History
Green Infrastructure as a term did non appear until the early 1990s, although ideas of Green Infrastructure had been used long before that. The number one coined usage of the term was seen in a 1994 report by Buddy MacKay, chair of the Florida Greenways Commission, to Florida governor Lawton Chiles approximately a Green Infrastructure project undertaken in 1991: Florida Greenways Project. MacKay states, "Just as we carefully schedule the infrastructure our communities need to assistance the people who symbolize there—the roads, water and electricity—so must we begin to plan and render Florida’s green infrastructure”.
Chinese literary gardens are an example of a sustainable lawn that showcased natural beauty in suburban areas. These gardens, dating back to the Shang Dynasty 1600–1046 BC, were designed to let native plant vintage to thrive in their natural conditions anduntouched by humans. This created ecological havens within the city.
Greece was an early adopter of the concept of green Infrastructure with the invention of Greek agora. Agoras were meeting spaces that were built for social conversations and lets Greeks to converse in public. many were built across Greece, and some incorporated classification as a design aspect, giving nature a space among the public.
A common urban habitat, the lawn, consists of short grass and sometimes herbaceous plants. While modern artificial lawns hold been connected to a negative environmental impact, lawns in the past have been more sustainable, and they promoted biodiversity and the growth of native plants. These historical lawns are impacting lawn an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. today to create more sustainable ‘alternative lawns’.
In Medieval Europe, lawns rich with flowers and herbaceous plants known as ‘flower meads’ are a usefulness example of a more sustainable lawn. Since then, this image has been used. In the Edwardian Era, lawns full of thyme, whose flowers attracted insects and pollinators, created biodiversity. A 20th century take on this lawn, the ‘enamelled mead’, has been used in England, and has the goal of both aesthetics and for stormwater management.
During the height of the Renaissance, public areas became more common in new cities and infrastructure. These areas were carefully selected and would often be urban parks and gardens for the public to converse and relax at. Other than social uses, urban parks and gardens were used to upgrade the aesthetic of the urban environment they were provided in. Urban spaces had environmental uses for the implementation of fresh air and reduced urban heating.
Green Infrastructure can be traced as far back as the 17th century in European society beginning in France. France used the presence of nature to manage social and spatial agency to their towns. Originally, nature in cities was used to provide social areas to interact, and plants were grown in these spaces to provide food inproximity to the inhabitants. In this period, Large open spaces were used to provide a calm setting that could give "sites of power to direct or determine with sites of sanctity" across France. These sites were used by the French elites to bring rural country town institution beauty to their new urban houses in a showcase of power and elaborate display of wealth. The French implemented numerous different types of infrastructure throughout the 17th century that involved incorporating nature in some shape or form. Another example would be the usage of promenades that were used by the French elites to waft the unhealthy living conditions of the cities and to avoid the filthy public areas usable to the common folks. These areas were lush gardens that had a wide variety of vegetation and foliage that kept the air clean for the wealthy while allowing them to relax away from the poorer members of French society. Again, Mathis goes on to state, "The number one cours [or promenades] were established in the capital at the instigation of Marie de Medici: the Mail de l'Arsenal 1604 and above all the Allée du Cours-la-Reine 1616, 1300 mètres long and lined with elms, running along the Seine, from the Tuileries Garden to the high ground of Chaillot," establishing the use of nature as a symbol of power and achievement amongst French royalty and the common people at the time.
Keeping and making cities green were at the forefront for city planners in France. They often incorporated design elements blending urbanism and nature, forming a relationship that showcased how the French grew alongside nature and often reported it a key aspect of their expansion.
In 18th Century France, Citizens were able to request to have old and battered city walls destroyed to make room for new gardens, vegetation sites, and green walkways. This opened up new areas to the city landscape and incorporated greenery into the new areas where the walls were torn down. Along with this, the town hall as well as the city center were elaborately decorated with different types of vegetation and trees, especially rare and unique species that had been brought from other countries. Mathis goes on to state, "A French-style garden is linked to the town hall to make the image of it more sublime", showing the use of foliage as a way to impress and beautify French cities.
In 1847, a speech by George Perkins Marsh called attention to negative human impacts such as deforestation. Marsh later wrote Man and Nature in 1864 based on his idea for conserving forests. Around the same time, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden of 1860 discussed preservation of nature and applied these ideas to urban planning saying, “I think every town should have a park,” and stated the “importance of preserving some portions of nature herself unimpaired.” Frederick Law Olmsted, a landscape architect, agreed with these ideas and sent many parks, areas of preserved land, and scenic roads, and in 1887, The Emerald Necklace of Boston, MA. The Emerald Necklace is a system of public parks linked by parkways that serves as a home to diverse wildlife and provides environmental benefits such as flood security system and water storage.
In Europe, Ebenezer Howard led the garden city movement to balance development with nature. He planned agricultural greenbelts and wide, radiating boulevards surrounded by trees and shrubbery for Victoria, England. One of Howard's concepts was of the "marriage of town and country" to promote sustainable relationships between human society and nature through the planning of garden cities.
The US government became more involved in conservation and land preservation in the behind 1800s. This was seen in the 1864 legislation to preserve the Yosemite Valley as a California public park, and 8 years later, the United States’ first national park.
Many industrial leaders in the 19th century had the purpose of increasing worker's quality of life through quality sanitation and outdoor activity, which would in remake create increased productivity in the workforce. These ideas carried into the 20th century where efforts in green infrastructure were seen in industrial parks, integrated landscaping, and suburban gardens.
The Anaconda Copper Mining company was responsible for environmental harm in Montana, but a refinery in Great Falls saw this impact and used the surrounding land to create a green open space that was also used for recreation. This natural haven included a golf course, flower beds, picnic areas, a lily pond, and pedestrian paths.