Case Study: The Nature Conservancy achieves smarter green community planning with UrbanFootprint

The Nature Conservancy Works with UrbanFootprint to Build Innovative Tech for Green Communities

The Nature Conservancy worked with UrbanFootprint to address the challenge of making nature and conservation central to land-use planning in a politically difficult climate. As cities grow and development pressure increases, the organization needed better tools to help planners and policymakers understand how future growth would affect natural and working lands.

UrbanFootprint integrated The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Module into its platform to help users analyze impacts on water, habitat, agriculture, and carbon sequestration. In Sonoma County, the tool helped compare growth scenarios and showed that a transit-oriented, infill approach could protect 16,000 acres of natural land, preserve groundwater recharge equal to the water use of 455 households per year, and keep 3,000 acres barrier-free for wildlife movement, among other benefits.

The Nature Conservancy

Elizabeth O’Donoghue

Director of Infrastructure and Land Use