Somerset County Planning Division

"CREATING QUALITY COMMUNITIES TOGETHER"

Robert P. Bzik, AICP/PP
Director of Planning
Anthony V. McCracken, Sr., AICP/PP
 Assistant Director

20 Grove Street
P.O. Box 3000
Somerville, NJ 08876

WHAT IS GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE ?

Identifying Green Infrastructure

According to the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Green Infrastructure consists of a community’s natural-life support system- a well planned and managed network of habitat lands, parks, greenways, open space, riparian corridors and lands with conservation easements that support native species and sustain our air and water resources- and directly contributes to a community’s health and quality of life.

Why call it Infrastructure?

Green infrastructure encompasses a wide range of landscape elements including wetlands, woodlands, waterways, farmland and public and private conservation lands as well as community-built outdoor recreation and trails. Roads, electric power lines and sewer and water systems are generally viewed as “infrastructure”, but by putting air, land and water resources on a equal standing as “built” infrastructure it make them equally important and also provides a framework for growth by identifying the places that should not be built upon.

Why Do We Need Green Infrastructure?

Well-planned and managed green infrastructure has the benefit of linking wildlife and people and urban and rural areas and serves as a blueprint for conservation. We also need green infrastructure since land is being developed faster than ever creating a more fragmented landscape. For example, the Urban land Institute reported that the total amount of land developed in the United States increased by 34 percent (25 million acres) from 1982 to 1997,with the rate increasing more than 1.5 times the previous 10 year rate. The pace of these trends are even more pronounced in a densely populated state like New Jersey with development encroaching on lands needed to protect water supplies and ecological resources.

How Can Communities Create a Green Infrastructure Plan?

Instead of protecting open space and the conservation natural resources on a site specific, piecemeal and reactive mode, communities are beginning to think about green infrastructure in a proactive, systematic and larger scale network, which is also coordinated with other smart growth efforts, like a regional land and water capacity analysis. Basically, green infrastructure can be broken into three separate but interrelated components: ecological networks consisting of stream corridors, wetlands, ridgelines, forest lands, groundwater recharge areas or critical wildlife habitat areas; working landscapes involving farms, historic and cultural resources; and outdoor recreation, interpretative areas and trail networks. Today, the use of Geographic Information Systems or GIS allows communities and counties to easily identify these networks of natural hubs and linkages and protect and enhance them in a coordinated and integrated way.