SYMP 12-3 - Just, nature-based solutions as critical urban infrastructure for cooling & cleaning airsheds

Background/Question/Methods
Earth’s cities are in the midst of a very hot and stifling century. The twin atmospheric threats of heat and air pollution are leading killers, degrading health and quality of life. We suggest conceptualizing these twin hazards as place-based experiences, rather than abstract weather phenomena. In the past, these hazards were often framed as short-term events, but communities are living with these hazards for longer and more intense episodes. Nature based solutions (NbS) and their associated benefits are being used in many cities to cool and clean urban atmospheres. We ask, how can planning, design, and engineering disciplines use social justice as an urgent frame for NbS as critical urban infrastructure to reduce heat and poor air quality? This important justice framing may provide an important convergence focus among burgeoning communities of NbS practice for pathways toward more effective justice-oriented stewardship of urban atmospheric systems. The COVID-19 pandemic required a reconceptualizing of our social-atmospheric interrelationship with air spaces, infrastructure, technology, and social communities. Thus, this new frontier in understanding social-atmospheric interrelationships allows researchers and practitioners to reconceptualize justice-oriented NbS for air in cities as something akin to watersheds.

Results/Conclusions
As mobile agents, we move through diverse airsheds (e.g., outside and inside at home, in private vehicles or public transport, and at work) that people exist within throughout a day. Airsheds are governed by fluid dynamics forming multi-layered mixtures of 1) gases and 2) particles with 3) radiative and 4) thermal properties, which interact with land and social dynamics including technological modifications to create diverse local atmospheres in which people and communities live in and move through. Differences in affluence allow some to use semi-private or private conditioned airsheds to protect themselves from public hazards, while others are more reliant on public indoor (e.g. public housing, transit, cooling centers) or outdoor airsheds (e.g parks, streetscapes, schools, and public spaces). In particular, we focus on people-centered experiences with NbS as integrated social-ecological-technological systems to address these hazards that result from legacies of systemic racism, colonization, and inequitable infrastructure decision-making processes. This talk will review: 1) heat-air quality challenges; 2) NbS for urban resilience; 3) metrics; 4) participatory approaches; and 5) a case study and next steps. Through a combination of public and private shelters, technology, and greening we can moderate our airsheds through artificial or natural processes.