Study Goal:
To create a comprehensive package with sufficient detail and references that will allow local decision makers to confidently give priority to green infrastructure, and in particular, to the San Diego River Park, as part of their quest to make their communities more livable, sustainable and healthy, thus improving the quality of life for all people that live, work, and play in the San Diego region.
Study Objectives:
Objective #1: To detail the long-term shifts in development patterns in the San Diego region, the resulting public and private negative impacts, and the rise of the smart growth movement.
Objective #2: To provide evidence and examples of benefits of green infrastructure to the San Diego region, with an emphasis on the benefits derived from the San Diego River Park.
Objective #3: To assess how green infrastructure and the San Diego River Park will help to advance the San Diego region’s smart growth objectives.
This study could examine:
• How the San Diego region’s population has grown and how this growth is expected to continue in the future.
• How this growth has made an impact, and will continue to do so, on the San Diego region.
• Policies instituted as a result of this growth and how they have shifted development patterns in the San Diego region.
• How the long-term shift in development patterns has created substantial public and private negative impacts, including:
o Environmental and water quality degradation
o Economic costs associated with auto ownership and use, such as health, and insufficient tax revenue at the local level to support
infrastructure for low-density development
o Social impacts including a reduced sense of community and quality of life
o Public health impacts, such as increased rates of obesity due to inactivity and rising asthma rates due to reduced air quality
• How the smart growth movement emerged from these long-term shifts in development patterns and resulting consumer backlash.
• The advantages of smart growth policies to the San Diego region and how they produce a shift away in negative consumer behaviors resulting from current development patterns.
• How smart growth policies recognize the values of trails and greenways; why investing in green infrastructure supports a broad range of smart growth objectives; and why green infrastructure needs to be considered a priority in the smart growth arsenal.
There are two contexts from which benefits can be derived from trails and greenways, including:
• The mere existence of the corridor. These benefits are primarily environmental such as air quality improvement, heat island mitigation, habitat preservation and stormwater runoff filtration.
• Use of the corridor by humans. These benefits include various transportation-related benefits such as air quality improvement, physical and mental health benefits derived from physical activity and economic impacts.
Benefits can be divided into the following categories:
• Transportation – facilitates non-motorized trips and reduction in emissions, congestion, lost time, societal costs, public costs and personal costs.
• Economy – job creation for gear and services to local residents and tourists, increased property values from proximate location to a desired amenity and retention of industry due to increased quality of life for employees that leads to a reduction in employee turnover.
• Public Health – increased physical activity levels and reduced auto emissions.
• Open Space – maintenance of wildlife habitat and heat island mitigation provided by tree canopy on the trail or greenway corridor.
• Education – through interpretive signs regarding wildlife and historic aspects of corridors. Trails and greenways serve as outdoor classrooms and research has found that students who exercise tend to get better grades and experience fewer behavioral problems.
• Social Capital – through increased interaction among community members.
PROSPECTIVE RESEARCH TEAMS TOPICS
* Summarize existing research on the value of green infrastructure (parks, open space, outdoor recreation amenities)
* Use the San Diego River and the proposed River Park as a case study for local research on the value of green infrastructure including creating metrics based upon research in #1 (e.g.: comparing property values adjacent to and away for the green space)
* Create and conduct a study to determine the public perception of the value and its importance
* Explore the design question of what infrastructure including specific projects (e.g.: bike rentals, camp grounds, and river-fronting cafes) would enhance directly or indirectly the value of the green infrastructure for the benefit of the community
* Take the stadium site as an example based upon three models (all green infrastructure, a stadium plus all green, development plus a river fronting parkway) consistent with the City of San Diego draft River Park Master Plan and develop a proposal for green infrastructure for the three models.
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