Dive Brief:
- An online policy tracker launched Wednesday provides city leaders with policymaking resources to advance “smart surfaces” that mitigate urban climate change impacts. Smart surfaces include green infrastructure, solar panels and “cool” roofs and pavement.
- The Smart Surfaces Policy Tracker is a collaborative project by Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Smart Surfaces Coalition. It contains over 450 resources and policy references from nine states, with more information to be added in 2025.
- "One of the challenges policymakers face is not always a lack of data and information, but rather too much disorganized information,” Smart Surfaces Coalition Program Manager Bill Updike said in a statement. The tracker is designed to “make it easy for policymakers to search and identify relevant policy examples quickly.”
Dive Insight:
The Smart Surfaces Coalition has more than 50 partners, including the National League of Cities, Smart Growth America and the American Planning Association. Health, environmental justice, climate and various industry groups are also involved in the coalition.
The coalition is currently working with 10 U.S. cities to increase the adoption of smart surfaces, helping them find and use data, engage the community, conduct cost-benefit analyses and find funding.
The new policy tracker is designed to spread these efforts beyond those cities, helping other communities revamp their zoning and building codes, procurement policies, comprehensive plans and green stormwater infrastructure regulations. Users can filter resources by region and state, policy type and goals, climate zone and jurisdiction size. Some examples of the resources in the tracker include El Paso’s parking lot tree regulations; Charleston County, South Carolina’s cool pavement strategy; and Oregon bills to support solar panel access.
The tracker also builds on a peer learning network that the Smart Surfaces Coalition launched earlier this month to connect city officials with funding opportunities and resources for project design and policy development.
