ReNature the City Fund

Supporting creative projects that reimagine cities as living ecosystems

A flower breaking through asphalt is a small revolution. ReNature the City supports community-led projects that bring ecological life, climate resilience, biodiversity, and human wellbeing back into urban space. We are interested in the people imagining new ways for cities to coexist with water, soil, plants, animals, fungi, and each other. This can take the form of a rain garden absorbing stormwater, a stream freed from concrete, a native micro-forest cooling a neighborhood, a food garden transforming idle land, or a green corridor reconnecting fragmented habitats. But it can also be something less conventional: a project creating habitat for urban wildlife, an artistic intervention that changes how people perceive a neglected ecosystem, a community experiment reconnecting people with nature, a new approach to urban biodiversity, or a technology helping cities understand and restore living systems. We are especially interested in projects that challenge the idea that cities exist only for humans. What happens when birds, insects, trees, rivers, fungi, soil and people are all considered part of the same urban system? We believe that restoring these relationships can make cities more resilient to climate change, richer in biodiversity, and healthier places to live, including for our mental and emotional wellbeing. Supports the people already experimenting with these possibilities: landscape designers, ecologists, artists, grassroots architects, scientists, technologists, educators, gardeners, and neighborhood collectives. Renaturing a city is about more than planting trees. It is about changing our relationship with the living world around us. Imagine living cities ReNature the City

Eligibility

To qualify for this fund, projects should contribute to one or more of the following:
- Ecological regeneration: restoring native vegetation, soil, water systems, habitats, biodiversity, or ecological processes within urban areas.
- Climate resilience: using living systems and nature-based approaches to address flooding, extreme heat, drought, stormwater, urban cooling, or other climate-related challenges.
- Multispecies urbanism: creating or restoring conditions for humans and other species — including birds, insects, pollinators, bats, plants, fungi, and aquatic life — to coexist in urban environments.
- Human wellbeing and connection to nature: projects that use nature to create healthier, more restorative, connected, and meaningful urban environments, including initiatives addressing mental wellbeing, environmental connection, play, contemplation, community, and belonging.
- New ways of imagining the city: creative, artistic, scientific, technological, educational, architectural, or community-led experiments that challenge conventional relationships between urban space and the living world.
Projects may include, but are not limited to: native micro-forests, rain gardens, bioswales, renaturalized streams, community food gardens, green corridors, pollinator habitats, wildlife-friendly infrastructure, urban rewilding, ecological art, community experiments, biodiversity monitoring, environmental education, and other approaches that reconnect living systems with urban life.
Projects at any stage are welcome: already underway and expanding, in progress, or just getting started.
We value genuine local participation. Neighbors, community groups, practitioners, researchers, artists, and other local actors should ideally have a meaningful role in shaping, implementing, caring for, or learning from the project.
To apply, bring:
- A photo or visual representation of the place, situation, or community you are working with.
- A clear description of what you want to change or explore.
- The intended ecological, climate, social, or wellbeing impact.
- A photo or introduction to the people involved.
- References to previous work, when available.
- A video is welcome and can help us understand the project, its context, and the people behind it.
We are open to projects that do not fit neatly into an existing category. What matters is the potential to restore relationships between urban life and the living world.

Projects (2)

1 curated · 1 submitted

Project	Status	Raised
Kiwaatule-2030: A Bold Experiment in Urban Regeneration	curated	$252
FROM MINE TO CLINIC NIGERIA	submitted	$612