A new movement across the world, which includes the Oregon-based Depave non-profit, consists of taking out concrete slabs and asphalt on residential properties, around schools, churches and in public city spaces, to allow renaturing and the cooling of urban areas, of which Reno was recently called the fastest warming in the United States.
Activists call it the liberation of soil. They also say urban re-greening increases biodiversity and decreases flood risks by having more locations where water can be absorbed into the ground.
More greenery across a city, such as investing in pocket parks, cut-outs for tree wells in parking lots, bioswales and nature play spaces, leads to higher air quality, lower stress and fewer traffic injuries.
Depave says it’s repaved over 360-thousand square feet in the past 15 years. Its vision statement indicates it “imagines a sustainable city as a place where people and wildlife coexist and prosper amidst clean air, clean water, robust urban forests, thriving local agriculture, and healthy communities.”
It offers a How to Depave guide to “freeing your soil,” writing as a preamble that “paved surfaces contribute to stormwater pollution, whereby rainwater carries toxic urban pollutants to local streams and rivers, greatly degrading water quality and riparian habitats. Pavement also disconnects us from our natural world.”
There are now other Depave branches around the country but none in Nevada.
Another group the Canada-based Green Venture has been placing miniature gardens with native trees in run-down areas, replacing gritty asphalt with relaxing greenery and stones to sit on.
One of its programs is called NATURhoods (Naturally Adapting To Urban Runoff) “to help residents slow water down and soak it up on their property, while providing beautification, home to pollinators, places to gather, flood protection and so much more,” by encouraging wild gardens across their properties.
An empty Jacobs Entertainment parking lot in May 2024.
This renaturing can also extend to installing green walls and roofs, as well as developing green streets, with more permeable pavement, so-called rain gardens and solar-powered street lights.
Instead, here in Reno we have the hyped up downtown concrete Locomotion Plaza and we see Jacobs Entertainment doing the opposite, adding an energy sucking giant digital screen and more concrete parking lots.