Climate Change Resilience

StoryMaps are easy-to-use, interactive web applications created by City of Worcester staff to share information about a specific location, topic or project. Climate Resilience is the act of preparing communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems to adapt and thrive in the face of climate change impacts such as severe flooding, extreme heat and increased ice storms. Through collaborative efforts among government, businesses, and communities, we aim to enhance Worcester’s capacity to withstand and recover from these challenges.

Climate Resilience in Worcester

As part of a special City initiative, we chose four properties for a unique opportunity to have landscape design experts craft personalized, conceptual plans to create a more sustainable and resilient yard. These "Sustainable Yard Designs" feature elements such as rain gardens, re-routing roof gutters, reducing pavement, native plantings, pollinator gardens and more. We hope they will spur ideas you can use for your own yards!

Between 2023-2025, the City developed a Stormwater & Green Infrastructure Master Plan to assess risks associated with urban flooding and build capacity to adapt to a changing climate. The report presents an overview of existing and anticipated future flooding in Worcester, impacts due to that flooding, development of the plan, and steps to create the model and evaluate green and grey alternatives for flood reduction. In the Spring of 2025, the City applied for another grant to complete Phase II of this important project, which aims to develop a reliable and thorough model that can be used to mitigate flooding in the future.

• Presentation
• Executive Summary of the Report

A 2023 state-funded Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Grant assisted with the planting of the City's two pilot Miyawaki Forests - one adjacent to the Worcester Public Library in the McGrath Parking Lot and the second at the Plumley Village apartment complex. These forests were planted by hundreds of community volunteers in the Spring of 2024.

The Miyawaki Method is a unique approach to reforestation devised by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki that creates dense, biodiverse, native pocket forests. These fast-growing and resilient tiny forests offer numerous ecological and human health benefits including flooding reduction, cooling the "urban heat island," and boosting biodiversity.

The City received funding from the state to design two CoolPockets in Spring 2024. A CoolPocket is a public space that will provide shady nooks for neighbors to gather, relax and find respite from the heat caused by Worcester's dense urban landscape. CoolPockets can increase the City's climate resilience by providing shade, incorporating stormwater management techniques and increasing the number of plants in the City which offer health and carbon sequestration benefits.

The two locations selected, Vernon Hill Park and Columbus Park School, received conceptual-level designs with the community's ideas and support.