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In Grand Rapids, Michigan, every 8th grader learns to canoe in the Grand River. Milwaukee’s public school district is now home to five new greenspaces. In Austin, nature-based learning is integrated into the city’s early childcare centers. Cincinnati has a goal of guaranteeing that all of its public schools have safe and accessible outdoor spaces by 2028.
This is the work of Nature Everywhere Communities, a program working to increase access to nature and playspaces in cities across the United States. Because the benefits of outdoor play are many, from preventing obesity to promoting social and emotional development and increasing attention spans, the partnership between the Children & Nature Network, the National League of Cities, and KABOOM! is working to reach 100 cities by next year.
“We’re partnering to ensure that children across the U.S. have the opportunity to grow and thrive in supportive communities through these proven strategies to increase equitable access to nature everywhere that children live, learn, and play — that’s our big emphasis,” explains Abbe Ewell Longstein, KABOOM!’s associate director of program management. “We really believe that, when implemented equitably and systemically, opportunities for nature-based learning, exploration, and play can really help address a myriad of systemic challenges that face youth and communities.”
While Nature Everywhere Communities technically started in 2023, it’s really a continuation and expansion of the work done by Cities Connecting Children to Nature, which started in 2014 with seven cities. The initiative grew to include 50 cities, and now with the transition to Nature Everywhere Communities and KABOOM!’s involvement, 20 more cities have been added to the mix.
In Grand Rapids, the work has been supported by two different mayoral administrations. It’s this intertwining of program initiatives with city priorities that’s made the pilot city the success it is today. Milestones include a green schoolyard initiative to create greenspaces at schools in the city’s most underserved neighborhoods.
Austin, another pilot city, has also seen enduring success. Here, too, support from the city has been critical. Today, Austin has two full-time city employees dedicated to coordinating and executing its Nature Everywhere Communities work. “Very early on, Austin took the step of drawing what we call equity maps and using geographic information systems to show where children had less access to nature [to] create priorities,” says Andrew Moore, director of youth and young adult connections at the National League of Cities.
Several major shifts came with the transition to Nature Everywhere Communities. First, the effort used the transition as something of a pause moment to focus on planning processes. “We asked [participating cities] to slow down and really take stock of what was happening in their community, to go through a listening process of community needs and interests with a recognition that we don’t know what we don’t know,” explains Monica Lopez Magee, senior vice president of program, research and policy at Children & Nature Network.
The second shift was the integration of KABOOM!’s Playspace Inequity Prioritization Index, or PIPI — a mapping tool that helps identify where playspaces are lacking through an equity lens. “It’s an index that combines a number of different data points [to] estimate the level of [playspace] inequity that exists in a particular community,” Longstein explains.
(Photo by Paris Lopez)
PIPI was born out of the realization that many city departments like parks and recreation or school systems have outdated or incomplete data on the location and quality of their playgrounds. Knowing exactly where there are gaps in quality places to play is critical when making decisions on where to invest resources for additional playspaces. Equipped with PIPI and nature-specific indicators like Nature Quant, the technical assistance that communities get from joining the initiative is a big benefit.
“Along the way, we’re providing technical assistance, which is really advising and consulting where we’re lifting up community practices from across the nation,” says Lopez Magee. The project’s growth from seven pilot cities to 70 cities today means they’ve seen many examples of what works and what might not.
This level of assistance is unique to just one of the pathways that cities can take under Nature Everywhere Communities, the more intensive accelerator community pathway. The other option is a self-directed action challenge community pathway for cities that are ready to make changes but perhaps not ready for launching intensive programs.
According to Lopez Magee, the action challenge pathway still comes with guidance and learnings from Nature Everywhere Communities but allows cities to take a more self-guided approach to declaring and acting on a commitment to equitable access to nature. “They get recognition for the work and recognition can be momentum-building,” she adds.
Through the addition of this approach, Nature Everywhere Communities is on track to meet its 100-city goal by the end of the year. “We’re just blazing ahead when it comes to engaging at least 25 cities on that path,” Longstein notes. Plus, the initiative plans to host a vision lab in the fall that will add an anticipated five to 10 additional cities, sending them down the more intensive accelerator pathway.
In addition to plotting another vision lab to bring on even more cities early next year, the group is having ongoing conversations about how to continue increasing access to nature for kids around the country. “There’s a lot of meetings happening and discussions about how we iterate on this,” Longstein adds. While they haven’t formally decided what that will look like yet, she’s confident that it will make a difference. “We’re committed to learning and evolving together as part of this broader movement of leaders working to create better futures for kids through access to nature,” she says.
Cities interested in committing to the Action Challenge can learn more here.