Infrastructure Exchange: Nature in the City
How to Deliver One Environment Infrastructure Combining Public Space, Flood-proofing, and Utility Upgrades in One Project
Learn from global experts on how to bring nature back to the city, deliver parks, green streets, flood protection/stormwater management, utilities, and environmental restoration in one project.
- ULI Americas Case Study: Revolutionize Utility Construction into Public Space Creation in Waterloo Greenway Waller Creek, Austin TX
- ULI Asia Pacific Case Study: Transform Under-used Degraded Land into a Cultural Biophilic Landscape in Jurong Lakeside Garden, Singapore Learning Objectives
- How to leverage the power of social and natural networks to create ‘one environment’ infrastructure, bring back nature to the city and redefine urban living and workplace.
- How to revolutionize utility construction into public space creation that leads to district-wide regeneration.
- How to transform under-used degraded land into cultural biophilic landscape and a national destination.
About Waterloo Greenway Waller Creek Austin’s Waterloo Greenway project is part of a nationwide coalition called the “Alliance of Infrastructure Reuse and Development” joined to support one another in the challenging transformation of urban districts by reimagining local blighted infrastructure. A small meandering creek that once defined the boundary of the original Austin Street Grid plan, named after the plan’s author Edwin Waller, has been completely engulfed in the city’s explosive growth. After 100 years of incremental degradation by adjacent landowners and the absence of a public maintenance regime, Waller Creek has experienced considerable erosion, slope failures and the loss of most of its native habitat, all of which aggravate the effects of regular flooding.
The notoriety of the creek’s “dangerous” qualities and the construction of an adjacent elevated highway has deepened the divide between East Austin’s Mexican-American community and the predominately white communities of Central Business District downtown. Between 2011 and 2018, the city of Austin built a mile-long bypass tunnel beneath Waller Creek to remove 28 acres of downtown from the floodplain, enabling significant redevelopment. The tunnel was funded through a TIF (tax increment financing) mechanism which leveed a water utility tax for the surrounding development district. As the tunnel neared completion, The Waterloo Greenway project was integrated into the city’s hard infrastructure work, and the TIF program was extended to support further improvements to the tunnel watershed.
The Waterloo Greenway is rebuilding the ecology of the creek while radically expanding access to immersive nature at the center of millions of square feet of new development and simultaneously reconnecting neighborhoods, business corridors, and mobility networks along the east side of downtown. As a public-private partnership, the Greenway has the potential to catalyze $2 billion in real estate value over 20 years and $500 million in enhanced value to existing real estate development. The first phase of the project was completed in 2021 with Waterloo Park, the first in a chain of parks to be developed along the Greenway. The success of the tunnel and Park has recently prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to invest $12 million in federal funding and recognize the environmental infrastructure project as the first of its kind to be approved in the State of Texas. About Jurong Lakeside Garden, Singapore In conjunction with the ‘Nature in a City’ theme in Singapore, Jurong Lakeside Garden is Singapore’s first national gardens in the heartlands, and strives to inspire people through nature, learn through nature and bring people close to nature. The garden utilizes biophilic design to knit nature back into the landscape. With its nature being a redevelopment project, existing conditions, existing habitat hotpots and existing resources on site are carefully respected and analyzed. They then contribute back to the final design in various means by retaining, relocating, recycling and repurposing. The challenge of such big construction within a habitat zone has been successfully overcome by appropriate mitigation measures and environmentally sensitive construction methodologies. Jurong Lakeside Garden started as a freshwater swamp back in the old days, and returned as a freshwater swamp in an ecological and a design philosophical way.
Webinar Summary: Learn from global experts on how to bring nature back to the city, deliver parks, green streets, flood protection/stormwater management, utilities, and environmental restoration in one project.
- ULI Americas Case Study: Revolutionize Utility Construction into Public Space Creation in Waterloo Greenway Waller Creek, Austin TX
- ULI Asia Pacific Case Study: Transform Under-used Degraded Land into a Cultural Biophilic Landscape in Jurong Lakeside Garden, Singapore Learning Objectives
- How to leverage the power of social and natural networks to create ‘one environment’ infrastructure, bring back nature to the city and redefine urban living and workplace.
- How to revolutionize utility construction into public space creation that leads to district-wide regeneration.
- How to transform under-used degraded land into cultural biophilic landscape and a national destination.
About Waterloo Greenway Waller Creek Austin’s Waterloo Greenway project is part of a nationwide coalition called the “Alliance of Infrastructure Reuse and Development” joined to support one another in the challenging transformation of urban districts by reimagining local blighted infrastructure. A small meandering creek that once defined the boundary of the original Austin Street Grid plan, named after the plan’s author Edwin Waller, has been completely engulfed in the city’s explosive growth. After 100 years of incremental degradation by adjacent landowners and the absence of a public maintenance regime, Waller Creek has experienced considerable erosion, slope failures and the loss of most of its native habitat, all of which aggravate the effects of regular flooding.
The notoriety of the creek’s “dangerous” qualities and the construction of an adjacent elevated highway has deepened the divide between East Austin’s Mexican-American community and the predominately white communities of Central Business District downtown. Between 2011 and 2018, the city of Austin built a mile-long bypass tunnel beneath Waller Creek to remove 28 acres of downtown from the floodplain, enabling significant redevelopment. The tunnel was funded through a TIF (tax increment financing) mechanism which leveed a water utility tax for the surrounding development district. As the tunnel neared completion, The Waterloo Greenway project was integrated into the city’s hard infrastructure work, and the TIF program was extended to support further improvements to the tunnel watershed.
The Waterloo Greenway is rebuilding the ecology of the creek while radically expanding access to immersive nature at the center of millions of square feet of new development and simultaneously reconnecting neighborhoods, business corridors, and mobility networks along the east side of downtown. As a public-private partnership, the Greenway has the potential to catalyze $2 billion in real estate value over 20 years and $500 million in enhanced value to existing real estate development. The first phase of the project was completed in 2021 with Waterloo Park, the first in a chain of parks to be developed along the Greenway. The success of the tunnel and Park has recently prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to invest $12 million in federal funding and recognize the environmental infrastructure project as the first of its kind to be approved in the State of Texas. About Jurong Lakeside Garden, Singapore In conjunction with the ‘Nature in a City’ theme in Singapore, Jurong Lakeside Garden is Singapore’s first national gardens in the heartlands, and strives to inspire people through nature, learn through nature and bring people close to nature. The garden utilizes biophilic design to knit nature back into the landscape. With its nature being a redevelopment project, existing conditions, existing habitat hotpots and existing resources on site are carefully respected and analyzed. They then contribute back to the final design in various means by retaining, relocating, recycling and repurposing. The challenge of such big construction within a habitat zone has been successfully overcome by appropriate mitigation measures and environmentally sensitive construction methodologies. Jurong Lakeside Garden started as a freshwater swamp back in the old days, and returned as a freshwater swamp in an ecological and a design philosophical way.