Untapped Common Ground: The Care of Forested Natural Areas in American Cities
By Clara C. Pregitzer, Sarah Charlop-Powers, Charlie McCabe, Alexandra Hiple, Bram Gunther, Mark A. Bradford
By Clara C. Pregitzer, Sarah Charlop-Powers, Charlie McCabe, Alexandra Hiple, Bram Gunther, Mark A. Bradford
Natural areas account for 84% of urban parkland. Despite representing the largest concentration of nature in cities, natural areas often go unnoticed, underused, under resourced and unprotected. Organizations across the United States have been pioneering approaches to enhance and conserve urban forested natural areas locally, but these efforts have never been summarized at a national scale. In 2018, the Natural Areas Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Yale School of the Environment completed the first-ever survey of organizations that manage the nation’s urban forested natural areas.
The NAC heard from representatives from 125 organizations, in 111 cities, across 40 states. This report presents an overview of the state of urban forested natural areas management across the nation.
This report summarizes the main threats to one type of urban natural area–forests–and the strategies cities use to minimize or negate these threats. Overall, this report shows that cities use various tactics such as ordinances, zoning, land acquisitions, and federal protections to preserve natural areas. The most successful approaches feature o...
During summer 2022, the Natural Areas Conservancy partnered with 12 cities from the Forests in Cities network to conduct a study focused on quantifying differences in air and surface temperature between types of urban greenspace, with a focus on urban natural areas. As a result of this study, we found that urban natural areas are the coolest class ...