd and Arch Street

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