City Green

The City of Ottawa will be the first Canadian city to use City Green to create a forest cover assessment tool. City Green is a Geographic Information System (GIS) tool developed by American Forests, a not-for-profit conservation organization. Based on the principle that tree cover represents green infrastructure, the City Green approach will enable Ottawa to incorporate forest cover into its planning and development practices by taking basic data relating to forest cover, soils and climate statistics; calculating the amount and monetary equivalents of natural infiltration, air pollution removal, and stored and sequestered carbon, and; examining energy conservation. The project will result in more refined forest cover targets; a baseline to measure change over time; an ability to factor in forest cover data to greenhouse gas reduction, Partners for Climate Protection commitments and City policy such as the Forest Strategy, a component of the City of Ottawa 20/20 Environmental Strategy, and Air Quality and Climate Change Management Plan; the ability to evaluate development options using forest cover value as a comparable evaluation criteria, and; a tool for ongoing application of further analysis of community design plans and assessment projects at a neighbourhood or block level in relation to the City’s development review process.