Resilient Cities

Science and Stewardship for Resilient Landscapes

Catalyzing nature-based solutions for community resilience

We believe that healthy urban landscapes are essential for thriving, equitable cities. By building long-lasting partnerships with communities, we facilitate the reimagining of urban environments as vibrant, multifunctional spaces that support people, plants, and wildlife. Fostering strong network connections across disciplines allows us to translate science into innovative policy and practice, creating lasting solutions that sustain cities and restore the natural systems they depend on.

How WE DO IT

Translating Science into Action

Methodology / Process

SIG-NAL’s Resilient Cities Program catalyzes the implementation of Nature-based Solutions through two strategic initiatives that drive our programmatic work:

Mainstreaming Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) across the Southwest

In the desert Southwest, we face two interconnected challenges: intensifying urban heat and growing stress on our limited water resources. This urgent dilemma requires balance and innovation to expand Nature-based Solutions like urban forest canopy equitably across neighborhoods while conserving precious drinking water supplies. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) offers a scalable, water-smart strategy to achieve both goals. By using passive rainwater harvesting to direct stormwater runoff toward trees and vegetation, GSI turns a waste stream into a resource. It allows desert communities to cool neighborhoods, replenish soil moisture, and maintain water conservation goals—while providing the multiple co-benefits of trees, including improved air quality, reduced localized flooding, and enhanced community well-being.

Cultivating Livable Communities Through Deep Greening

Our Deep Greening initiative bridges the gap between policy and practice by aligning municipal strategies with best management practices in urban forestry and sustainable water management. A healthy, resilient urban forest is essential for creating a sustainable, livable, and economically vibrant city. Cities in particular provide ample opportunity to integrate sustainable practices as they are in a constant state of redevelopment, allowing innovative thinking at the project scale to build the resilient landscapes needed for the future. We bring a triple-bottom-line mindset to all projects, removing perceived and real barriers that slow adoption of sustainable approaches to both new construction and redevelopment projects.

Each initiative works closely with municipalities and partners to guide systemic change for long-lasting conservation outcomes.

Expertise

Our social and economic well-being is tied to the natural resources we rely on everyday. The urgency these issues create make it all the more critical to be able to translate cutting-edge science to actionable strategies. We help our state and local government partners develop actionable adaptation strategies and manage projects by translating science into practice, drawing from our expertise in: