Mosaic Insights and Natural Capital Economics were engaged by Living Melbourne to develop a cost analysis and estimate the benefits of greening priority areas of the city. The work is a key part of Living Melbourne’s Priority Urban Greening initiative and aims to provide the evidence base to build a business case for funding increased and enhanced urban greening for enhanced climate resilience and biodiversity at various spatial scales.

We developed an advanced, integrated approach that combined complex, city-scale urban analytics and innovation tree costing tools (including the tool we developed for Hort Innovation Australia).

The analyses – for the first time – provides city-scale estimates of the cost of greening to: 

• Reduce urban heat for vulnerable communities
• Protect biodiversity and provide enhanced habitat
• Enhance priority passive open spaces to cool those places
• Protect the health of waterways, riparian corridors and aquatic ecosystems
• The results of the analysis clearly show that the economic case for urban greening stacks up.

You can download the report for more details on the work.