Blue-green development merged open space with storm-water storage.

Evidence

A handful of Leopold’s suggestions became a new ideal – “blue-green development.” The phrase was coined in the mid-1960s by a Federal Housing Administration official, and the concept soon had the support of civil engineers and landscape architects. The basic idea was to combine storm water storage and open space. “Rather than constructing large artificial drainage channels in urbanizing areas,” explained the authors of one of the Geological Survey reports on water in the urban environment, “the developer preserves the natural drainage channels and flood plains and creates artificial lakes by impoundment or by a combination of impoundment and excavation. These lakes serve the purposes of providing recreation, an esthetically pleasing environment, and space for the temporary storage of storm runoff.” By the early 1970s, the idea had shaped the development of a number of projects, from a low-cost subdivision in El Paso to the celebrated “new town” of Woodlands, Texas. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 814