Our Living Waterways program delivers on-ground water sensitive urban design demonstration projects aimed at protecting and improving urban waterways to deliver enduring benefits for the environment and community.

Living Waterways is a decision making framework that is designed to help users create sustainable stormwater management systems that provide multiple benefits to the community and the environment.

It was developed in 2013 in partnership with Meter, Bligh Tanner and Landscapology. The intent was to create a quantitative urban water management tool that would incentivise innovation during the design phase by allowing users to balance water quality objectives with environmental, social and economic outcomes.

Living Waterways is a site driven approach which aims to deliver enduring, affordable, welcoming outdoor spaces that engage the surrounding community. It was developed to support implementation of water sensitive urban design by encouraging design solutions that enrich the natural, historical and cultural elements of a site and promote interaction with water to inspire adventure and discovery, strengthen social ties, support healthy living, and educate visitors about the value of their local environment.

The Living Waterways framework is recognised in the Queensland State Planning Policy as a valid alternative to meeting the Stormwater Management Design Objectives (SMDOs).

The Living Waterways tool is a scoring system that can be used to assess a project based on a set of four themes that align traditional stormwater principles with place-making benefits.

A series of principles and values underpin each theme and are embedded in the scoring system, with each theme broken up into a range of subcategories and incorporating a series of mandatory and non-mandatory items. Working through the scoring system allows you to accrue points by ticking off the applicable items for your project to get an overall score.

There are also built in safeguards to ensure that in balancing the objectives of each theme, fundamental aspects of waterway health are not compromised.

Healthy Land & Water has delivered a series of on-ground demonstration projects in South East Queensland applying the principles of Living Waterways.

The aim of these projects was to showcase how the framework can be used to achieve holistic, integrated design outcomes across a range of local environments and increase awareness and appreciation of the value this approach can bring to our urban spaces.