Blueprints for a Green City

Integrating urban nature into cities reduces emissions, saves money, and promotes equity.RMI November 14, 2022  Zach Clayton,  Mia RebacRMIk,  Julia Meisel,  Shelby Kuenzli Global challenges are pushing cities to their breaking point. Worsening air pollution, regular extreme heat, severe flooding, and other climate-induced extreme weather events claim thousands of lives and do hundreds of billions of dollars in damage every year. Despite these daunting challenges, local governments are Despite these daunting challenges, local governments are taking the lead on climate action in many ways.  In their fight to mitigate and adapt to climate change, cities must use every tool available.  Urban nature is a solution we cannot afford to overlook. Many benefits of nature are well known, like recreation, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. But urban nature — such as a city’s forests, street trees, and bodies of water — delivers countless additional benefits including climate mitigation (lower energy use and emissions), jobs, community connectedness, pollution mitigation, and heat mitigation. In economic terms, these benefits add up........