Somerville, Massachusetts, one of the hottest and most densely packed cities in New England, is moving forward with a project to install urban trees and reconstruct sidewalks with permeable materials, an attempt to reverse decades of canopy loss that has left the city acutely vulnerable to extreme heat.
The initiative, called the Green and Cool Somerville: Sustainable Sidewalks and Trees Project, combines two functions that cities typically handle separately. Rather than treating sidewalk repair and tree planting as unrelated public works jobs, Somerville is integrating them into a single effort, using structural soil systems and suspended-pavement tree pits that give roots enough space to survive well past the typical seven-year mortality curve for urban street trees. Traditional concrete sidewalks are being replaced with permeable surfaces that absorb stormwater instead of routing it into overtaxed drains.
The stakes are high for a city of roughly 81,000 residents packed into just 4.1 square miles. Somerville has some of the lowest per-capita green space in Massachusetts, a dense stock of triple-decker homes that trap heat, and an extensive cover of asphalt and concrete that drives temperatures up in summer. The city has lost significant tree canopy to development, the Emerald Ash Borer and aging street trees, a trend its 2021 Urban Forest Management Plan was designed to reverse.
Source: NationGraph.
Federal climate legislation has created an opening to fund this kind of work. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act together channeled $1.5 billion into the USDA Urban and Community Forestry program, the largest federal investment in urban trees in U.S. history. Massachusetts has added its own funding through the Greening the Gateway Cities Program and Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grants, and Somerville has been an active applicant for both. With uncertainty growing over whether the Trump administration will claw back unspent IRA dollars, city officials appear to be moving quickly to lock in funding.
The project is also part of a longer policy arc. Mayor Katjana Ballantyne, elected in 2021 on a climate platform, has made green infrastructure a signature issue. The city passed one of Massachusetts's strongest tree preservation ordinances in 2020 and has committed to carbon neutrality by 2050. As coverage of Somerville's integrated approach to trees and sidewalks has noted, fusing these two functions is a deliberate bet that coordinated design produces better outcomes than piecemeal repairs.
The city has posted the project for contractor proposals through Bid Express, Massachusetts's standard e-procurement platform. The contract value, number of trees to be planted, and total sidewalk footage are not disclosed in the public notice.
