Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Z Grabowski, Pauline Munga

Green infrastructure (GI) is usually assumed to be a benefit everywhere and for everybody in a city. Is this assumption correct? Or are there differences in where and who is served or burdened by GI? This project is a collaboration with the Cary Institute examining green infrastructure plans in 20 U.S. cities with the goal of understanding how best to improve the equity of green infrastructure through policy and practice. The project includes an interactive website and toolkit for city planners, researchers and others to use in considering the equity dimensions of future green infrastructure planning.

Project themes

Environmental Justice & Equity · Urban Policy & Planning

Project Team: Erik Andersson, Timon McPhearson, Daniel Sauter

SMARTer Greener Cities aims to develop and test novel tools and processes for explicitly converging social, ecological, and technological approaches. The convergence of these approaches will promote resilient and equitable urban futures in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and generate new opportunities for transformative change and increasing resilience to extreme events in other Nordic cities. The comprehensive integration of emerging science and practice connected to each of the three couplings (social-ecological (S-E), ecological-technological (E-T), and social-technological (S-T)) into a combined SETS framework is essential for the development of “smarter” (through systems) solutions for resilience and equity. We believe, despite the challenge of systems oriented research and practice, that we must cut across silos in disciplines, approaches, and knowledge systems by bringing technology, people, and nature together.

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PROJECT THemes

Urban Climate Resilience · Environmental Justice and Equity

Social-ecological and technological factors moderate the value of urban nature

By Bonnie L. Keeler, Perrine Hamel, Timon McPhearson, Maike H. Hamann, Marie L. Donahue, Kelly A. Meza Prado, Katie K. Arkema, Gregory N. Bratman, Kate A. Brauman, Jacques C. Finlay, Anne D. Guerry, Sarah E. Hobbie, Justin A. Johnson, Graham K. MacDonald, Robert I. McDonald, Nick Neverisky & Spencer A. Wood

Project Team: Timon McPhearson

Urban ecosystems and biodiversity are forms of natural capital with profound influence on human wellbeing. As part of the Natural Capital Project, USL is developing the Urban InVEST valuation model with colleagues from Stanford University, University of Minnesota, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics. Urban InVEST integrates spatially explicit biophysical and socio-economic data to allow users to quantify and map the impacts of alternative urban designs on ecosystem services — showing their associated benefits and costs for different communities.

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Project themes

Big Data & Artificial Intelligence · Nature-Based Solutions · Urban Ecology

Project Team: Timon McPhearson

The Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project is a collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Centre funded initially through Future Earth. Our aim is to counterbalance dystopian visions of the future that may be inhibiting the ability to cooperate effectively on problem solving.

USL is working with project participants to solicit, explore, and develop a suite of alternative, plausible “good anthropocenes” — future scenarios that are socially and environmentally desirable, just, and sustainable.

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Project themes

Community Engagement · Environmental Justice & Equity

Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Daniel Sauter, Claudia Tomateo

Building Resilient Coastal Cities through Smart and Connected Communities was a project to develop a data visualization and user interface design for web platform. This work involved mapping use cases, tools classification and social networks based on different stakeholders’ data from San Juan, Baltimore and Miami workshops. The product was represented in a series of interface workflow in form of storyboard (Screen designs), low fidelity wireframes and animated video mockups of platform usage. The tool is used as a “network of networks”, to help stakeholders map current projects and tools being used in the field and to discourage the duplication of efforts and co-production of knowledge.

project themes

Urban Climate Resilience · Urban Policy & Planning

Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Taylor Drake Chris Hepner Josh Snow

Like most cities, New York struggles with a lack of connectivity between parks and smaller green spaces. The Networked Urban Ecology project is dedicated to linking fragmented habitats that promote biodiversity and provide important services to society. Through a program called Connect the Dots, it merges ecological research with participatory design to build innovative corridors between parkland, street vegetation, green roofs/walls, and other elements throughout the city — with emphasis on places where greenery is lacking. This network has the potential to significantly improve public health, livability, equity, resilience, and sustainability.

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Project theme

Urban Ecology