Collaborative Action for Collective Change
New Orleans is no stranger to extreme weather. From hot, humid summers to frequent flash floods and increasingly strong hurricanes, this city understands the importance of learning to live with the increasing frequency of these dangerous conditions. By investing in nature-based solutions and stormwater infrastructure – rain gardens, bioswales, trees, permeable pavers, rain barrels, etc. – community organizations across the city are working to reduce flooding, cool neighborhoods, and improve air quality. With the weather getting wild (tornados, wildfires, snow!), there is an increasing need to get even more intentional and strategic about prioritizing neighborhoods with the greatest needs and projects with the greatest benefits. Groundwork New Orleans worked with 20+ grassroots organizations to develop a new Green Infrastructure dashboard and identify new ways to collaboratively towards shared goals.
Visualizing Collective Need and Collective Action
With so many small organizations working on neighborhood-level green infrastructure projects, coordination can be challenging, increasing the potential to overlook areas with the greatest need. To help get a better picture of ongoing work and facilitate more effective collaboration, Groundwork New Orleans, with the support of Groundwork USA, led a multi-year effort to develop a public infrastructure dashboard that visualizes the collective impact of more than two dozen grassroots organizations. The finalized New Orleans Green Infrastructure map shows the infrastructure type and location, block by block, along with details about the organizations collaborating on the projection. Additional layers on the dashboard include historic redlining maps, heat projections, flood models, and other social, environmental, and health indicators. Combined, this is a powerful tracking tool and a platform for deciding where to prioritize future projects to have the biggest impact.
from dashboard to action
In the year since the map has been publicly accessible, residents and community groups across New Orleans have been using the map to prioritize areas that need more resilience investment, decide on the most effective infrastructure interventions, and build new partnerships.
Groundwork New Orleans’s Climate Action Group – a paid advisory body comprised of eight residents and community leaders tasked with leading community education and engagement efforts around resilience – has been leveraging this new dashboard as both a planning and education tool. Last year, using data from the dashboard and real-time heat and water data collected through community walkthroughs and FLIR cameras, the Action Group identified residential and public spaces for new infrastructure installations along the most flood-prone streets in the 7th Ward. They worked with residents and landlords to finalize intervention plans, such as rain gardens, permeable pavers, trees, and French drains, and organized “Action Days” to complete the projects.
Between November 2023 and May 2024, the Action Group completed three resident-identified projects in high-priority neighborhoods. At one home, they replaced 125 sq. ft. of concrete with a rain garden featuring native plants and permeable pavement and installed a new rain barrel system to manage excess water. At a second property, they added permeable pavement and a French drain system. They also retrofitted a property in Gentilly’s 7th Ward with a French drain and rain garden to divert standing water away from the house’s foundation.
Does the small-scale approach really work?
Whether it’s new trees, a rain garden, or new green space, the benefits of these infrastructure installations not only mitigate heat and flooding, but also provide multiple economic, social, and health benefits, including better air and water quality, recreational opportunities, increased biodiversity, and reduced cost of storm damage, to communities.
Groundwork New Orleans has seen impressive returns on its stormwater management investments. At their soon-to-be-open Vision to Reality Stormwater Park, they have reclaimed a swampy plot of land underneath the highway overpass, transforming it back into a resilience hub and community gathering space.
Now outfitted with attractive green space, walking paths, and a bioswale that can capture 68,500 gallons of stormwater during precipitation events, Vision to Reality Stormwater Park is already dramatically improving flooding conditions in the surrounding neighborhoods, saving residents money on home repairs and damages. The park provides shade structures, access to culturally important plants, and safer pedestrian infrastructure for commuters, improving air quality and offering a cool space during the hot summer months. For every dollar invested in building this park, GWNOLA received a return of $7.68 in health, social, and environmental benefits.
And, this is just one of dozens of green infrastructure projects in the works across the city. While each project provides incremental improvements, the real benefits are in the collective impacts. Over the coming years, the goal is to continue to build the public infrastructure dashboard to document the full potential of collaborative grassroots action on long-term resilience.
To learn more about their resilience infrastructure efforts, visit Groundwork New Orleans.
