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Diving certificate:
- A Online policy tracker Started Wednesday provides city guides with policy resources to promote “smart surfaces” that mitigate the impacts of urban climate change. Smart surfaces include Green infrastructureSolar panels and “cool” roofs and sidewalks.
- The Smart Surfaces Policy Tracker is a joint project of 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 for policymakers is not always a lack of data and information, but rather too much disorganized information,” said Bill Updike, program manager for the Smart Surfaces Coalition, in a statement. The tracker is intended to “make the search easier for political decision-makers.” and quickly identify relevant policy examples.”
Insight into the dive:
The Smart Surfaces Coalition has more than 50 partnersincluding the National League of Cities, Smart Growth America and the American Planning Association. The coalition also includes health, environmental justice, climate and various industry groups.
The coalition is currently works with 10 US cities to increase adoption of smart surfaces, help them find and leverage data, engage the community, conduct cost-benefit analyses, and find funding.
The new policy tracker is designed to spread these efforts beyond these cities and help other communities revise 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 objectives, climate zone, and jurisdiction size. Some examples of the resources in the tracker include tree regulations for parking lots in El Paso; Charleston County, South Carolina's Cool Pavement Strategy; and Oregon laws supporting access to solar panels.
The tracker also builds up a peer learning network which the Smart Surfaces Coalition launched earlier this month to provide city officials with funding and resources for project design and policy development.