Depaving for green spaces has transformed 8.4 acres of pavement into gardens across 80 Portland-area sites since 2008.
Depaving for green spaces began when Portland residents removed pavement from their own properties and planted gardens. That personal project sparked a movement. Depave formally launched in 2008 and has since grown into a nationwide network training other organizations to remove unnecessary asphalt and concrete.
The approach is straightforward. Identify over-paved sites at schools, churches, and community spaces. Organize volunteers. Remove pavement. Replace it with gardens, rain gardens, and gathering spaces. A typical project removes 3,600 square feet.
The results are measurable. NASA researchers analyzed six Depave sites using remote-sensing data and recorded decreases of up to 7.7°F in reflected heat. NASA hypothesized that cooling effects would continue to grow as vegetation matures. That kind of independent, third-party verification is rare for a grassroots environmental intervention, and it confirms that these small-scale projects deliver a real, physical cooling effect.
Stormwater benefits follow a similar pattern. Portland receives 37 inches of annual rainfall, and a typical project footprint, combined with runoff from adjacent impervious surfaces, reclaims roughly 208,872 gallons a year. Across Depave’s full portfolio of 80 projects, spanning 8.4 acres of direct pavement removal plus 12.6 acres of adjacent drainage area, the organization estimates that 24.4 million gallons are redirected into soil annually, easing pressure on storm drains, cutting pollution runoff, and helping recharge groundwater.
Carbon sequestration adds another layer of benefit. Urban soils store 1.5 to 3 times as much carbon as non-urban soils, and Depave estimates that each typical project sequesters 0.05 to 0.10 metric tons of soil carbon annually. Across the full portfolio, that amounts to 5 to 10 metric tons of carbon captured annually, not including the additional sequestration provided by newly planted trees.
Depave pursues a network model rather than trying to depave every city itself, training community groups across North America to run similar projects in their own neighborhoods. That multiplication strategy is how a Portland-born idea becomes a continent-wide practice: each new site brings its own volunteers, local knowledge, and community partnerships, spreading both the workload and the benefits far beyond what any single organization could deliver alone.
Depaving for green spaces scales through a network model that trains community groups across North America to run their own projects, though replicating Portland’s success depends on each location independently securing the funding, volunteers, permits, and community partnerships that not every city can easily access. Photo courtesy of Depave.
The organization also advocates for policy change, pushing cities to reduce parking requirements and legalize sustainable urban design. Los Angeles, Seattle, and Tacoma have begun exploring similar depaving policies, a sign that ideas tested on a single schoolyard are starting to shape decisions made at the level of entire cities.
Long-term care is built into the model from the start. Depave runs ongoing Community Care programs where volunteers tend green schoolyards and gathering spaces well after the initial transformation, and its Green Thumb Maintenance Crew treats each project as a lasting commitment rather than a one-day event. That follow-through is part of what has allowed sites planted years ago to keep maturing and cooling today.
Environmental justice shapes where Depave works. The organization intentionally partners with communities facing disproportionate heat exposure and historically less access to green space, directing volunteer labor and resources toward the neighborhoods that need cooling and stormwater relief the most.
Depaving for green spaces demonstrates genuine environmental benefits, verified by NASA and quantified through stormwater and carbon metrics. Sixteen years of sustained operation, a growing national network, and cities beginning to adopt supportive policy all point to a movement with real staying power. Every removed parking lot becomes a small, functioning piece of climate infrastructure: cooler, more absorbent, and more alive than the pavement it replaced.
What started as two neighbors pulling up their own driveways has become a repeatable model that is now taking root, literally, in cities well beyond Portland.
