The U.S. Forest Service has an essential, and very difficult, mission. Originally founded in the 19th Century to ensure the timber supply needed to build a rapidly expanding and growing country, the Forest Service has evolved into a federal agency that must balance timber management, recreation and conservation. While that can be a delicate balancing act, I do believe it can be done — and done well. I am proud of the work that has been done in the Cherokee National Forest in recent years to preserve its special and unique ecosystem while enhancing the experience of recreationists visiting the forest.

Similarly, balancing conservation and development is a guiding principle for all of Fusco Land Planning’s work. I believe evaluating a property’s inherent environmental assets and topography should always be the first step in developing a comprehensive land use plan. Identifying and then conserving significant natural features, wetlands, and environmentally sensitive areas or habitats on the property is paramount to ensuring responsible, sustainable development.

Setting those areas aside as nature areas, parkland, or other common areas not only is environmentally responsible, it leads to better development, and homes and communities that live within their environment rather than dominate it. At Fusco Land Planning, we work with landowners to identify the home sites that will help them reach their goals while conserving the inherent value of the landscape and environment. The result is communities with properties that are more valuable over the long term while providing an overall experience that people invest in and want to be a part of for years to come.

For a good example of how all this comes together, check out my projects pages on Little Pisgah Mountain Conservation Easement. I would welcome the opportunity to hear from you about your ideas for your property.

One of the more welcome trends over the past decade in the way cities and towns are planning for the future and investing in their infrastructure has been a renewed focus on trails and greenways. From rail-to-trail conversions to bicycle lanes to nature trails to comprehensive trail networks, municipalities and counties of all sizes have increasingly gravitated toward projects that enhance connectivity while providing immense recreational, health, and economic benefits.

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We have worked extensively with local governments to plan, permit, and develop these projects. And we believe passionately in the power of urban trails and greenways to transform and elevate communities in profound ways. People who do not own a personal vehicle gain access to more educational, economic, and social opportunity when smart trail networks are developed. Businesses adjacent to trails benefit from the increased foot traffic passing by their doors. And the quality of life for the entire community improves through the presence of a fun, free, open year-round recreational amenity.

While nearly every city planner (and most local elected officials) I talk to today understands the benefits, they also grapple with real-world challenges to developing trail systems. Without a doubt, finding the resources to invest in trails and bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure can be a challenge. But the benefits are worth it.

When we work with a city or town on these types of projects, we take a big-picture, long-term approach. While there are numerous questions to answer and considerations to take into account, cities and towns should have a very clear understanding of the following three considerations in particular before embarking on a trail planning process:

1. What are your community’s natural environmental assets?

   The best trail projects not only co-exist with but actually serve to enhance and spotlight the valued natural areas in your community. Trails help to enhance them by serving as educational tools — they enable people to access these areas and feel a connection to them. Trails also relieve development pressure by utilizing space you can’t or shouldn’t utilize otherwise, such as flood plains, while still allowing these important areas to function as nature intended.

2. What are your community’s transportation and connectivity considerations?

   The best trail projects also improve people’s ability to move around their community and to reach destinations. They connect neighborhoods with each other. They connect neighborhoods with where educational and employment opportunities are located. They connect recreational and natural assets with neighborhoods. These connections might not necessarily be the traditional greenway along the river — instead, connectivity may be achieved through a multi-modal experience. For example, a nature trail might connect into a neighborhood, continue along a sidewalk and/or a bike lane for a few blocks, and connect to a grocery store on the other side of the neighborhood, then connect into a protected bike lane and then a regular bike lane and eventually to a bus stop, where you can throw your bike on a bus and continue onto another more distant part of the community, or another community altogether. Planning and building trails that connect all three settings — natural, residential and commercial — leads to a more cohesive community that is fully accessible to all.

3. What are your community’s future growth considerations?

   Trails will lead to more foot traffic and interest in the businesses and other features and assets along their route. So building trails is a powerful tool to help revitalize areas and to help shape future growth and investment in your community. And by providing trails to these areas so that people do not have to rely solely on car transportation to access them, you can save your community money over the long term. Trails are expensive, but they typically are much less expensive than major road widening and expansion projects, which may not actually improve congestion and traffic. This hierarchy of costs make investments in trails much more palatable over time. Our friends at Asheville on Bikes have a great page of data and other information showing the economic benefits of investing in bike-friendly streets, parks and businesses.

Of course, many other considerations have to be taken into account as your trail-planning process continues. But starting with these will lead to a better process and a plan that will be more likely to stand the test of time.

What are some of the challenges or snags that are preventing you from moving forward with trail and bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure investments in your city? Let us know by filling out the form on this page, and we’ll be in touch with possible solutions. We’d love to hear from you.

Government regulations.

Bureaucracy.

Red tape.

Feeling anxious yet? If you’ve ever tried to build a home or open a business, you’ve had to deal with some level of bureaucratic red tape known as the permitting process. Of course, some projects are more difficult to get approved and permitted than others. Perhaps the most complex, time-consuming, and frustrating don’t even involve private parties. They are public projects, the kind of infrastructure that requires one governmental or public entity to acquire approvals and permits from other governmental or public entities.

WORKING ON A PROJECT? WE'D LOVE TO HELP.

While you might think public officials would be well-equipped to work with public officials from other agencies to ensure a smooth permitting process, it’s all too often not the case. Many times, different agencies operate under very different requirements. The county planning department, for example, has a host of issues and considerations they have to consider, while the city may have a different set of considerations driving their decisions.

Sometimes, local government staffs are stretched so thin and are juggling so many different projects, it becomes extremely difficult to effectively navigate other agencies' permitting processes, and a great project may languish for months or even years. Or, as leadership turns over or people move up or out in their careers, it creates a revolving-door issue. Consequently, a great idea that stalled in the permitting process ends up being dropped altogether simply because its momentum was lost and never recaptured.

At Fusco Land Planning, one of the biggest values we bring to our clients is our experience and expertise in dealing with local, state and federal agencies that you need to gain approvals from to move your project from concept to reality. From the DOT to the EPA, from the National Park Service to the United States Forest Service, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to state-level environmental agencies, we understand the regulations and relationships that are key to moving projects forward, saving you time, money and headaches.

While we provide this as a value-add to our planning and design services, we also are comfortable joining a team after the project has been designed and handle the permitting process. Above all, we are a team player and are very comfortable working with other consultants and firms on projects. Our focus is on keeping red tape from stalling your project in the conceptual stage. Whether you need someone to start the process or get things moving again, Fusco Land Planning can help.

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WORKING ON A PROJECT? WE'D LOVE TO HELP.

For example, while a single-family residential development along a public riverfront could provide a significant infusion of tax dollars, such a project would also impact everyone else’s access and view of the riverfront, an inherent, natural community asset. Getting the balance right is difficult, and ultimately hinges as much on political and social considerations as economic and environmental ones.

Those answers are going to be different for every community, but Fusco Land Planning starts with a couple of principles that we use to guide our approach to long-range growth and development planning in urban settings.

1. Public spaces should be a key part of your master plan. Of course, you first need to have a master plan (more on that in a future blog). Your master plan should identify long-term needs and goals, including areas that, should they become available, should be acquired or dealt with in a different way than they have been (perhaps through a zoning change). For example, a creek may have been piped and built upon decades ago and you have identified it and its floodplain as a potential daylighting and greenway project. Completing such a project could take years or even a decade or more, but one of the first steps is to identify the property that will need to be acquired.
2. Preserving and enhancing public spaces is good for the environment and for the economy. Those two imperatives are not mutually exclusive. The days when wet, flood-prone natural areas were not valued because they were not developable are over. There is a wide recognition that preserving these areas and promoting access to them with trails and greenways provides an enormous recreational and educational value for citizens. This, in turn, makes a community a more desirable place to live and operate a business.
3. Stormwater management is becoming a bigger and bigger concern for cities and towns with every passing year. Planned correctly, public spaces can play a big part in helping improve stormwater management, and ultimately water quality, in your community. While older greenways might just have a pipe under the greenway that empties into a river or stream, the standards today are higher. At Fusco, we consider total inputs into the overall system, and we try to design public spaces and natural areas that will keep water on dry ground longer, therefore more slowly introducing water back into the natural system. By slowing stormwater down, it is naturally filtered and is much cleaner when it reaches larger sources such as rivers and streams.
4. Public spaces, parks, greenways and blueways create a scale that attracts people. These types of areas and amenities are pedestrian-oriented, rather than vehicle-oriented. They are more conducive to all kinds of activities and even just resting and relaxing. If people walk into a space and feel good, they don’t necessarily have to know why. But if they feel comfortable, there is a pretty good chance that someone like a landscape architect planned that space and that experience. And there is an even better chance that they will want to come back.

Many other factors come into play when considering the role public spaces will play in the future of your community. Above all, it is important to have the conversation. Cities and towns that do are taking the first steps toward striking the kind of balance that people increasingly are coming to expect of urban environments.

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I think the best way to bring these thoughts together and wrap up this series of blogs on urban land planning is by exploring some places that have done a great job and created an urban experience that has encouraged people, businesses and all sorts of positive activity to flock there. Of course, you can find great examples in many places today. These are just a few of my favorites.

Downtown Pittsburgh

If you had visited this city in the 1970s and 80s you would have seen a downtown in decline, the result of a changing economy and a shifting of resources and capital to the suburbs. Indeed, for most of its history, Downtown Pittsburgh basically rolled up the sidewalks and shut down after the workday ended.

But while Pittsburgh is still proud of its history as an industrial powerhouse, the city today is defined by more than its blue-collar manufacturing roots. Downtown Pittsburgh is a great urban success story. Home to scores of jobs in various creative industries, a dynamic mix of mixed-use developments, museums, public art, breweries, restaurants, parks, pro sports venues and entertainment amenities, Downtown Pittsburgh has become a major tourist destination as well as a highly desirable place to live and operate a business.

This transformation didn’t happen by accident. A lot of credit must go to Pittsburgh’s planners. From renovating the 36-acre Point State Park and using it as an iconic anchor to build off, to locating new stadiums for their Major League Baseball and NFL teams in close proximity to each other along the riverfront, linked by a greenway and park space and just the right amount of mixed-use development, to the inclusion of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure throughout, Downtown Pittsburgh is a place that feels built for people, not just cars. Indeed, while it has plenty to offer in terms of dining, entertainment, culture and all kinds of activities, it is also a place where you can relax and do, well, nothing. And that is perhaps the greatest testament to its success.

US 36 (Boulder-to-Denver) Bikeway

This 18-mile paved route not only connects Boulder to Denver, but also a number of suburban towns between the two cities. Completed in 2016, the bikeway has been described as a “highway for cyclists.” The 12-foot-wide bikeway also connects commuters to other bicycle paths and provides access to six commuter stations where riders can hop on the local rapid bus transit service between Denver’s Union Station and Boulder.

The bikeway, which runs parallel to U.S. 36, was built at a cost of $16.6 million. But rather than treating the bikeway as a separate project that needed its own funding source and/or fundraising effort, local and state planners included it as part of a nearly $500 million project to alleviate congestion on and improve U.S. 36. They took a true multi-modal approach to U.S. 36, and treated the bikeway as an essential part of the overall planning and project.

Within a year of the bikeway’s completion, it was more than paying for its cost in the form of four significant multi-use development projects that had been announced. In each case, developers pointed to their property’s proximity and/or connection to the bikeway as key to their decisions to move forward with their projects.

In the land planning business, the design and placement of amenities such as trails, parks, greenspace and gardens get most of the focus from clients and other end users. And with good reason—the goal of land planning and design is to create spaces people want to spend time in, neighborhoods and communities that are more cohesive, connected, accessible, and, yes, beautiful. But before any of that can happen, a solution must be created for something that many end users might never notice or even think about, if it’s done well: stormwater.

HAVE A STORMWATER QUESTION? WE CAN HELP.

Stormwater solutions are a part of nearly every project Fusco Land Planning & Design undertakes. And because of a combination of factors driven largely by local, state and federal agencies, innovative stormwater solutions are increasingly in demand. The basic mandate is commonly called the “first-inch” or “first-flush” rule. In essence, this means the first inch of runoff of a storm must be captured. The goal is to prevent much of the oils, chemicals and sediment from impervious surfaces such as parking lots and rooftops from entering a storm drainage system and, eventually, downstream water sources. Of the various solutions, some stormwater measures are more effective than others at filtering runoff.

Devising a solution to meet that requirement can take myriad forms, and additional regulations or requirements unique to some states and local jurisdictions only adds to the complexity. That’s why whether you partner with Fusco or another firm, engaging with a stormwater solutions expert with a proven track record is a must. At Fusco, stormwater management is an integral part of nearly every project we do, and we have created many different solutions over the years.

Here is an overview of some of the more common types of stormwater management solutions we recommend:

• Infiltration Basins: Unlike wet ponds, infiltration basins do not contain a permanent pool of water. Instead, captured water is released through infiltration into the substrata or through evaporation. While the water that runs through infiltration basins eventually reaches downstream water sources, the method by which it gets there is different than other systems. These features allow runoff to infiltrate into the ground rather than allowing it to exit the feature through a pipe or other outlet structure.
• Rain Gardens: Rain gardens are great solutions in urban residential environments. While some can be very complex and highly engineered, a rain garden generally is a depressed area in the landscape that collects rain water and allows it to soak into the ground. Rain gardens are usually planted with grasses, flowering perennials, and sometimes even trees. They are not only cost-effective, but help to beautify a property’s landscape.
• Permeable or Porous Pavement Surfaces: Whenever possible, we recommend using pavers and other permeable surfaces that allow rainwater to soak into the ground. Impervious surfaces such as asphalt and concrete create massive runoff that has to go somewhere. Using pervious surfaces reduces the amount of runoff that has to be captured and held by other methods.
• Subsurface and Proprietary Stormwater Systems: Proprietary stormwater systems, such as Stormtec, can be used in situations where space is limited. These types of systems utilize underground storage chambers where stormwater is captured and allowed to infiltrate or slowly drain out to the surface. They can be installed under impervious surfaces such as parking areas and drives.

A lot more can be written about these options, how they work, and when and where each makes the most sense. Whether you have questions about stormwater management options in general, or have a specific project on the drawing board, reach out to us at Fusco Land Planning & Design. We would love to hear from you and help out.