Rooftop Gardens Pitched for Bus Stops as Cheap Remedy to NYC’s Flood Problems
Sourced from Gothamist
As New York City spends billions of dollars preparing for its next extreme flood, new research suggests a cheaper, greener resource may already be scattered across the five boroughs: bus stop shelters. The concept would transform all the roofs of bus stops into urban gardens to sop up rainwater.
Ben Matusow, an urban planner, developed the idea as part of his master’s at the Pratt Institute’s Center for Planning and the Environment. He pitched it to the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) last spring, given the agency’s bus stop shelter contract is up for renewal. The idea comes also with the opportunity to enshrine new greenery, which could help absorb carbon emissions and aid urban life.
Taken together, NYC’s bus shelters cover an area the size of four football fields. That means in an average year, they protect New Yorkers’ heads from over 6.5 million gallons of rainwater, which flows off the shelters onto sidewalks and into sewers.
Matusow’s idea centers around how much water small urban gardens (or green roofs) might be able to absorb if installed on each shelter. By his math, green roofs are less expensive than the city’s existing adaptation plans for extreme rainfall and better for the environment.
“The most important thing I found is there are opportunities everywhere to improve the sustainability of the city and the world,” said Matusow, who graduated in 2022 and started a new gig at DOT last month. “Basically, whenever you look into any city agency project there’s always an opportunity to make it greener.”
His analysis centered around how NYC is already committing billions of dollars to flood prevention, comparing the cost of those measures with the rollout of green bus shelters in other cities, both in the U.S. and abroad. Boston, Philadelphia and Buffalo are among seven American cities to have trialed green-roofed shelters, along with cities in countries from Brazil and Japan, to Amsterdam.
From the Living Architecture Monitor
