Featured Alum: Katherine Peinhardt

Cities are both at the forefront of climate change’s impacts and the epicenter of solutions. Now is a crucial moment to take those realities into account. Today, 55 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. By midcentury, that percentage is projected to be as high as 68 percent.

The coronavirus has depleted city budgets around the world, but a just recovery needs to fill in those gaps and make sure our cities are prepared for climate change. That’s particularly true of public spaces that have only become more vital in our new reality where indoor gatherings in private spaces have proven to be prime venues for the virus to spread. 

The future of public spaces is a challenge Climate and Society (C+S) alum Katherine Peinhardt has been grappling with long before the pandemic gripped the world. She’s recently joined ICLEI as a communications officer at their European Secretariat in Freiburg, Germany. Prior to joining ICLEI Peinhardt completed a German Chancellor Fellowship where she researched climate resilience through the use of public spaces. Her research was recently published and featured in a talk at TEDxKanzlerPark.

We caught up with Peinhardt to discuss her work and what comes next for cities around the world as we enter a new era of a planet that’s hotter and more urbanized. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

When did you become interested in the intersection of climate change and urban issues?

Soon after C+S, I worked at the World Resources Institute Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, and later at Project for Public Spaces. I began to see cities as lenses through which we can see the human side of many climate challenges: things like environmental racism, housing, and spatial justice, and transportation equity, to name a few. 

I started to ask myself: Are our parks, streets, and plazas making it easier or harder for us to confront the climate crisis? Are we more or less resilient as a result of how they are designed, programmed, and managed? Public spaces are more than the physical landscape of our communities; they also define our social landscapes by influencing whether and how we gather. This crucial role means that, among other things like social well-being, public spaces are key to our ability to collaborate in response to our shared challenges. 

Last year, I was a part of a German Chancellor Fellowship, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and hosted by the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany, where I am researching how spaces can layer physical adaptation considerations with features that make them well-loved, social public spaces. I came to the conclusion that we can make ourselves both physically and socially more resilient to climate change via public space projects—and projects in cities like Rotterdam are proving this to be effective.

What are some emerging strategies that cities are using to address climate change?

The intersection of cities and climate change is fairly well-explored, but I think approaching public spaces as opportunities for urban adaptation is a new angle. 

We turn to public spaces not only in good times but also in times of crisis. They are key in helping us physically weather emotional shocks and as places that boost our social resilience and everyday quality of life. Our public realm can and must cultivate resilience to the climate crisis, and overlooking public spaces in this capacity is a missed opportunity. 

We can look to cities like Rotterdam, where public spaces’ role as social infrastructure is being combined with climate adaptation efforts. A notable example that melds social and environmental benefits is Waterplein Benthemplein, which is one of the city’s  “water square” projects. Its basins serve as a key gathering place, designed for skateboarding and basketball, but also gather excess stormwater, making it key for water management.  

And Rotterdam isn’t the only one: Chulalongkorn Centenary Park in Bangkok, Thailand, and Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia have also shown that flood and stormwater management can be layered into public spaces that otherwise provide everyday opportunities for recreation and interpersonal connection.

What urban climate solutions are you particularly excited about?

I’m excited about the growth and increasing recognition of the importance of local, grassroots movements. In looking at how cities are adapting through the public realm, this type of movement is showing up in the form of “placemaking,” an increasingly popular approach to improving the public realm. I learned about this during my time working at Project for Public Spaces, where I was taught that placemaking refers to how the members of a community drive how their public spaces evolve and are used. The movement centers the “informal” human element that drives us to make and keep up our great public spaces. It’s clear to me that this people-first approach goes far beyond public spaces and should be the lens through which we assess many of our shared challenges, such as climate justice and food security. 

What do you think is important for a layperson to understand about your work?

What I’d love for people to take away from my work is that changing our cities in an era of climate change isn’t solely in the hands of experts. I didn’t study urban planning, but like many other folks, I see our cities as opportunities to create a public realm that serves everyone and serves our shared imperatives of social equity and climate justice. These issues can’t be solved solely through official routes. 

In my research, I have learned not only about the formal, bureaucratic efforts of cities like Rotterdam, but also the community-level projects that city officials have been clever enough to tap into and support. In Rotterdam, people are taking on community garden projects, de-paving, and greening—and the city has started to support these efforts and directly consult with its citizens about their experiences and concerns about the climate. I’m not alone in saying that real and lasting change has to take this type of approach, rooted in the work people are doing on the ground.

How did Climate and Society prepare you for your career?

Climate and Society was a great way to see the broad landscape of work to be done to confront the climate crisis. Being able to get a foundation in the science, while also having the chance to dig in with elective classes in climate law, environmental conflict, and urban sustainability, was a perfect chance to broaden my understanding of the way climate change impacts people, and where our opportunities for change lie.