Urban Calm: How Cities De-Stress to Decarbonize
Cities create the best versions of themselves by taking action to reduce carbon emissions. Lowering carbon levels also lowers stress levels, which makes cities more wonderful places to live.
We’ve seen this dynamic at play in our Supercool coverage since launching our podcast and newsletter in July 2024.
Geoffrey Donovan, an urban forester and research economist at the U.S. Forest Service, discussed the relationship’s bidirectional nature in an episode this past fall. According to Donovan, cities that prioritize strategies to reduce stress and make their cities more livable will automatically cut carbon emissions in the process. Similarly, cities that prioritize decarbonization strategies aiming to make climate progress will enact measures that also de-stress life for urban residents.
Many of the key strategies overlap regardless of the objective.
The Supercool playbook for low-stress, low-carbon cities centers on three principles:
1. Adding Nature
2. Elevating the Walk
3. Enhancing Bike Life
1. Adding Nature
Every fourth grader knows (hopefully) that trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide as they grow, making them key allies in combating climate change. According to Donovan, it’s the trees closest to you, those on your street and in your neighborhood, that have a far more significant impact on your life.
Above: Urban trees in a Chicago neighborhood
Research increasingly shows that plentiful, mature, and diverse city trees:
1. Make you safer
Donovan and others have shown that in cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Portland, you’re less likely to get shot or be the victim of any violent crime when trees are nearby. In New Haven, Connecticut, controlling for all other factors, a 10% increase in tree canopy was associated with a 15% decrease in violent crime.
2. Make you happier
In London, research shows that people living in neighborhoods with tree-lined streets are prescribed fewer antidepressants.
3. Make you and your children healthier
Studies in New Zealand and Madrid, Spain, show that proximity to trees and urban green spaces are directly related to a decline in asthma and childhood leukemia.
4. Make you richer
Donovan’s work in Portland, Oregon, found that neighborhood trees add $7,000, on average, to the price of a house, increasing the total value of Portland’s housing stock by over $1 billion.
5. Help you make friends and improve voter turnout
Donovan’s work researching the connection between city trees and social cohesion reveals startling insights. Urban trees lead people to feel more connected to their neighbors, resulting in stronger social ties and civic engagement.
When we feel safer, happier, richer, and more connected, we naturally feel less stressed. Carbon-absorbing trees play a starring role in de-stressing city life.
Listen to the interview with Geoffrey Donovan
2. Elevating the Walk
It may seem self-evident that places that are more walkable are less stressful. However, there is also data to back this up. A study in England evaluating 430,000 residents across 22 cities, including London, found that the more walkable a city neighborhood is, the lower its residents’ stress and blood pressure levels are.
How do cities become great places to walk?
Paris might have an answer. Under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the city has become a global trailblazer for the 15-minute city—a vision where everything you need, from work and schools to parks and groceries, is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.
The transformation has been bold: car-free zones around schools, elementary school playgrounds “greened” and turned into public parks on weekends, hundreds of miles of protected bike lanes, and old industrial spaces reimagined as housing.
Above: A car-free zone outside a school in Paris
But here’s the rub: proximity alone doesn’t guarantee people will walk. According to Jeff Speck, the key difference is the walk has to be as good as a drive.
He would know; he wrote the book on walkability. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time is the best-selling city-planning title of the 21st century and a classic on making cities pedestrian-friendly.
Jeff’s “General Theory of Walkability” explains exactly what is required: walking must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.
The transformation has been bold: car-free zones around schools, elementary school playgrounds “greened” and turned into public parks on weekends, hundreds of miles of protected bike lanes, and old industrial spaces reimagined as housing.
But here’s the rub: proximity alone doesn’t guarantee people will walk. According to Jeff Speck, the key difference is the walk has to be as good as a drive.
He would know; he wrote the book on walkability. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time is the best-selling city-planning title of the 21st century and a classic on making cities pedestrian-friendly.
Jeff’s “General Theory of Walkability” explains exactly what is required: walking must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.
Above: Walkable downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa
I spoke with Jeff his work over three decades to reshape city streets in places like Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Tampa, Florida. Cities implementing his playbook take measures to slow things down, specifically cars, redesigning streets to create more convenient room for pedestrians and public transportation.
Additionally, there’s a link between urban walkability and economic prosperity. In the U.S., the largest 35 metro areas account for 50% of GDP. Break that down further, and just over 1% of neighborhoods in those 35 metros are responsible for 20% of the entire U.S. GDP.
Those urban neighborhoods have one thing in common: they are walkable.
Listen to the interview with Jeff Speck
3. Enhancing Bike Life
Building great bicycling infrastructure is something 70% of Americans support, according to City Thread, an organization that accelerates urban mobility projects.
A comprehensive approach to safe cycling infrastructure does more than enable zero-emission commuting and errand running; it enhances population health, reduces stress, boosts economic activity, and attracts job-creating companies.
However, turning that support into new bike lane construction can drag on for years, if not decades, as the wheels of city government grind slowly to a halt.
Enter The Final Mile Project—a transformative initiative designed to break through social and political barriers and accelerate the construction of complete bike networks in mere months. Austin, Denver, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Providence were the first five cities to participate.
Above: A downtown bike lane in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The results? 335 miles of bike lanes built at record speed, taking just 24 months.
According to an independent review by the Urban Institute, that’s 3X faster than comparable cities.
In Episode 10, I spoke with Kyle Wagenschutz, who co-led The Final Mile Project. Today, Kyle and his team are implementing their playbook for building cycling infrastructure in record time in cities across America.
Three approaches stood out to me from our conversation.
1. Build A Broader Coalition of Support
From Kyle: “Our audience has to be people who choose to drive a car and are never going to make another choice because those are the majority of people living in American cities.”
2. Move Fast
From Kyle: “Orange traffic cones are free advertising that cities put up every single day. And they’re not usually a positive communication method to folks.”
3. Think Big
From Kyle: “Acting at scale leads to this sustained change over time. If we’re just going to build one mile of trail, people are not going to show up for the next one.”
Final Thoughts
Designing cities for greater livability is an ideal path for cutting carbon emissions. “Taking down the temperature,” literally and figuratively, is the way cities and humanity win in the 21st century.
It’s a Supercool megatrend we’ll explore further in 2025. It will also be an area of focus for the inaugural Supercool Summit coming in 2025—details to follow soon.
Listen to the interview with Kyle Wagenschutz
Final Thoughts
Designing cities for greater livability is an ideal path for cutting carbon emissions. “Taking down the temperature,” literally and figuratively, is the way cities and humanity win in the 21st century.
It’s a Supercool megatrend we’ll explore further in 2025. It will also be an area of focus for the inaugural Supercool Summit coming in 2025—details to follow soon.
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