MIT NORMAN B.

LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM - PROJECT PRIMER

STRATEGIES FOR URBAN STORMWATER WETLANDS

Alan M. Berger, Heidi Nepf, Celina Balderas Guzmán

Keywords Abstract

Stormwater Heavier rainfall due to climate change, combined with widespread

wetland destruction, has led to major environmental problems in cities:
Green Infrastructure
urban flooding, water scarcity, and water quality problems. Wetlands, the
Resiliency
primary landscape that could help cities cope with these problems, have
Regional Planning been largely (if not entirely) destroyed in urban areas by the very process
Ecology of city making. This project reclaims urban wetland infrastructure
through strategic design, planning, and engineering concepts.

The research is based on two of America’s largest, fastest-growing,

and most water-stressed metropolises: Los Angeles (2nd largest metro
at 13.2 million people) and Houston (5th largest metro at 6.5 million
people). Through iterative design and fluid dynamics modeling, the
Project Contributors
project will discover the optimal wetland designs that combine engaging
Tyler Swingle, Department of landscape topography and hydrologic performance and illustrate
them as design guidelines for planning and water agencies all over the
Architecture
United States. These guidelines will reconceptualize how landscape
Waishan Qiu, Department of architectural design can impact the cultural imagination of wetland
Urban Studies & Planning engineering.
Samantha Cohen, Department
of Urban Studies & Planning
Manoel Xavier, Visiting Student,
Department of Civil and Environ-
mental Engineering

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MIT NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM

FIGURE 1
Buffalo Bayou during the
INTRODUCTION
major April 2016 floods in
Houston with downtown in
Drivers for Change
the background.
PC: Elliott Blackburn, CC
American cities face interrelated threats to their water systems:
BY-NC-ND 2.0
stormwater pollution (causing impairment in 121,000 miles of the nation’s
rivers), flooding (costing $2.4 billion in 2014 alone), and water scarcity
(expected in 40 states within the next 10 years).1 [Figure 1] The increase in
these threats is partly the result of having lost half of the nation’s wetlands
since colonization.2 In some places, the loss is often dramatic: over 95
percent loss in Los Angeles County, and 30 percent in Harris County
(metro Houston) between 1992 and 2010 alone.3
Historically, the response to these threats has been to eliminate natural
systems and build costly engineered infrastructure predicated on the false
notion that nature could be predicted, controlled, and ordered. [Figure 2]
In doing so, the result has often been exacerbated risk in cities, instead
of the assured protection that was originally intended.4 As the mistakes
of the past amount to greater vulnerability, cities need a new paradigm
of water infrastructure that responds to the real patterns of nature, which
often remain unpredictable and uncertain in spite of our scientific and
technological advancements.
Today’s cities face unprecedented urban flooding that have led many
to rethink the role and value of soft infrastructures such as wetlands to
capture and treat stormwater. Cities are building constructed wetlands
for capturing stormwater, an infrastructure type that began in the 1980s
as a derivative of agricultural wastewater treatment wetlands created by
civil engineers.5 The wastewater engineering origin of the stormwater
wetland remains visible today in its utilitarian aesthetic and function.
Even as landscape architects have become more involved in such projects,
the design and physical manifestation of stormwater wetlands remains

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an engineering-based product driven by regulatory stormwater rules and FIGURE 2

the urban hydrology technocracy.6 Stormwater wetlands are typically The highly channelized and
conceived as site specific solutions, designed to retroactively alleviate a engineered Los Angeles
small scale problem without solving larger systemic watershed problems.7 River.
PC: jondoeforty1, CC BY-
At the scale of the regional watershed, stormwater wetland networks NC-ND 2.0
can be conceptualized as public landscapes. Our project seeks to create
practical design guidance for stormwater wetlands, to be used by cities
to reconceptualize how water is controlled, managed, treated, and used
as a public landscape resource and contributes to urban water resiliency.8
This project represents an opportunity to develop stormwater wetlands as
resiliency infrastructure for cities to improve ecosystem services, alleviate
water shortages through water re-use, flood control, and open space. In
doing so, a wetland landscape becomes an inseparable part of the city’s
structure.9

General Approach on Methodology

The project will be grounded in an understanding of the water
challenges, environmental conditions, and geographic factors of Los
Angeles and Houston. [Figure 3] This analysis will yield insights as to where
water treatment, flood protection, and/ or groundwater recharge make
sense in each metro area. A number of design iterations will be tested via
physical fluid dynamics modeling and numerical modeling to determine
performance. [Figure 4] Terraforming, landscape architectural design, and
fluid mechanics engineering will merge in our working methods to yield
new configurations of highly efficient wetlands.

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MIT NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM
Figure 2: Los Angeles Spatial Analysis
FIGURE 3
Los Angeles GIS analysis of
stormwater infrastructure,
natural hydrologic network,
watershed boundaries, soil
conditions, rainfall patterns,
floodplains, land use,
existing open spaces, and
vacant lands.
FIGURE 4
Physical testing in the Nepf
Fluid Dynamics Lab.
4
We will also explore ways to create a citywide wetland network that
offers opportunities for recreation, resiliency features, economic activities,
water re-use, conservation areas, and raised real estate values. Finally, the
research will be summarized and translated into design guidelines that
will articulate the principles behind the optimal designs and how they
operate at the metropolitan scale.
The project is based on the work of Professors Alan Berger and Heidi
Nepf in designing agricultural wastewater treatment wetlands for the
Pontine Marshes in Italy.10 The large-scale urban context of wetland design
and application to stormwater comes from Celina Balderas Guzmán’s
Masters thesis at MIT.11
Background, Purpose, and Intended Audience
The impetus for the project comes from a rejection of the traditional
disciplinary divide between engineering and design and the belief that
outcomes can be more impactful with close collaboration. Although
many designers and planners have talked about bridging this divide, and
have conceptualized landscape as infrastructure, there remains a need to
articulate more concretely how landscape infrastructure actually functions
in a city at a large-scale and how multi-functionality can be embedded in
a system.
The design guidelines will provide useful illustrative visions for
 PROJECT PRIMERS

designers, planners, engineers, developers, and community organizations

engaged in the design and construction of constructed wetlands. The
project will also aid policymakers (EPA, state agencies, environmental
non-profits) and city agencies (particularly public works departments)
in making project decisions around stormwater and other water-based
resiliency issues.

CURRENT CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES

Conceptual Urbanism Challenges & Opportunities
With both climate change and global urban growth coming to a
head, stormwater will only grow as a problem in urbanized areas. Already,
there are 700 cities in the United States with combined sewer systems
that contribute stormwater pollution to natural water bodies.12 Municipal
discharges, including combined sewer overflows, and stormwater runoff
are identified as a source of impairment in roughly 121,000 miles of rivers
and streams, 1.2 million acres of lakes, 8,000 square miles of bays and
estuaries, 600 miles of coastal shoreline, 500 square miles of ocean,
and 72,000 acres of wetlands nationally.13 Impairment of natural systems
degrades ecosystem services that cities depend on.
In eleven American mega-regions, approximately 73 million people
live in 4,400 square miles of “urban stream deserts,” areas were streams
have been entirely buried or removed.14 Not only does this finding reveal
the highly compromised condition of the natural environment in urban
areas, it also suggests that a massive amount of people would benefit from
wetland infrastructure due to the public health and amenity benefits of
natural open space.
To date, cities have been addressing these issues through green
infrastructure, such as swales, detention ponds, green roofs, and rainwater
harvesting. Although cheaper than conventional engineered infrastructure,
the benefits of green infrastructure are still unclear due to their small scale
and piecemeal implementation.15
Even with existing rainfall patterns in both Los Angeles and Houston,
the high levels of imperviousness of urban watersheds means that large
volumes of stormwater cannot be accommodated on available urban land
at a reasonable cost. Moreover, the seasonality of rainfall in some areas
means that long dry periods will harm wetland plants and diminish the
capacity of the wetland to treat stormwater when it is available. Climate
change will exacerbate both of these problems by lengthening and
intensifying wet or dry cycles.
Historically, people disdained wetlands out of the belief that they
spread disease and impeded travel, agriculture, and urban construction.
Meanwhile, their benefits remained unknown or ignored. For these
reasons, many people today continue to hold negative perceptions of
wetlands, especially when a wetland does not conform to public aesthetic

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MIT NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM

preferences for landscapes that look healthy and complex, but also orderly
and ‘natural.’16 Achieving these attributes requires more than attending to
the engineering performance of a wetland; successful wetland projects
need careful landscape design and regular maintenance to earn public
acceptance.
Furthermore, cities face a learning curve with operating and maintaining
landscape infrastructure. The skills, equipment, and knowledge required to
care for storm pipes and treatment plants is different than those required to
care for dynamic wetland landscapes. Cities have run on the former model
for many decades. Yet because no city yet relies on green infrastructure at
a large scale, little precedent or knowledge exists for the latter. Although
cities are interested in stormwater wetlands, they are also hesitant to build
such projects because of negative perceptions and the economic and
political risk involved with building a new infrastructural type.

Organizational and Institutional Challenges

With all natural systems— water being no exception— there is a
mismatch between administrative and natural boundaries, necessitating
regional cooperation that often does not exist. Moreover, multiple agencies
may have oversight over the same issue or geography. For example, the
project to restore the 600-acre Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles is an
effort by three state agencies and will involve multiple permits from other
state and federal agencies, as well as community buy-in. The multiplicity
of stakeholders, while perhaps useful in keeping checks and balances, has
also delayed the project for over a decade.
Funding mechanisms for infrastructure projects are fewer as the need
becomes greater. American cities need $298 billion over the next 20 years
for wastewater and stormwater management and capital investment.17
But federal funding sources for water infrastructure are diminishing. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faced a budget cut that will largely
be achieved by a $581 million reduction in two key water infrastructure
funds.18 Meanwhile, regulations are tightening around stormwater and
CSOs. Cities will have to make strategic investments in order to meet
higher standards at a lower cost.
Once projects are constructed, there may be further challenges with
maintenance and operations as they may fall under the prevue of various
agencies and heavy regulation. Also, wetland projects may undergo an
extensive period in their inception where their performance is suboptimal.19
Obtaining extra resources to stabilize performance and gaining public
acceptance become political difficulties in this period.

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FIGURE 5
ADVANCED URBANISM MODELS Plan of Olmsted’s Back Bay
Fens in Boston.
Source: Olmsted Archives,
Principles & Theories
National Park Service
The overarching principle is the seamless integration between
landscape architectural design and fluid mechanics engineering, carried out
by the simultaneous development of hydrologic function, design ideation,
and recreational programming, in a replicable wetland cell. If successful,
urban wetlands can be used to address water resiliency issues and open
space needs of cities simultaneously in the age of climate-change induced
flooding.

Precedents
Currently, there are no precedents for wetland projects that demonstrate
the above principles. Wetland projects led by engineers, such as the South
Los Angeles Wetland Park, offer a conventional wetland design with a
perimeter trail. Although the performance of the wetland is closely tracked,
it does need to be supplemented with drinking water in the dry season,
which has made the project controversial. Wetland projects led by designers,
such as Turenscape’s large-scale wetland projects in China, offer a lot of
urban amenities and supposedly offer flood protection and water treatment
benefits, however, the performance of these wetlands is not tracked.
The closest precedent for this project is the work of Frederick Law
Olmsted in the nineteenth century, who brilliantly merged performance,
program, and aesthetics into his landscape projects, including the Back
Bay Fens in Boston and Central Park in New York City. However, there is
one important difference between the work of Olmsted and this project:
Olmsted hid the performative aspects of his landscape through his English-
derived naturalistic aesthetic.20 A new aesthetic can be found that is not
wholly imitating nature nor seeking to hide the performative functions of
the landscape. [Figure 5]

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MIT NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM

Taylor Yard Site

Los Angeles, CA LA River
Site Area: 45.66 acres
Low Flow: 1.19 cfs
First Flush: 1 inch
85% storm: 7230 cfs LA River Watershed Watershed

TaylorYard TaylorYard

to Downtown

to Downtown

Buffalo Bayou Site

Houston, Texas
Site Area: xx acres
Low Flow: xx cfs
First Flush: 1 inch
85% storm: xx cfs
Buffalo Bayou
Brays Bayou

Brays Bayou Buffalo Bayou

Downtown

Downtown

FIGURE 6 Project Vision & Goal

Potential demonstration
areas in Los Angeles and The vision of this project is to illustrate the full potential of a system
Houston. of urban constructed wetlands to be multi-functional infrastructure that
contributes to the resiliency of a region and to a city’s urban amenities.
The design guidelines will feature a catalog of design options that are
dependent on resiliency goals, urban programming needs, and local
environmental conditions.

IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGIC VISION

Besides land acquisition and regulatory challenges, cost and public
acceptance are two key implementation issues. Complex landforms can
be costly to build, however, if all positive externalities were calculated
they may outweigh costs.21 Public acceptance depends on perceptions
of wetlands. Although they have been improving over time, studies have
revealed that the public has certain preferences that might not be well
matched to ecological performance.22
Wetland typologies will be developed according to a set of
programmatic requirements (recreation, agriculture, conservation)
matched with stormwater goals (water treatment, flood protection, and/
or groundwater recharge). The stormwater goal for a site depends on
climate, soil conditions, location in the hydrologic network (upstream
versus downstream), and watershed and site size.

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 PROJECT PRIMERS

Potential Demonstration Areas [Figure 6]

-- Los Angeles: Taylor Yard (Los Angeles River) and spreading ground
sites (San Gabriel River)
-- Houston: Buffalo Bayou downtown site and northeastern residential
sites

The building of a constructed wetland infrastructure system would

be subject to local and federal stormwater rules. At the municipal level,
cities often have requirements for site-level stormwater management,
such as capturing one inch of water and retaining it for twenty-four hours.
At a federal level, all cities are subject to National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System rules that regulate stormwater runoff.

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MIT NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM

Endnotes
1 “National Water Quality Inventory: Report to Congress” (Environmental Protection
Agency, 2004), http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guidance/cwa/305b/
upload/2009_05_20_305b_2004report_report2004pt1.pdf; United States
Government Accountability Office, “Freshwater: Supply Concerns Continue,
and Uncertainties Complicate Planning,” May 2014; National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, “United States Flood Loss Report- Water Year
2014,” n.d., http://www.nws.noaa.gov/hic/summaries/WY2014.pdf.

2 Thomas E Dahl and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Status and Trends of Wetlands
in the Conterminous United States 2004 to 2009 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Dept. of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Fisheries and Habitat
Conservation, 2011), 16.

3 “The Greater Los Angeles County Open Space for Habitat and Recreation Plan”
(Greater Los Angeles County Integrated Regional Water Management Plan,
June 2012), 17, http://www.ladpw.org/wmd/irwmp/docs/Prop84/GLAC_
OSHARP_Report_Final.pdf; John S. Jacob et al., “Houston-Area Freshwater
Wetland Loss, 1992-2010” (Texas Coastal Watershed Program, n.d.), http://
tcwp.tamu.edu/files/2015/06/WetlandLossPub.pdf.

4 Jared Orsi, Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

5 Celina Balderas Guzmán, “Strategies for Systemic Urban Constructed Wetlands”

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013), 11, http://hdl.handle.
net/1721.1/80907.

6 Ibid.; Andrew Karvonen, Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the
Sustainable City (MIT Press, 2011), http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhm9z.

7 See “Systemic Wetlands” chapter in Balderas Guzmán, “Strategies for Systemic

Urban Constructed Wetlands,” 14, 97–105.

8 J.N Carleton et al., “Factors Affecting the Performance of Stormwater Treatment

Wetlands,” Water Research 35, no. 6 (April 2001): 1552–62, doi:10.1016/S0043-
1354(00)00416-4; Two examples of design guidelines: Thomas R Schueler
and Anacostia Resoration Team, Design of Stormwater Wetland Systems:
Guidelines for Creating Diverse and Effective Stormwater Wetlands in the
Mid-Atlantic Region (Washington, D.C.: Anacostia Restoration Team, Dept. of
Environmental Programs, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments,
1992); This is an update to Schueler’s work: Karen Cappiella et al., “The Next
Generation of Stormwater Wetlands” (Center for Watershed Protection,
February 2008).

9 See “Systemic Wetlands” chapter in Balderas Guzmán, “Strategies for Systemic

Urban Constructed Wetlands,” 97–104, 115; Momentum is building in cities
to increase stormwater capture: Adam Nagourney, “Storm Water, Long a
Nuisance, May Be a Parched California’s Salvation,” The New York Times,

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 PROJECT PRIMERS

February 19, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/us/storm-water-

long-a-nuisance-may-be-a-parched-californias-salvation.html; Monte Morin,
“DWP to Unveil Plan to Capture Storm Runoff,” Los Angeles Times, June
25, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-stormwater-plan-
20150625-story.html.

10 Peter Dizikes, “Using Plants to Purify Canal Water,” MIT News, April 7, 2010,
http://news.mit.edu/2010/italy-water-0407.

11 Balderas Guzmán, “Strategies for Systemic Urban Constructed Wetlands.”

12 United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Greening CSO Plans: Planning

and Modeling Green Infrastructure for Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO)
Control,” March 2014, 5.

13 “National Summary of State Information | Water Quality Assessment and TMDL

Information | US EPA,” accessed March 24, 2016, https://ofmpub.epa.gov/
waters10/attains_nation_cy.control#prob_source.

14 Jacob A. Napieralski and Thomaz Carvalhaes, “Urban Stream Deserts: Mapping a

Legacy of Urbanization in the United States,” Applied Geography 67 (February
2016): 129–39, doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2015.12.008.

15 Committee on Reducing Stormwater Discharge Contributions to Water Pollution,

National Research Council, Urban Stormwater Management in the United
States (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2009), 1.

16 Meredith Frances Dobbie, “Public Aesthetic Preferences to Inform Sustainable

Wetland Management in Victoria, Australia,” Landscape and Urban Planning
120 (December 2013): 188, doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2013.08.018; See
“Histories of Wetlands in the United States” chapter in Balderas Guzmán,
“Strategies for Systemic Urban Constructed Wetlands,” 17–32.

17 “CWNS 2008 Report to Congress | Clean Watersheds Needs Survey | US EPA,”

accessed January 25, 2015, http://water.epa.gov/scitech/datait/databases/
cwns/2008reportdata.cfm; American Society of Civil Engineers, “2013 Report
Card For America’s Infrastructure,” 2013, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.
org.

18 The two key federal sources are the State Clean Water Revolving Fund and the
Drinking Water Revolving Fund. Patrick Ambrosio, “President Proposes Cut
To EPA Funding for Fiscal Year 2015,” Bloomberg, March 6, 2014, http://www.
bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/president-proposes-cut-to-epa-funding-
for-fiscal-year-2015.html; OCFO US EPA, “FY 2015 Budget,” Overviews and
Factsheets, accessed January 25, 2015, http://www2.epa.gov/planandbudget/
fy2015; Ronald White, “Congress Slashes EPA Budget Again Despite Strong
Public Support for Strengthening Health Protections | Center for Effective
Government,” accessed January 25, 2015, http://www.foreffectivegov.org/
blog/congress-slashes-epa-budget-again-despite-strong-public-support-
strengthening-health-protection.

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MIT NORMAN B. LEVENTHAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED URBANISM

19 Shahram Kharaghani, Conversation about stormwater projects in the city of Los

Angeles with the Department of Sanitation Watershed Protection Program
Manager, November 10, 2015.

20 1. Anne Whiston Spirn, “The Poetics of City and Nature: Towards a New
Aesthetic for Urban Design,” Landscape Journal 7, no. 2 (1988): 108–26.

21 M.J. Vanaskie, R.D. Myers, and J.T. Smullen, “Planning-Level Cost Estimates
for Green Stormwater Infrastructure in Urban Watersheds,” 2010, 547–58,
doi:10.1061/41099(367)48; Carolyn Kousky et al., “Strategically Placing
Green Infrastructure: Cost-Effective Land Conservation in the Floodplain,”
Environmental Science & Technology 47, no. 8 (April 16, 2013): 3563–70,
doi:10.1021/es303938c; See the chapter “The Cost & Value of Constructed
Wetlands,” Balderas Guzmán, “Strategies for Systemic Urban Constructed
Wetlands,” 107–13.

22 Dobbie, “Public Aesthetic Preferences to Inform Sustainable Wetland

Management in Victoria, Australia”; Meredith Dobbie and Ray Green,
“Public Perceptions of Freshwater Wetlands in Victoria, Australia,”
Landscape and Urban Planning 110 (February 2013): 143–54, doi:10.1016/j.
landurbplan.2012.11.003; R.c. Rooney et al., “Replacing Natural Wetlands with
Stormwater Management Facilities: Biophysical and Perceived Social Values,”
Water Research 73 (April 15, 2015): 17–28, doi:10.1016/j.watres.2014.12.035.

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