Cooling cities, saving lives, and strengthening economies
Livability Starts with Surfaces
Cities are under threat—with extreme heat, increased flooding/mold, and soaring electricity bills all hurting livability. Citywide Smart Surfaces are solving these problems, with greatest benefits in lower income and formerly redlined neighborhoods. Smart Surfaces can deliver 5°F citywide summer cooling while enhancing health, cutting electricity bills and slowing global warming—protecting our cities and their citizens.
What We do
The Smart Surfaces Coalition provides its city partners all the tools, training and support needed to quantify and transform their surfaces—to use them as a single integrated solution to cool as the world warms, reduce flooding as rain events worsen, and cut electricity bills as electricity costs rise. We enable partner cities to thrive in a climate changing world—and to more rapidly and cost effectively cut their own global warming contribution.
Interested in learning more about our work?
SMART SURFACE Solutions
Cities that deploy Smart Surfaces cut urban heat, reduce flood risk, save money, and make communities more livable.
Cool Roofs
Cool roofs are light colored roofs that reflect most heat—unlike conventional dark colored roofs. Cool roofs reflect more than 50% of solar radiation compared to traditional dark roofs, which reflect only about 15-20%.
Green Roofs
Green roofs are covered in vegetation, which provides shading, reduces building energy use, cleans the air, and absorbs water to prevent flooding.
Trees
Trees provide shade and reduce ambient temperatures through evapotranspiration. Additionally, trees turn CO2 into oxygen, filter out air pollutants, and mitigate flood risk during heavy rains.
Solar
Solar PVs convert sunlight into electricity and provide shading for buildings, sidewalks, and other public areas.
Reflective Pavements
Reflective (or ‘high albedo’) pavements include light-colored roads, sidewalks, and parking lots. These pavements use a reflective sealant to bounce sunlight and heat away from cities to reduce surface temperatures. They also protect the pavement, extending its useful life.
Porous Pavements
Porous pavements allow rain to pass through the surface, recharging groundwater while reducing flood risk.
Nature-Based Stormwater Solutions
Bioswales, rain gardens, and other forms of bioretention allow rain to run off into green, porous basins, in turn reducing stormwater runoff, risk of flooding and stormwater system overflow, whilst recharging groundwater.
Combined Surfaces
By combining Smart Surface solutions, cities can maximize the benefits from a single area. For example:
Green roofs + Solar PV generate clean energy, reduce building energy use, manage stormwater, and clean the air.
Porous + cool surfaces reflect heat, capture rain, and clean the air.
Low-Carbon Concrete
Through the process of integrating CO2 into new concrete, concrete can be carbon neutral or even carbon negative. Additionally, carbon-sequestering concrete has a relatively high albedo.
Hear the SSC Story
Fourteen-minute TedX video providing a comprehensive overview of Smart Surfaces and their ability to cost-effectively mitigate the Urban Heat Island effect, boost urban economic vitality, and solve structural urban inequities.
Two-minute video on how Smart Surfaces can improve the health of people across America - created by the American Lung Association.
Research and Reports
Coalition Partners
The Smart Surfaces Coalition is made up of 40 leading national and international organizations with a shared commitment to enabling and ensuring that Smart Surfaces become the urban design standard globally within a decade.
