Properties that include green space and common areas for people to interact in are more beautiful, livable, and desirable. However, attracting people also means taking into consideration car parking. Parking, while a necessity, is not the optimal use of land in any project. Architects and developers often have to compromise their designs or reduce the amount of revenue-generating space to accommodate the required parking space. In many cases, space is at a premium, and the project cannot go forward unless an architect can somehow “create space” to account for the needed parking density.

A compact automated parking system is the solution to minimize the impact of parking. It creates more space that can benefit the property as a whole and increase the return on investment (ROI) for your clients.

Low Impact Development (LID) has several advantages over traditional stormwater management approaches. Since impervious pavement is the main source of stormwater runoff, LID strategies recommend permeable paving for hard surfaces. The course discusses LID, its goals and principles, and how they are achieved. It provides an overview of permeable pavements, and more particularly, plastic permeable grid paver systems and how they support LID goals.

The magnitude and negative impacts of solid waste have become increasingly apparent, especially in regard to plastics and their presence in the oceans. As a result, there have been many approaches to rethinking what constitutes waste and how it can be avoided or used/managed in a more sustainable manner. This course explores these emerging approaches to waste management planning and illustrates them with current examples of solid waste management plans and initiatives from various countries around the globe. In the first part of this course, we’ll dig into the impact of our growing waste problem and some methods for rethinking this waste. In the second, we’ll provide guidance for the design of a sustainable community waste management plan.