Case:

Groundwork Bridgeport

Promoting the civic, climate, and health benefits of trees for everyone

Summer temperatures are rising around the globe, and cities are looking to trees as a way to provide health benefits and counteract the effects of urban heat islands. Bridgeport, the largest city in Connecticut, is one such place, with an ongoing partnership between the municipal government and communities to plant trees, and nurture them to maturity. Yet the existing tree canopy in Bridgeport is uneven, and the communities with the lowest access to green space are in the historically neglected East Side neighborhood.

Project Overview

Groundwork Bridgeport is a community-based organization working to reclaim abandoned or underutilized sites as public spaces. They focus onbringing the benefits of tree cover to all, starting with the East Side. As a small, local organization, Groundwork Bridgeport came to EDDIT looking to build momentum around their work, convince people of the importance of trees and tree canopy cover, and mobilize partner organizations and the public to get involved through volunteering, financial support, or adopting a tree. With such diverse audiences, the argument for more tree cover must resonate both as data and on an emotional level. The timing is also critical, in order to take advantage of the historic amounts of federal funding currently available for environmental initiatives.

A key part of the organization’s mission is improving the overall well-being of residents in communities that have been neglected, denied resources, or otherwise ignored over the years. One of their priorities is mobilizing volunteers and partners in the East Side neighborhood to advocate for more green spaces. In addition to the data, the organization has focused on their local roots and role in building connections to encourage greater community involvement in environmental stewardship.

Data Insights

Groundwork Bridgeport’s story highlights the benefits of trees by using data about health, climate, safety, and equity, showing how more tree cover cools cities, reduces asthma and other respiratory illnesses, and leads people to spend more time outdoors. Trees make cities more walkable and encourage people to get outside and get to know their neighbors, which leads to improvements in mental health. By mapping urban temperatures and health data against tree cover, the team highlights how trees make cities healthier and more pleasant, but also shows that variations in the level of tree cover create disparate impacts on urban populations.

Going forward, Groundwork Bridgeport will track and report on the number of trees planted and the change in canopy alongside other measures of community health, including air quality and incidence of crime. Future projects will also use both maps to show how trees contribute to a variety of community safety metrics as well as air quality monitoring tools to show how trees are linked with cleaner air.

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