PUTTING CLIMATE RESILIENCE ON THE MAP “Each of these factors in their own right presents an op- portunity to create a more climate-resilient city,” says Daley. “But you want to get the most bang for your buck, you need to identify the opportunities to meet multiple goals at once.” To do that, the Climate-Smart Cities program uses sophisticated mapping software—Geographic Information Systems, or GIS—to reveal where investment in parks and green space will yield the biggest payoff. Working with a partner city, The Trust for Public Land
assembles a local team of policymakers and researchers to supply data from their fields of expertise. In Chattanooga, for example, officials provided The Trust for Public Land with detailed information about the region’s floodplains. Satellite data on land-surface temperature helped pinpoint heat islands. Population density, income levels, the location of existing trails and bike lanes, and even social and health- related data—such as likelihood of heart disease in a given neighborhood, or the number of children or seniors—all came together in one system. With this master map, Daley and Wood can help
Chattanooga evaluate where parks and green space can do the most to help protect its most vulnerable residents from the effects of climate change—while serving the city’s long-term goals for transportation, recreation, and even housing. It’s a powerful resource for visualization and collaboration: with city agencies and their community partners all accessing the tools through one online portal, the map provides a common language for planning deci- sions that affect the entire community.
PLANNING AT STREET LEVEL Back in the office, Wood spreads a printout of a GIS map across a large table. Red dots mottle the downtown area like a bad case of chicken pox. “The red here is ‘high need,’” Wood says. “If you think about it, it makes sense: lots of pavement, people, and density.” Wood traces his finger along the blue line of the Tennes- see River and stops on the NorthShore district. From here, the main road climbs from the waterfront up to the Hill City neighborhood, site of Stringer’s Ridge. As it travels away from the river, Spears Avenue transitions from a row of trendy boutiques to a narrow stretch of single-family homes covered in aluminum siding. There are few trees. “As you can see, Spears Avenue isn’t red, it’s orange,” says Wood, pointing to the map. “But believe me, it gets hot.”
The Trust for Public Land’s Climate-Smart Cities program works closely with field staff—like the Tennessee team—to apply big-picture strategy with local expertise.
Last summer, Wood says, he and an engineer walked the length of Spears Avenue together and had to stop every few minutes to rest in the beating sun—hardly an encour- aging sign for planners hoping to convince residents to ditch their cars. To help transform the road into a viable bikeway, the city will plant trees (that’s the “cool” strategy) and rain gardens with thirsty plants (“absorb”). And Spears Avenue won’t be a bike path to nowhere: it will “connect” the downtown district—site of several public housing projects, large em- ployers, and the University of Tennessee—to the trails of Stringer’s Ridge and existing bike and pedestrian corridors that extend into the suburbs.
A NEIGHBORHOOD ON THE RISE For the residents of Chattanooga’s Hill City district, the Climate-Smart Cities plan is the next level of a long-range parks plan that’s already brought welcome change. Residents Pamela and Jason Havron remember the old
Stringer’s Ridge as a dubious site for illegal encampments and a dumping ground for discarded junk. But The Trust for Public Land’s purchase of the property for the city— and the massive, community-led cleanup and trail-building effort that followed—has made the forest a destination. “The park has revitalized the neighborhood,” says Jason Havron. Their neighbor, 79-year-old Hattie Darby, was born and raised in Hill City. She graduated from the segregated
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