Water always finds its way—fighting nature is laborious, expensive, and unsustainable. Managing stormwater and protecting waterways, the bane of urban planners everywhere, is further complicated by chaotic storms and flooding in this age of climate change. In Sustainable Stormwater Management, author Tom Liptan encourages landscape architects, designers, engineers, architects, and city planners to look to the landscape for innovative solutions to modern urban challenges, using natural systems that have been in place since, well—forever!
The book is divided into two sections. Landscape Stormwater Design begins by laying out fundamental guiding principles that promote a new/old shift in perspective. And it all comes down to putting water in the landscape. Every surface, every parking lot, gutter, and curbcut, every garden, every rooftop is an opportunity to successfully “capture, detain, treat, and transport water in ways that reduce costs, increase environmental benefits, eliminate unnecessary gray (conventional) stormwater facilities, function sustainably over an extended lifespan, and look good while accomplishing these goals.” Liptan fully acknowledges that daylighting water m...
