The Green Futures Lab works to improve the health of our water bodies and sustain our water resources through green infrastructure innovations, ecosystem restoration, and open space protection.
Climate Responsible City
With cities consuming significantly more energy and producing more greenhouse gas emissions, cities, and urban areas more broadly are critical in mitigating, or reducing the severity of, global climate change. For instance, how do we get to the places we need to go? What volume of GHG emissions are produced by city services like providing...
Sweetgrass Living Shorelines Project
Project Background The Sweetgrass Living Shorelines project examined the benefit of constructed floating wetlands to provide missing habitat on urbanized shorelines for outmigrating juvenile salmon in the freshwater Lake Washington Basin. This project built on the lessons learned from the Duwamish Floating Wetlands, testing new living shoreline prototypes. The GFL convened an expert Urban Shores...
Marine Floating Wetlands
Project Background To test the viability of floating wetlands in marine waters, the GFL and EarthCorps have installed customized BioMatrix eco-islands along a dock at Shilshole Bay Marina. The living shoreline units are again aimed at providing missing habitat for fish and to begin to restore wetland functions along urbanized shorelines where traditional restoration is...
Duwamish Floating Wetlands
Project Background The lower Duwamish River and transition zone (River miles 1-10) is critical to salmon population survival and return because this is where juvenile salmon forage, shelter and physiologically transition from living in freshwater to saltwater (Ostergaard, 2014). In order for out-migrating juveniles to achieve this transition they require low gradient intertidal mudflats lined...
Coupeville Stormwater Park
Inspired by the urban design and water quality projects represented in the Waterfront Case Studies booklet as part of the Waterfront Stormwater Solutions research, the GFL designed multi-functional stormwater treatment systems that collect, clean, cool and recycle stormwater at the end of the pipe before it is released into the Puget Sound. Along with water...
Waterfront Stormwater Solutions
The impact of land use, impervious surfaces, stormwater pollutants and climate change are critical threats to the livability of our urban areas. Considering that a majority of the population is concentrated along waterfronts, developing solutions to these issues becomes all the more pressing. The intent of the Waterfront Stormwater Solutions is to develop and inspire...
Stormwater Web Portal Feasibility
It is well documented that the leading cause of degradation to Puget Sound arises from stormwater pollution. The Puget Sound region’s current and projected urbanization, growing coverage of impervious surfaces and antiquated stormwater infrastructure increases stormwater pollution that poses significant ecological and human health risks. There have been substantial breakthroughs in landscape solutions that remediate...
Green Roof Database and Evaluation
Green Roof Survey: The 2010 Seattle Green Roof Survey provided a snapshot of green roofs for the City of Seattle creating a baseline understanding from which to build a more comprehensive inventory and tracking tool for the city’s green roof built stock, green roof benefits and challenges, and the emerging green roof industry. Information about...
Floating Wetlands Research & Education
In 2013 and again in 2017 and 2018, the Green Futures Lab conducted seminars on floating wetlands. Students surveyed floating wetlands literature and precedents, investigated their benefits for habitat, stormwater cleansing and water temperature regulation, and then developed new design concepts for several freshwater locations. Each site’s biological parameters drove the designs. Carrying the momentum...
Biodiversity Green Wall System
Spearheaded and designed by the Green Futures Lab, the UW Biodiversity Green Wall, Edible Green Screen, and Water Harvesting System was completed in the fall of 2012, transforming two blank concrete walls into lush urban habitat. Located in the southeast corner of Gould Hall on 15th Avenue and NE 40th Street, the award-winning project has...
Manchester Stormwater Park
The Green Futures Lab has monitored the effectiveness of Kitsap County’s Manchester Stormwater Park in treating pollutants from the upstream contributing basin, collecting and analyzing samples over the course of one year. Results indicate that both the system of level perimeter wetland cells filled with proprietary soil media, and the vertical spiral rain gardens with...
Porous Public Space: People + Rainwater + Cities
How can design help us to regard stormwater as a resource rather than waste? How can the celebration of water bring people together in public space? How might a heightened awareness of water– positioned in its unique geophysical context–promote an urban life culture with an authentic sense of place? Interns Roxanne Lee and James Wohlers...
Urban Play Handbook
Play brings people together, stimulates creativity, alleviates stress, and cultivates delight to both the participant and the viewer. Play can also break down social barriers that often prevent diverse groups from interacting and equitably sharing public space. Therefore, providing opportunities for play in the urban public realm is an essential tactic for creating lively, just...
Reflections: People on the Waterfront
In an ideal world, waterfronts would be available to all people. In most U.S. cities these prime sites are in private or industrial hands. Seattle has over 200 miles of shoreline, most of it inaccessible to the general public. The healing power of shorelines, water access and views are available only to the privileged. Reflections:...
Lake Forest Park 100-year Legacy Plan
As a member of a professional consulting team, the Green Futures Lab led the public process for developing a 100-year green infrastructure plan for the community of Lake Forest Park. The Lab facilitated a Green infrastructure festival to solicit community input, a Green Legacy design charrette to engage the public in planning their green infrastructure...
Global Green Lecture Series
Global Green is a lecture/panel series showcasing Sustainable Planning and Design in the Pacific Northwest and Denmark. Funded by the Scan Design Foundation. The themes to date have been: Autumn 2023 “City Nature and the Nature of Cities” Speaker: Rasmus Astrup, SLA Spring 2023 “Copenhagen’s BLOXHUB: Nordic Hub for Sustainable Urbanization” Speaker: Martine Kildeby, BLOXHUB...
Burlington at the Crossroads
In 2013, Burlington, WA—a small agricultural city located in the Skagit Valley north of Seattle—engaged an interdisciplinary team of graduate students and a faculty advisor from the University of Washington Green Futures Lab (GFL) to generate ideas for a Comprehensive Plan update. City planners and the GFL convened numerous public workshops, forums, and presentations to...
Regional Open Space Strategy (ROSS)
The Puget Sound basin is facing significant ecological and economic pressures, which are predicted to be further exacerbated by our rapid population growth and increasing intensity of climate change impacts. These stresses affect water quality and supply, fish, farm and forest production, flood and other environmental hazard vulnerability, economic opportunities and quality of life, and...
