October 15, 2013 Assistant Professor Brad Collett Named UT Quest Scholar

Brad Collett, assistant professor of plant sciences and landscape architecture, is a scholar of landscape performance and sustainable planning and design. He recently published “Low-Impact Development: Opportunities for the PlanET Region,” which addresses the area’s water resources as economic, social and environmental assets, and details their threatened and impaired status. It proposes low impact development as an enhanced approach to watershed planning, community design, and site development in the five county study area. This publication is part of his leadership and research involvement with Plan East Tennessee (PlanET), a regional partnership of communities building a shared direction for the Knoxville metropolitan area’s planning and development.

The effort is related to a $4.3 million grant given to the city of Knoxville through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities. Through the program’s partnership with PlanET, Collett has led graduate student research that investigated opportunities for regional growth through grayfield redevelopment as well as low-impact alternatives to managing stormwater runoff that reintroducesnatural hydrologic processes on developed sites in Knoxville’s First Creek/White’s Creek Watershed.

Originally posted 11 Oct 2013 by the UT Office of Research: http://quest.utk.edu/2013/brad-collett/