Towns and cities have an opportunity to reprioritize resources to foster children’s connection to nature while meeting sustainability and resilience goals.

More than ever, our towns and cities are at the front line of the climate crisis facing growing risks from extreme heat, sea level rise, and flooding from storms and excessive rainfall. In response, local governments are taking important steps to become more resilient through sustainability measures that lower their emissions as well as through investments in green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to reduce risk, with increased support from state and federal loans and grants. As towns and cities begin to reprioritize their budgets towards sustainability and resilience, the projects that result from these investments present invaluable opportunities to foster children-nature connections. Children with regular access to nature gain multiple forms of support for healthy development through active outdoor play and learning to redress the ​“nature deficit disorder” that has resulted from too much childhood time spent inside.

Cities Connecting Children to Nature initiative (CCCN) and Regional Plan Association (RPA) recently conducted a review of local and state resilience and sustainability plans and interviewed municipal officials and stakeholders throughout the New York metropolitan region to determine effective ways to bridge goals of resilience, sustainability, and children-nature connections.

Planning, sustainability, resilience, and other municipal professionals in the tri-state area are invited to hear from city leaders who have been integrating children’s nature connection into their sustainability and resilience planning and a discussion of how you can make similar connections in your community.