The conversation around how to fund, implement, and scale green infrastructure (GI) has never been more urgent, with many urban areas across the United States facing a growing threat of severe flooding—but having only aging drainage infrastructure to deal with it. Updating storm and sewer systems is slow, expensive, and disruptive, so innovative GI solutions are needed to adapt rapidly to the changing reality of worsening and more frequent flooding in America’s cities.
This infrastructure gap—outdated water drainage systems and large expanses of impermeable surfaces—exists in many cities and can easily lead to catastrophic flooding if not addressed. Municipalities, building owners, and real estate developers are often ill-equipped to handle the volumes of runoff that can be suddenly generated during severe weather events. Frequent headlines are reminders that failure to take the flooding threat seriously can threaten the safety and long-term viability of housing and commercial development.
During the 2025 Charles H. Shaw Forum on Urban Community Issues, ULI convened more than 40 leaders from commercial real estate, local government, and nonprofits to explore how to bridge the gap between vision and implementation of GI. Building on two decades of ULI’s Shaw Forums, this year’s gathering—hosted by the Randall Lewis for Sustainability in Real Estate’s Urban Resilience Program—focused on funding, collaboration, and policy to accelerate implementation of resilient and equitable urban stormwater infrastructure.
1. Inaction Is Not Free
Forum participants agreed that delaying investment in flood resilience carries a steep price tag. Data from AON’s Catastrophe Insight report show flood hazards contributed to nearly $2 trillion in cumulative economic losses in 2024. These numbers underscore the urgency of upgrading today’s outdated water systems.
Hoboken, New Jersey, provides a compelling case study. With 75 percent of the city located within the coastal floodplain, chief resilience officer and business administrator Caleb Stratton described how his team used cost-benefit analysis to show the true cost of the status quo. “We clearly needed to discuss whether the cost of inaction was higher than the cost of action,” Stratton said. This analysis helped Hoboken secure financing for its comprehensive flood resilience projects—all part of its now-renowned “resist, delay, store, discharge” strategy.
Shalini Vajjhala, executive director of PRE Collective, also spoke about the need to quantify flood impacts to help with project financing. “The key is to focus less on future benefits of GI and more on current, balance-sheet value,” she said. “That’s what gets projects financed.”
2. Data and Modeling Are Vital to Effective GI Investments
Data-driven insights are often the backbone of successful GI implementation. Participants emphasized that data collection and modeling can be used to prioritize where the siting of green infrastructure will have the most impact, as well as to evaluate progress over time.
To develop an effective stormwater management strategy, Hoboken took the time to understand their geographic low points, as well as the capacity and flow between sewer sheds. They were then able to “look within the sewer shed for either investments of additional storage or breaking points of interconnection between the sewer sheds,” Stratton said.
Matt Johnson, environmental protection specialist with Washington, D.C.’s Department of Energy and Environment, shared the importance of data collection to the city’s Stormwater Retention Credit (SRC) trading program. “Through collecting data like drainage area, porosity, and depth, we can model real storm events to see GI performance. We use this data to drive the case for sites that are generating credits and to showcase the efficacy of the program.”
Janice Barnes, managing partner at Climate Adaption Partners, added: “There are interesting discussions about digital twins [virtual models of real-life infrastructure systems or places] to scope out what collective impact could look like and how that incentivizes collaboration.” Participants noted that these virtual models of real-life infrastructure can be important for showing site-level impacts and for steering investments to high-impact areas.
3. Early Collaboration Can Catalyze Shared Visions that Facilitate Collective Action
Shaw Forum participants emphasized that early collaboration across sectors—such as public agencies, developers, utilities, and nonprofits—can be essential to successful GI implementation. “Cross-sector collaboration breaks down barriers and unlocks opportunities, enabling innovation,” said Pippa Brashear, partner and resilience principal at SCAPE Landscape Architecture.
Many Forum participants agreed on the need for early and frequent collaboration to ensure successful GI projects, noting the benefits of aligning around core principles and values that can shape GI tactics. The positive impacts that early collaboration and cross-sector partnerships have on project delivery timeline, project financing, and GI maintenance are written about in more detail in Georgetown Climate Center’s Green Infrastructure Toolkit.
As an example, Brashear shared lessons from SCAPE’s work in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood, where collaboration between city officials, community members, and nonprofits helped transform cleaned up sections of a Superfund site into a resilient, dynamic space. Aligning early around shared principles like equity and resilience, as well as logistics like maintenance—before deciding on project tactics—ensured that each partner’s contribution strengthened the overall outcomes.
4. Education, Outreach, and Communication Are Key to Successful Cross-Sector Partnerships
Shaw Forum participants pointed out that education, outreach, and communication underpin all successful GI projects. Roland Jones of the Clean Water Partnership in Prince George’s County, Maryland, underscored how two-way communication with both community members and public officials enables better results. “Outreach is tremendously important—especially since community members can tell you if there are maintenance issues that need to be addressed,” Jones said. He also stressed the importance of seeing community members as vital partners in GI implementation and longevity.
This collaboration with community members is a key component of Clean Water Partnership, the first ever Community-Based Public-Private Partnership (CBP3) developed to meet stormwater management requirements. The partnership emphasizes educating decision makers and residents about the broad benefits of GI—ensuring greater community buy-in. These practices align with guidance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which encourages community inclusion to increase well-being and support.
Jones also highlighted programs that educate children about stormwater management and flood risk mitigation. “If you educate the kids, they’ll go home and educate the parents,” he said. “It makes the program much more successful.”
Communicating GI benefits to public officials can also stimulate support for GI projects. Participants agreed that reframing GI as a tool to improve public health and quality of life—not just stormwater infrastructure—can broaden support and political will. Demonstrating community support can be crucial in helping persuade politicians and decision-makers to endorse GI projects.
5. Project Co-Benefits Can Garner Multiple Revenue Sources
A recurring theme throughout the forum was the importance of leveraging GI’s many co-benefits—including flood mitigation, recreation, safety, and quality of life improvements—to attract diverse funding streams.
Hoboken’s resiliency parks offer a model for this approach. By integrating flood storage with public open space and Vision Zero street safety design principles, the city accessed funding from FEMA, state revolving loan funds, Vision Zero, NJ Green Acres, and local park programs. This success demonstrates how blending financial sources focused on green space, infrastructure, and transportation can make complex projects feasible.
6. Collaboration and Innovative Funding Tactics Can Help Overcome Traditional GI Maintenance Barriers
Long-term maintenance remains one of the most persistent challenges of green infrastructure implementation. Unlike centralized gray systems, GI requires distributed, site-level care, which can strain traditional funding and operations models. Forum discussions emphasized that collaboration and creative financing can help reduce this burden.
Hoboken provides an example of how cities can rethink maintenance to support next-generation GI systems. As part of its “resist, delay, store, discharge” strategy, the city capitalizes early operations and maintenance costs directly into its project contracts. “We finance the first two years of maintaining all of our sites by the contractor—it’s like commissioning a sewer plant,” Stratton explained. By embedding these costs up front, Hoboken ensures that GI performs as intended and reduces uncertainty about long-term budgeting.
Forum participants also discussed the importance of clarifying maintenance responsibilities early in the planning process. Brashear noted that aligning on logistics before selecting GI tactics helps avoid future gaps. Drawing from SCAPE’s work in the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn, she described how nonprofits assumed maintenance responsibilities for city-owned green infrastructure and trained volunteer stewards—an arrangement that strengthened long-term GI performance.
Looking ahead, Brashear noted that effective stewardship and maintenance programs cannot rely solely on volunteers—they require sustained funding and trained personnel. She suggested that maintenance-focused business improvement districts (BIDs), as currently proposed in Gowanus, could help formalize funding streams for GI upkeep. Participants agreed that pairing innovative funding models with collaborative governance can help cities overcome the maintenance challenges that often limit the effectiveness of GI at scale.
7. Effective Incentives Match a Clear Value Proposition with Technical Assistance
Forum participants emphasized that well-designed incentives are essential to driving private-sector participation in GI implementation. Programs that combine a clear value proposition with transparent data, technical assistance, and flexible financing tools were consistently highlighted as the most effective.
Taylor Ralph, founder and president of REAL Building Consultants LLC, noted that aligning incentives with developer priorities can shift mindsets. “We’re helping developers understand how the investment in their project is associated with benefits for them and the surrounding city,” Ralph said. “Things like LEED certification or green infrastructure in their parking lot or other beautification elements add value to their project and are better than just sending a check to the city.”
Washington, D.C.’s Stormwater Retention Credit (SRC) program was cited as an example of incentives that work. Johnson explained how the SRC market, the first municipal stormwater credit trading system in the country, turns stormwater management into a private investment asset. By offering design flexibility, cost savings for developers, and revenue opportunities for SRC aggregators, the program heavily incentivizes GI creation while strengthening citywide stormwater management.
“Direct financial incentives are the most motivating,” Johnson said, a sentiment echoed by many participants. Lisa Phocas, director of sustainability at Aalberts Integrated Piping Systems, added, “Incentives need to make more financial sense than paying into a fund.” Other cities have aimed to make incentives attractive to private sector partners—notably New York City with its Green Roof Retrofit Grants and Resilient NYC Partners programs—which provide financial incentives for design and construction of GI by large asset holders in the city.
Participants also stressed that incentives work best when matched with technical assistance. “I think that pairing of technical assistance is really crucial, particularly for any developer who is not a large, institutional-size developer,” said Molly McCabe, CEO of HaydenTanner. Technical assistance can help bridge knowledge gaps, reduce risk for new participants, and ensure that incentives translate into high-quality GI installations rather than compliance-driven minimums.
8. Share Success Stories and Metrics to Make the Case for Future Action
Measuring success in GI can be challenging, as participants noted. “When we do our work right in green infrastructure and in climate resilience, our success is an avoided loss,” explained Vajjhala. “This is counterintuitive since most project finance works in the completely opposite way, where you generate a benefit to pay for a project. We are doing things that look a lot more like preventive health or early childhood education.”
Resilience is often invisible to the public, so communicating success through clear stories, data, and transparency becomes essential. Hoboken’s approach illustrates how visibility can support long-term progress. Stratton described how the city began its GI efforts with low-cost, high-visibility rain gardens around city hall to demonstrate commitment to action and build community buy-in. These installations also served as early sites for intensive metric tracking, generating performance data that could be shared with partners and funders to make the case for future projects.
Participants agreed that clear, accessible communication can be useful to boost public perception of projects, emphasizing that storytelling is as important as engineering in advancing next-generation GI.
Looking Ahead
The 2025 Shaw Forum underscored that scaling up GI to meet today’s risks will require both innovation and persistence. Starting small, demonstrating success, learning, and investing at scale can pave the way for larger systems change. As Vajjhala reminded participants: “Vision, capacity, and money are the three building blocks of successful implementation. Without all three, we risk expensive band-aids instead of lasting solutions.” Next-generation GI represents not just a response to climate risk, but an opportunity to reimagine how cities grow, collaborate, and invest. With aligned incentives, strong partnerships, and transparent communication, communities can turn aspiration into action on flood resilience.
More Resources
ULI has several resources related to flood resilience, including:
