Cool Boulder

Cool Boulder is a place-based experiment in what the Great Transition can look like when ecological regeneration becomes a shared civic project. A partnership between the City of Boulder and the wider community, it mobilizes residents, nonprofits, businesses, scientists, and public agencies around nature-based climate action—restoring soils, expanding tree canopy, creating pollinator habitat, improving water retention, and strengthening resilience to heat and flooding. Its deeper significance is cultural as much as ecological: Cool Boulder shifts people from being consumers of municipal services to active stewards of the living systems that sustain their community. It also explicitly recognizes that contemporary nature-based solutions are catching up with Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge rooted in reciprocal relationships with the natural world. In Three Horizons terms, Cool Boulder is a strong Horizon 2 prototype—demonstrating how local government, science, community participation, and ecological stewardship can begin to function together as foundations of a more regenerative Horizon 3 city.

Functional Sector: Governance, Relationships, Education

Date Added: 2026-09-11

	Category: Environmental Stewardship
	Type: Organization