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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/depaving-cities-urban-heat-island-effect/>
"It all started because a man named Arif Khan wanted a garden.
In 2007, he had recently moved into a house in Portland, Oregon, whose backyard
was covered in asphalt. Some friends helped him tear up the impervious surface,
and soon after, they won a small grant to carry out a similar project in front
of a local cafe.
“It was a one-off,” said Ted Labbe, co-founder of Depave, an urban greening
movement. “But it was so successful that the next year we got solicited to do
three projects, and then five the year after that. It just kept escalating.” In
the 15 years since breaking ground on Khan’s backyard, Depave has completed 75
projects in schoolyards, churches and other community spaces across Portland.
The Depave movement has spread across the United States and Canada in recent
years as climate-related extreme heat and flooding have made some cities
rethink the wisdom of all that heat-absorbing, impervious surface area.
Depave’s newest chapter is in Chicago, where about half of the population lives
in areas where temperatures are at least eight degrees higher than the city’s
base temperature, a disparity that can prove deadly in heatwaves. More than 60
percent of the city is covered in impervious surfaces, and when record rains
fell in early July, more than 12,000 residents reported flooding in their
basements."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
