More Than a Green Roof: An Analysis of Low Impact Development Policies and Practices

Abstract

While the concept of green infrastructure is becoming increasingly popular, practitioners and institutions that implement it have varying perspectives on its meaning. This case study aimed to understand how a medium-sized municipality defines green infrastructure as a concept and incorporates it into official policies and related development plans to encourage green stormwater management strategies. It further sought to understand how the analyzed policies and related plans stimulate low impact development implementation in response to climate change adaptation efforts. A content analysis of eight official documents was conducted to determine how the City of St. Catharines, Ontario defines green infrastructure and includes it in its policies and plans. NVivo 12 was used to gather the meaning of green infrastructure and related terms qualitatively. The findings discuss how green infrastructure was defined and incorporated, as well as the consistency of its usage and meaning across the sampled official documents.