Video By The City of Boston | Cities face runoff problems from paved surfaces. Boston uses green infrastructure to absorb water, filter pollution, and prevent flooding.
🌧️ Urban Runoff Problem
Stormwater runoff is a growing challenge in cities. Urban surfaces like roads, rooftops, and sidewalks prevent rain from soaking into the ground. Instead, the water flows over these surfaces, collecting pollutants and debris before entering storm drains. This untreated runoff often ends up in rivers, lakes, or harbors, causing environmental harm and reducing access to clean recreational waters.
Rapid development makes the problem worse by paving over natural landscapes. The increased runoff leads to flash flooding, erosion, and overloaded drainage systems. These impacts often hit hardest in historically neglected or lower-income neighborhoods.
🌳 Nature-Based Solutions
To manage this, many cities are investing in green infrastructure, strategies that mimic nature by using plants, soil, and permeable materials to absorb and filter stormwater. These solutions help restore the land’s ability to manage water and deliver added benefits.
Boston, for example, is implementing bioswales in parking lots, rain barrels for homes, green roofs like Fenway Farms, and permeable pavers in Central Square. These projects reduce flooding and pollution while cooling neighborhoods, improving air quality, and creating much-needed green space.
🌍 Atlanta’s Stormwater Success
In Atlanta’s Vine City neighborhood, green infrastructure took on new meaning after a major flood exposed how recent development had paved over absorbent land, worsening stormwater problems. In response, the City of Atlanta partnered with The Trust for Public Land and the Department of Watershed Management to co-develop Cook Park, a space designed to serve both the community and the environment.
Video by ACoM | Justin Cutler, Commissioner of Parks & Recreation, City of Atlanta, explains how a park served as valuable stormwater drainage infrastructure in 2024 during Hurricane Helene.
Half the park functions as a stormwater retention system, while the other half offers a public green space. During Hurricane Helen, the stormwater infrastructure did exactly what it was built to do: it captured and temporarily flooded the sports fields, protecting nearby homes from disaster. Just days later, the park had returned to normal, showing how resilient design can turn a past tragedy into a long-term solution.
As one community advocate put it, Atlanta’s approach reflects a group project mindset that blends parks, flood control, and community advocacy into one integrated, neighborhood-centered solution.
🏡 Greening Communities
- ACoM Initiative | Greening Communities
- ACoM Story | The Future of Parks Revealed in 100 Top U.S. Cities
- ACoM Briefing | Ranking Top 100 Cities on Urban Parks—Where We Go To Heal
- Los Angeles ranks 90/100 by ParkScore | Greening Communities: LA Park Profiles
- Atlanta ranks 21/100 by ParkScore | Atlanta has 518 parks
- Boston ranks 12/100 by ParkScore | 100% of Boston residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park
