US Schools are replacing blacktop with greenery to avoid the heat island effect
US Schools are replacing blacktop with greenery to avoid the heat island effect
Today, the Los Angeles Unified School District has a goal of converting at least 30 percent of every schoolyard to green space, a years-long project that it expects to cost $3 billion. By its own estimate, about 475 schools do not meet that standard and, of them, more than 200 elementary schools have less than 10 percent green space. This analysis does not include school parking lots or truck delivery areas — paved surfaces that are likely to remain that way and raise the temperature around schools.
Webster, after years of waiting, is now on the list of schools to be renovated by the Trust for Public Land. The nonprofit will work with a class of third-graders and landscape architects for the next year to design a new schoolyard. Projects like this can take two to three years to complete, at a cost ranging from $400,000 to as much as $2.5 million, said Danielle Denk, who directs the organization’s schoolyard transformation work. In Philadelphia, most of the money for these projects comes from the water department, which is trying to make the city more capable of absorbing storm runoff.
Plus the kids will have trees to use as cover from shooters. I guess to avoid the packin' heat Island effect?
This will be beautiful. One downside is that it will need more maintenance costs, i.e. you can't just walk away from it for years at a time, especially if it were somewhere that poison ivy could start to grow. But definitely an uplifting positive direction to be heading in!:-)
I mean you could. My wife's school usually let's the outside of her class become a forest before they chop it all down like every two years. Mainly because they don't have a landscaper and just equip a janitor with a weed Wacker
This is awesome. Might even be really engaging for green-minded students if they are given the opportunity to participate in the greening, or any gardening, or maintenance etc. They should also all install apiaries, and teach beekeeping
I went to school in CA for a year and a half. In all the states I've also gone to school, that was the only place with blacktop as the school yard. Strange for such large expanses without turf.
Both the Catholic school I attended Kindergarten through 2nd grade at and the public middle school I attended in suburban NY had blacktop as the main rec area during lunches and other such breaks, so it's not just a CA thing, I guess. Neither school was in a very build up area, either. The Catholic school in particular had plenty of land they could have had us play on that wasn't the parking lot. Had I stayed there for all my schooling, they were even known for sending students into the marsh out behind the school to catch their own frogs for the full experience of preserving something in formaldehyde and dissecting it during high school biology labs.
If only people could have predicted this kind of thing a few decades ago... Oh wait, they did. But still it's weird to frame it this way. We should have natural campuses because that's better in general, not just because of the heat island effect.
What about basketball?
Soccer instead. Basketball is a cataylst for global warming.
They can still exist they'll have dedicated areas. Super common to see on a school yard. The overall issue is massive areas of black top not small basketball courts
Those'll probably be part of the remaining 70% that isn't greenspace.
While greenery is better than black top, there are studies that show metal roofs do not retain heat at night and are virtually care free.
I've never heard of these things. What about the sunlight reflection's glare, and how would this be better than conventional roofs or solar panel roofs?
I wonder how much additional water this will use?
Judging by how many trees suburbs already have, probably just rainwater