By Cate Mingoya-LaFortune, a people-centered climate adaptation activist, community activist, teacher, parent, and optimist. Raised in an environment of environmental justice, Mingoya-LaFortune is committed to advancing a future where all people live in clean, thriving communities. He currently serves as Groundwork USA’s chief climate and land use officer, where he oversees major climate change projects, Climate Safe Neighborhoods planning programs, urban and community forestry projects, and a variety of cross-sector collaborations. He is the author of Climate Action for Busy People (Island Press, 2024). Find him online at www.catemingoya.com
This adapted episode comes from Cate Mingoya-LaFortune Climate Action for Busy People (2024, Island Press). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerce-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) with permission from Island Press. Adapted and produced for the web by Mhlaba | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute..
If you want to have a say in how policy decisions are made and resources distributed in your community, the data you collect will be critical. Often, before committing to spending tax dollars on a new program or policy, local government agencies want to understand the scope and scale of the problem and how they will identify and measure the success of the intervention.
If an area has few trees, the urban forestry department may assess the number of sites suitable for new trees before committing to planting. Once planted, the department may measure the number of seedlings left five years later to assess success. Before installing protected bike lanes, the transportation department may conduct a 12-month survey of the number of cyclists and motorists on the road and take similar measurements after the installation of protected bike lanes to see if the improved bike infrastructure has an impact on the way people travel.
However, municipalities do not always consider all the relevant information and information before starting an intervention, which can have disastrous consequences for the people who live there or for the intervention itself.
Policies are the course of action your municipality has chosen to take through guidelines, ordinances, financial priorities, or laws. Everything in your neighborhood—from where there are parking spaces, how tall buildings are, and which neighborhoods have street trees—is a deliberate, goal-directed decision. Sometimes, decisions were made a hundred years ago, and sometimes, they were put together last week. However, those decisions can be changed to reflect current or desired values and trends.
In their mind, policies are ideas that the government has decided will help them achieve certain goals.
Do you know who has great ideas about how to change things for the better in your community? You. You are well suited to turn the information you have gathered into municipal policy ideas through your data collection, understanding of local history, and discussions with community members.
Policy comes through your elected and municipal officials, and there are many opportunities for you and your coalition to participate in the decisions that are made. Understanding how policymaking happens will help you understand how to intervene. When starting this work, it is useful to focus on four main areas of intervention: master plans, planting or sustainability plans, local regulations, and landscape design. These four areas of intervention are how many decisions are made about prioritizing community needs and distributing resources.
Example Questions and Decisions
Events like votes on climate ballot measures don’t happen every day, so in your average community, identifying your priorities through existing municipal infrastructure makes sense. Below are a few examples of “asks” you and your coalition members might consider representing and the processes or people you’ll need to influence to make what you’re asking happen.
Concrete examples prove that change is possible and has already been adopted by some communities (so what are we waiting for?). This can encourage elected or government officials who are concerned about the feasibility of new programs, policies, and regulations. Also, it is easier to change existing policies and procedures than to write them from scratch.
Question: New Local Ordinances Improving Bicycle and Pedestrian Infrastructure
What: Ask your city or city council to write, introduce, and pass laws that ensure that transportation improvements address the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists as well as those of automobiles. Many municipalities have a general plan for road and street maintenance, and some cities have policies that coordinate the development of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, such as fast-building bicycle lanes or curb cuts, and road maintenance.
Reason: As it gets hotter, people are less likely to walk, ride bikes, take public transportation, and more likely to drive. Cars, however, produce a lot of waste heat from their combustion engines, making walking on the streets or in parking lots hotter than in places where there are no cars running.1 When it’s hot, there are more cars; the more cars there are, the more heat there is. Laws that allocate resources to cycling and walking infrastructure help reduce the number of cars on the road, thereby reducing the city’s heat output and improving air quality.
Example of an Ordinance: In 2019, the city council of Cambridge, Massachusetts, passed the nation’s first “Cycling Safety Ordinance,” requiring the city to add protected bike lanes to highways during planned reconstruction. new bike lanes, protected for seven years.
Question: Amend the Parks Master Plan to Include Splash Pads and Misters When Parks Are Built or Redeveloped or Renovate Old Pools
What: Parks and recreation departments often produce master plans for individual large parks (think Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California) or an entire park system. These plans include everything from the presence (or absence!) of drinking fountains to the maintenance, replacement, or removal of park infrastructure.
If your community is at risk of heat, work with your coalition to submit a recommendation that the parks department revise its master plan to prioritize the installation of splash pads and misters in local parks and playgrounds as they are being built or renovated and to replace abandoned or failing ones. pools become splash pads instead of being covered.
Reason: A dip in the pool on a hot summer day can be a great way to beat the heat, but there are a few challenges to using pools as a way to deal with the weather that you may be looking for. Increasingly, municipalities are depleting reservoirs that have reached the end of their lives as the reservoirs become more expensive to rebuild or maintain. Even if your local pool is always open, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used by those in desperate need of relaxation.
Some residents who are at risk of heat-related illnesses cannot swim or have disabilities that prevent them from accessing or enjoying the pool. People who work outside the home may not be able to access the pool during opening hours, and the statewide shortage of gamekeepers limits those opening hours significantly. Splash pads and misters are another great option for pools. They provide affordable, intergenerational access to cool down; they do not require skilled workers, such as guards, to guide them; can be conducted day or night; and, compared to pools, they are relatively cheap to install and maintain.
Splash pads require a fair amount of drainage to prevent standing water or localized flooding, but the masters—which produce a fine mist of water like what you might see sprayed on vegetables at the grocery store—require less water to keep off while providing the same benefits as splash pads. .
Example of an Ordinance: The Park Improvement Projects Master Plan developed by the Louisville, Kentucky, Department of Parks and Recreation calls for the inclusion of “splash pads” (splash pads and interactive misters) in park redevelopment and construction. Although not binding, the master plan directs investment in Louisville’s park system, which currently boasts more than thirty parks.
Using Collective Powers for the Common Good
No one has a perfect and foolproof way to grow our cities without unintended consequences. However, there are ways to think about your impact and use your collective power to advocate for sustainable policies and programs that benefit all. As cities and counties develop their climate plans, they must have residents and local advocates at the table and include different strategies that allow for wealth creation for those who have been excluded from the housing market because of their race or class, rent stabilization, and push for the creation of more vacant housing through the funding of community land trusts and and housing associations.
They should allow local job creation without disproportionately placing toxic industries in Black, Brown, immigrant, and low-income neighborhoods. They must provide for transport and trade without exposing those most vulnerable to emissions of the dark carbon-rich gas. Just and effective solutions meet the needs of the climate crisis and do so without harming those who have already endured the burden of injustice for so long. If an area’s flood risk is reduced but long-term residents can no longer live there, one problem has just been replaced by another.
As you continue your journey to fight the climate crisis, use whatever resources or rights you have to not only promote positive change but also make sure that those who will have the greatest impact on that change are engaged and listened to. Drawing attention to the lived experiences and perspectives of those who are often excluded from the process is a huge and often overlooked step towards implementing the values of equality and justice.
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