To create healthier and more resilient cities, the Bay Area Urban Nature Collaborative has three primary goals.
The Bay Area has regional habitat goals for upland, shoreline, and subtidal habitats, but there is a conspicuous gap in our urban areas.
By filling this gap, we will see improvements in urban nature, public health, and water quality. This multi-benefit approach will require participation from members with a diverse range of disciplines and experiences. Developing goals in urban areas also ensures that goals in adjacent habitats are not isolated.
The focus of the goals will be to meet existing policy requirements, not to create more processes or policies.
Because the process will be highly collaborative, we envision that cities, counties, and regional agencies will adopt the regional goal as part of their individual urban planning policies.
Tools will be provided for both the planning-scale (for city or watershed planning) and site-scale (for design of specific projects or parcels).
The Collaborative’s Workgroups will be the main forum for understanding what tools and information already exist, and what still needs to be compiled or created.
As the Collaborative becomes more established, regional resources will be developed to improve consistency across the region.
Many regional and state organizations and agencies are updating or creating plans that include urban nature. We want to provide an umbrella framework for coordination across these various efforts, and also start early conversations to inform a future local funding measure!
A future phase of this de-siloing hopefully expands beyond the region to also include collaboration among California’s various metropolitan areas, so that the Bay Area learns from urban nature efforts in other highly urbanized areas, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento.
What do we mean by “urban nature”?
The focus of the Collaborative is on the 9 Bay Area Counties’ developed urban core – the light grey areas in the aerial photo, most easily visible ringing the South Bay.
We are not focused on the shoreline (which already has a regional goal and many regional plans and guidance documents), nor the natural and working lands (which also already have a regional goal). We recognize that there is overlap of these 3 geographic areas, which presents another opportunity for close coordination.