New tricks for older communities in the central US By Thomas A.
Smith and Jason A. Hubbart By 2030, almost 70% of the world’s
human population is predicted to live in rapidly urbanizing
metropolitan areas. Human induced pressures on water quality and
other natural resources throughout the United States and most of
the rest of the world continues to increase in concert with
urban development. To accommodate increasing human population
developmental pressures and mitigate continued environmental
impacts, innovative development techniques are being designed
low-impact development, or LID). LID is a general term used to
describe innovative engineering for residential or commercial
sites. It attempts to develop a site with minimal disruption to
the local environment and hydrology. The intent is to maintain
an area’s predevelopment flow regime by encouraging infiltration
and shallow surface storage of precipitation in order to avoid
concentrated flow. Few articles are written illustrating the
complexities of LID im