Virginia Planning Guide

Evaluating and Conserving Green Infrastructure Across the Landscape:
A Practitioner’s Guide

This guide is based upon five years of research and field tests by the Green Infrastructure Center Inc. (GIC) that sought to evaluate, prioritize and map natural and cultural assets in Virginia. The guide is intended to help people make land management decisions that recognize the interdependence of healthy people, strong economies and a vibrant, intact and biologically diverse landscape. Green infrastructure consists of our environmental assets – that GIC calls ‘natural assets’ – and they should be included in planning processes. Planning to conserve or restore green infrastructure ensures that communities can be vibrant, healthful and resilient.

Having clean air and water, as well as nature-based recreation, attractive views and abundant local food, depends upon considering our environmental assets as part of everyday planning. While there are other books and guides about the benefits of green infrastructure planning, this guide provides practical steps for creating green infrastructure maps and plans for a community. It draws from twelve field tests GIC conducted over six years to learn how to evaluate and conserve natural resources. These field tests were conducted in a diversity of ecological and political conditions, at multiple scales, and in varied development patterns – from wildlands and rural areas to suburbs, cities and towns.

During these field tests, the GIC determined three things:
• How to create green infrastructure maps that highlight the most significant resources for conservation.
• Steps to integrate those maps into local and regional plans.
• How to communicate the importance of this work to local officials, planners, developers and others.

Print version

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PRINT edition of the Virginia State Planning Guide
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You might also be interested in our National Guide:

Strategic Green Infrastructure Planning—A Multi-Scale Approach

Our national guide to Green Infrastructure Planning has more information on green infrastructure planning in urban environments. It includes the planning steps found in the state guides, with updated statistics.
$49 available in paperback and e-book from Island Press.