A HOT TREND TO STAY COOL IN SOMERVILLE
Neighbors in Somerville crammed into a tiny backyard on Joseph Street on a recent weekend morning, gathered in a circle to listen to Leigh Meunier explain the day’s main event: ripping up asphalt from the yard.
Meunier’s organization, Green & Open, has been holding “depavement parties” in Somerville since 2014. By replacing concrete and asphalt with dirt, the earth can soak up rainwater, which would usually slide right across impermeable surfaces. In heavily paved cities, adding more natural landscaping can be critical for capturing excess storm-water runoff.
Another benefit is that adding more plants and greenery can cool down surface temperatures and also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the fight against climate change.
“For Somerville, we are three-quarters paved and incredibly dense as a city,” said Meunier, the advocacy group’s coordinator. “A lot of people want to be able to have access to healthy green space.”
A demonstration from veteran volunteers with Green & Open, Cador Pricejones and Jen Stevenson Zepeda, showed what would be expected from the group. Pricejones wedged a long metal bar underneath the asphalt where it met the grass. As he used his weight to push the bar down toward the floor, his demonstration partner, Zepeda, swung a sledgehammer over her shoulder and head, then smashed the ground.
After a few heavy swings, the asphalt cracked. The moment was met with “oo’s” and “wow’s.”
‘For Somerville, we are threequarters paved ... A lot of people want to be able to have access to healthy green space.’
LEIGH MEUNIER, Green & Open coordinator, said of adding more greenery amid climate change
would do this every day if I could,” said Zepeda, a commercial solar consultant. “I just love getting in there. It’s satisfying to see your work in real-time.”
Soon, this patch of asphalt will be replaced with mini clover and other native plants. “Somerville is just so concrete, and I appreciate any opportunity to create green space and make room for plants and all that sort of stuff,” said the property owner, Laura, who asked the Globe not to use her last name for privacy reasons.
“Every little bit counts,” said Vivek Shandas, professor of geography at Portland State University. “One of the things that we’re really trying to contend with is how do you eke out little patches of green space as the development machine rolls over what used to be fields or forests.”
Another major concern with all that asphalt is the “urban heat island” effect, where dark paved surfaces absorb and retain heat. Urban areas can be about 1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than nearby rural areas, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Numerous studies have found that ground surface temperatures of pavement can be significantly warmer than grass — 45 degrees Fahrenheit or higher under direct sunlight. (Temperature measurements vary according to the location of the study and time of day.)
In Somerville, the depaving movement began somewhat organically when the cofounder of Green & Open decided to remove her driveway. Over the past decade, they’ve been doing a handful of depavings each year.
While the depavement movement hasn’t caught on in other parts of Massachusetts, a larger network exists globally. There are groups in Tennessee, California, the United Kingdom, and more that are a part of the organization called Depave based in Portland, Ore., which launched the movement.
Ted Labbe, co-director of Depave, joined the group when it was founded in 2008 after a “happy accident” of some residents helping each other in their backyards. They eventually applied for a small grant to transform an underutilized parking lot.
“No one had ever done this before. We didn’t know if it was possible,” Labbe said. “But we did it and it worked.”
Labbe said his organization has continued to grow — not only in terms of the size and types of projects in Portland, but also in the worldwide network they have built, which includes Somerville. Depave provides ad“I vice and training to other groups on how to rip up the asphalt.
A big project is on the horizon for Depave: An affiliated group in Chicago is working with the University of Illinois to convert a 10,000-square-foot space from concrete to greenery next to a Montessori school on the south side of the city.
“I always tell people that the most important aspect of this work is not the physical changing of their environment, it’s unlocking the human potential and making people realize that pavement isn’t permanent and giving people hope for the future,” Labbe said.
Although Green & Open have mostly stuck to doing small depavings in Somerville backyards, Meunier said the group recently partnered with the Mystic River Watershed Association to move their efforts to bigger projects in East Somerville, a heavily paved environmental justice community, which is defined by the state as a neighborhood with low-median household incomes.
“I think we’re really lucky to be connected with some really cool community groups,” said Patrick Herron, executive director of the Mystic River Watershed Association, who attended his first depavement recently. “It’s through these relationships that we learn about community desires, and who our organization should be working with.”
The movement may also soon spread to Framingham, where advocacy groups are engaged in community outreach to launch some projects.
Meunier said she wants Green & Open to continue to help get rid of paved driveways and hopes to keep what is at the center of it all: the community.
“A lot of people are experiencing anxiety and paralysis around climate change. They just don’t move forward in anything because it’s so overwhelming,” Meunier said. “You’ve got to do stuff that’s also hands-on, where you see immediate impact, and depaving is like this gift on so many levels.”