“As a warming planet leads to worsening risks and impacts, American cities are taking matters into their own hands. Cities are not only pledging to slash carbon emissions in the coming decades. They are also figuring out how to be more resilient. Because one thing is clear: disadvantaged communities that have been historically neglected will suffer the most as the planet warms. Park acres, it turns out, are very good at buffering the effects of climate change. Green space has the power to lower air temperature and absorb floodwater, and can be designed in such a way as to significantly enhance those climate benefits.  As part of its 2022 ParkScore® index, Trust for Public Land (TPL) asked parks departments in the 100 most populous cities what they’re doing about climate change. Bottom line: many cities are doing a great deal. But cities are not taking action in a vacuum. Neighborhood associations, climate-justice groups, arts organizations, and environmental activists have all pushed cities to move aggressively on climate measures.  Even where progress is being made, it’s not nearly enough to address the climate crisis, given that many cities lack the funds to adequately care for their parks, let alone invest in major new infrastructure.  We also analyzed access to park space in those same cities, breaking down the results by race/ethnicity and household income. We found:

• Eighty-five percent of cities are adapting parks and recreation facilities to address climate change.
• Eighty percent are enlisting parks to counter urban heat.
• Seventy-six percent are improving surfaces to reduce flooding and runoff from rains.
• Twenty percent are actively managing parks and woodlands to sequester carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change.
• Other cities are managing parks to reduce the risk of wildfire, restoring shorelines to absorb storm surges, and opting for renewable sources of energy.
• Cooling green space is not equitably distributed, however. Trust for Public Land analyzed the 100 most populous cities and found that the neighborhoods where most residents identify as people of color had access to an average of 43 percent less park acreage than predominantly white neighborhoods.
• [How well is your city meeting the need for parks? Explore the 2022 ParkScore rankings. – Spoiler, DC is No. 1]