Northampton Designs with Nature
Northampton, MA
Linnean led the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Planning (MVP) Process for the City of Northampton in 2018, which highlighted citywide stormwater and flood management as an increasing concern. Following this finding, the City applied for and was awarded an MVP Action Grant for Northampton Designs with Nature, a project to assess ten sites for potential green infrastructure design and to develop designs for a subset of those sites.
GZA Geoenvironmental, Inc. led the engineering assessment and design development for the project sites, in conjunction with developing a set of criteria that prioritized sites with the highest opportunity for flood reduction, enhancement of natural ecological systems, and community benefits.
Linnean led the community process, which included activities with a high school class to engage students on nature-based solutions for resilience and a public workshop to identify potential for the sites. The workshop focused on gathering insight on how the sites are used, their envisioned potential, as well as design principles based on community values that would help build a number of co-benefits into the sites’ designs.