Case Study:
Creating Community: Columbus Square Park
As part of a city-wide effort to manage its combined sewer overflow problems in a more natural way, the Philadelphia Water Department's Green Streets Program is using a combination of vegetation and engineering to manage stormwater runoff where it falls.
In the first South Philly neighborhood to receive stormwater planters, PWD learned that involving locals is THE key to a project's success. What started out as an exercise in innovative stormwater management at Columbus Square Park proved to be a community-builder that involved volunteer gardeners, supportive and skeptical residents, and the school children that will tend to the plants.
