ABSTRACT
It is fitting that major advances in the conception and application of green infrastructure at the metropolitan scale have occurred in dense, brownfield Philadelphia, seat of the program in ecological planning and design that Ian McHarg guided for years to the benefit of greenfield development well outside its urban boundaries. In 1984, Anne Whiston published The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design which opens with an impassioned salvo: Nature pervades the City, forging bonds between the city and the air, earth, water, and living organism within and around it. Issues of air and water quality, heat island effect, storm drainage, flooding, water supply, energy efficiency, and urban vegetation and wildlife are addressed in the book, laying a broad foundation for rethinking the relationship between nature and urban land. Representing the seamless convergence of people, government, and industry, the work occupies an undistinguished spit of concrete well in the shadow of the massive Second Empire municipal building.
