Rainhaven
Advocating for 10,000 Rain Gardens
Proposing a civic engagement platform for promoting rain gardens as a future-proofing tool to help manage stormwater and beautify cities
Rainhaven
Advocating For 10,000 Rain Gardens
Overview
Research, design and proposal
Duration
3 Months:
4x Workshops
Team Meetings
Culminating Pitch Event
Post-Pitch Community Events
Team Members
Brandon Sullivan
Developer
David Potter
Business Analyst
Adam Chiaravelli
Strategic Partnerships
Matthew Crans
Communication Designer
Context
Exploring civic resiliency and water systems in Hamilton, Ontario
Youthful Cities is a social enterprise focused on building civic resiliency through data-driven problem solving. The group facilitates pop-up innovation labs—Future City Builders—in cities across Canada.
Future City Builders recruits civically-engaged youth between 18-29 to explore the big issues impacting their cities, and asks them to develop innovative solutions with guidance and resources from Youthful Cities and partner organizations.
Hamilton youth surveyed by Youthful Cities identified water as a major topic of interest, leading to the development of Hamilton’s Future City Builders pop-up lab.
Founder Robert Barnard defines the concept of the “Youthful City”
Solution
How rain gardens beautify cities and mitigate flood risks
My project team proposed a civic platform focused on promoting rain gardens as a future-proofing tool for mitigating flood risk and beautifying cities.
As global temperatures continue to rise, flooding and stormwater overflow present an ever-increasing risk to communities and property. Rain gardens can mitigate this risk by diverting excess stormwater, reducing the load on sewer systems.
We calculated that the addition of 10,000 rain gardens to properties across the city of Hamilton could effectively divert the measured volume of overflow that had entered the Hamilton Harbour in that calendar year, impacting water quality and posing a public health risk.
Process
Youthful collaboration and project-based learning
Over a series of workshops, our cohort learned about Hamilton’s water systems, practiced design thinking to brainstorm and analyse ideas, and formed teams to develop ideas into pitch-ready proposals.
Photos from workshops and lectures hosted at Co-Motion in Hamilton, Ontario
Key components of the Future City Builders innovation lab, and how our team approached the challenge
1.
Lecture Series: Learning from Experts in the Field
2.
Workshops: Design Thinking for Social Enterprise
Ideation — “forming, storming, norming”
3.
Scoping and Development: Forming Teams + Collaborating on Research, Strategy, Pitch and Proposal Writing
- Collaborative research and strategy, regrouping to share and discuss ideas and learning
- Dividing roles and responsibilities based on areas of expertise
- Core premise under investigation: rain gardens as an effective intervention for stormwater overflow management at the civic level — added benefit of beautifying outdoor spaces
- Why rain gardens? Team researched the science of rain gardens and conducted data-driven analysis; used real data to connect metrics of overflow volume with the metric capacity of rain gardens
- Ideation: Develop a civic engagement platform (website, social media) — connecting the public with information and resources; implement a local rain garden map and total garden counter, measuring distance remaining to reaching the end goal of adding 10,000 rain gardens to the local civic fabric
- Ideation: Creating a public art piece to promote the cause by installing a creatively-designed rain garden in a highly visible area (McMaster U) — tool to a) promote the platform, b) communicate the core message, and c) demonstrate the concept in action
My Contributions
Utilizing creative tech background to tell the story of Rainhaven
As one of the few designers participating in the lab, I brought a unique blend of creative design and research/writing acumen to the project.
Design I contributed to the Rainhaven proposal
1.
Branding and logo design
2.
Website mockups
3.
3D modeling
4.
Deck and infographic design
5.
Research, strategy and proposal-writing (team collaboration)
Culminating Event
Delivering a winning pitch to key stakeholders
Our team pitched to a panel of key stakeholders, including representatives from Evergreen Brickworks, RBC Future Launch and the Mayor of Hamilton.
Rainhaven was awarded first place for our pitch, receiving $5k in grant money to continue developing the project.
Beyond The Lab
Leveraging momentum to pursue strategic partnerships
After the culmination of the innovation lab and pitch event, we continued to advocate for Rainhaven’s mission by participating in workshops and pursuing strategic partnerships.
Our team ended up donating the majority of our prize grant to Depave Paradise, a local organization focused on under-utilized paved spaces to install rain gardens.
Summary of team’s activities post-pitch
Presenting our work to Burlington Green members
