Planning Green Streets: Denver’s Levels of Green Tour

Denver’s Green Streets Guide: The Green Continuum addresses a critical challenge facing climate-focused practitioners: green infrastructure (GI) is a growing discipline often perceived to add complexity and rigidity to city projects. While each context is uniquely challenged to bring green infrastructure to scale, to expand a practice anywhere practitioners must first focus on building a shared language and culture within existing institutional structures.

After a decade of lessons learned building a GI program from the ground up, Denver’s GI division now connects with engineering teams, consultants, and planners alike using its ASLA award-winning Green Continuum framework. The so-called Levels of Green (LoG) framing provides a structure for planning and design teams that allows plans, studies, and design projects to align cross-functionally and support community needs. This toolkit makes it easier for planners to incorporate GI at early stages by optimizing site selection, alternatives analysis, and conceptual planning for water-quality priorities and urban heat-island mitigation. The framework is a Denver construct which may not be the right tool for every city; however, as cities grapple with yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s challenges, planners must envision their role in the path toward built-environment innovation.