Trees-as-Infrastructure: Ensuring Cool, Green and Resilient Cities
by Sila Egridere, Architect and Smart City Expert
Cities worldwide are facing significant challenges, including rising temperatures, the intensifying heat island effect, worsening floods, and increasing air pollution. In response, urban planners and policymakers are beginning to rethink how the multiple benefits of urban nature can be systematically integrated into city planning.
Trees-as-Infrastructure is leading this transformation by integrating trees into urban planning in ways that go far beyond aesthetics. Trees are a critical component of our city systems. In our insightful conversation with Sebastian Klemm and Sofia Valentini, we explored the challenges cities face today and how nature can play a more integral role in urban infrastructure.
Sebastian Klemm, co-holder of Trees-as-Infrastructure and the NbS Portfolio at Dm Capital Systems, plays a key role in building relationships for place-based systemic financing facilities that support urban nature infrastructure, climate resilience, public health, social cohesion, and a just transition.
Sofia Valentini, a strategic designer at Dark Matter Labs, has been key in shaping Trees-as-Infrastructure’s Location-Based Scoring (LBS) methodology. She works on creating tools that help cities make informed decisions about where and how to implement nature-based solutions.
Why Trees Are Essential
Trees play a vital role in improving urban environments by cleaning the air, managing water, and significantly reducing heat. Studies show that increasing tree coverage from 0% to 25% can lower urban air temperatures by approximately 4.4°C, helping to mitigate the urban heat island effect (Springer, 2024). Trees also reduce energy costs by providing shade and cooling buildings. In some cases, strategically placed shade trees can lower cooling energy consumption by up to 30% (ISA Arboriculture, 2024).
Beyond their direct environmental benefits, trees provide spaces for communities to connect, boost mental health, and enhance overall well-being. Trees-as-Infrastructure highlights these entangled values, showing that trees are also essential for the interconnected public health, social well-being and a thriving economy.
Image credit: Raed Mansour
Stuttgart: A Leading Example
In 2023, Stuttgart, Germany, became a flagship site for Trees-as-Infrastructure. Over several months, with co-financing from the Stuttgart Climate Innovation Fund and The Nature Conservancy, the Trees-as-Infrastructure team brought together urban planners, city arborists, and environmental specialists from across Stuttgart’s city departments. Their goal was to implement a data-driven, collaborative approach to urban nature while fostering integration with broader sectoral changes. By using the innovative Location-Based Scoring (LBS) methodology, they developed an agile framework to identify high-priority areas for nature-based interventions. This approach focuses on compounded risks and adaptation opportunities in areas with vulnerable populations (including the elderly, children, and low-income groups), reimagines maintenance strategies for trees under drought stress, and pinpoints locations at high risk of stormwater flooding that could benefit from being unsealed. In this way, Trees-as-Infrastrastructure’s Location-Based Scoring approach provides a data-backed foundation for determining where Nature-based Solutions interventions and corresponding investments are most needed.
Screenshot: Trees-as-Infrastructure’s Location-based Scoring at the example of Stuttgart – Here you can actively test, feedback and get in touch on Location-based Scoring
The Methodology: How Location-Based Scoring Works
Trees-as-Infrastructure’s Location-Based Scoring (LBS) methodology is central for cities to effectively prioritize nature-based solutions (NbS). It is designed to address the specific risks and vulnerabilities of urban areas.
The Methodology: How Location-Based Scoring Works
Trees-as-Infrastructure’s Location-Based Scoring (LBS) methodology is central for cities to effectively prioritize nature-based solutions (NbS). It is designed to address the specific risks and vulnerabilities of urban areas.
The methodology unfolds in five stages:
- Identifying Risks: The process starts by analyzing major urban hazards, such as heat islands, flooding, and air pollution, and identifying the living systems (e.g., the public, existing green spaces) or elements (e.g., transport networks, built-up areas) most exposed to these risks. This analysis leads to the definition of “impact chains.”
- Gathering Data: Environmental and census datasets are collected and organized according to location-specific impact chains. These help identify particular vulnerabilities and compounded risks, such as elderly populations and low-income communities in heat-island areas with insufficient green infrastructure.
- Analyzing Spatial Data: Using GIS tools to overlay a grid on the city enables detailed analysis of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. Location-Based Scoring highlights how factors like access to healthcare, urban ventilation, the sealing rate, and existing green infrastructure influence a site’s ability to cope with risks.
- Stakeholder Collaboration Workshops: Multi-stakeholder workshops, including citizen initiatives and other interest groups, help translate the findings into nature-based solutions that align with local needs. This collaboration ensures that the unique needs of vulnerable groups, such as preschool children or residents with pre-existing health conditions, are considered when planning nature-based solutions.
- Ensuring Comprehensibility: The results are compiled into user-friendly, interactive dashboards, enabling i.a. policymakers to visualize risk profiles and design NbS projects tailored to specific areas.
Tackling Funding Challenges
One of the key challenges in urban forestry is securing the necessary funding. Trees-as-Infrastructure is addressing this by developing innovative financing models. By treating trees as valuable assets that reduce risks and save money in areas like public health, building energy, and wastewater management, the Trees-as-Infrastructure and Dm Capital Systems teams are creating systemic financing approaches to attract new sources of investment.
Expanding the Vision for Long-Term Success
While Stuttgart serves as a groundbreaking example, the methods developed by Trees-as-Infrastructure are designed to be adaptable to other cities with unique challenges. By focusing on collaboration, data-driven analysis, and innovative financing models, Trees-as-Infrastructure and Dm Capital Systems provide a scalable framework for integrating nature into urban infrastructure.
However, planting trees is only the first step. Ensuring their growth and survival over the long term requires consistent maintenance and active community participation. Trees-as-Infrastructure addresses these needs by fostering Commons-Public-Private partnerships that link civic stewardship programs with innovative financing, ensuring that urban forests remain resilient and impactful.
Conclusion
Trees-as-Infrastructure introduces a mission-driven approach to revaluing urban nature as a critical, investable asset. By treating trees and other urban nature typologies as essential infrastructure, cities can tackle climate challenges while improving urban life quality. The success of Trees-as-Infrastructure in Stuttgart offers a blueprint for cities worldwide to follow. Reach out to the Trees-as-Infrastructure team, excited to support more cities in leveraging this approach.
References
Dark Matter Labs (2024) Trees-as-Infrastructure: Revaluing Nature as Urban Infrastructure. Available at: https://darkmatterlabs.org/initiatives/treesai [Accessed 15 November 2024].
ISA Arboriculture (2024) The effects of shade trees on cooling energy use in residential buildings, Arboriculture and Urban Forestry. Available at: https://auf.isa-arbor.com/content/isa/35/4/197.full.pdf [Accessed 15 November 2024].
Springer (2024) Impact of tree coverage on urban temperatures, Sustainability Science Journal. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43621-024-00247-w [Accessed 15 November 2024].
Mansour, R. (2024) Air and Surface Temperature and Trees, Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/raedmansour/51517069533 [Accessed 15 November 2024].
Dark Matter Labs (2023) TreesAI is implementing Location-Based Scoring in Stuttgart, Provocations Blog. Available at: https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/treesai-is-implementing-location-based-scoring-in-stuttgart-c54c752bdaaf[Accessed 15 November 2024].
