Economic Architecture Interviews CRS Foundation Director Brett KenCairn for its “View from the Frontier - Resilience” Research Project

Most cities manage urban landscapes as separate functions — parks, street trees, stormwater systems — each operated by different departments with different mandates. That fragmentation can mean the cross-cutting benefits of urban landscapes, including heat mitigation, flood absorption, biodiversity, and public health, often go underdelivered. 

Managing them as integrated ecological infrastructure makes a different set of outcomes possible. 

Boulder has been building that model. The City's Nature-based Climate Solutions team coordinates across Open Space and Mountain Parks, Urban Forestry, and Utilities to implement ecosystem-based strategies at multiple scales, from natural predator approaches to mosquito-borne illness, to non-chemical invasive species management, to urban forestry integrated into the city's extreme heat strategy. The team also coordinates resilient landscape pilot programs involving more than 70 organizations.  

The effort extends beyond city limits through landscape-scale ecosystem resilience initiatives focused on forests, soils, grasslands, and land degradation risk assessment. 

Brett KenCairn, Senior Division Manager for Nature-based Climate Solutions at the City of Boulder, is leading that effort. As Founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions, he is also working to translate nature-based climate solutions into scalable models for communities across the country. 

While this interview will not be made available to the general public and is intended for research purposes at Economic Architecture, they reported gratitude to Brett for sharing his perspective with them. The entire Economic Architecture “View from the Frontier” series can be found on their website.