Highly Rated Resources
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March 28, 2018
This report describes an initiative of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) to encourage the creation of Resilience Hubs, which are defined as community-serving facilities meant to both support residents and coordinate resource distribution and services before, during or after a natural hazard event. While these are primarily meant to address vulnerability and risk, this report explains how Resilience Hubs can also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support social equity. The report draws on lessons from Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Maryland, two cities that are actively exploring the Resilience Hub concept.
Authors or Affiliated Users: Kristin Baja , Kristin Baja, CFM
Resource Category: Solutions
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January 23, 2018
The City of Norfolk, Virginia adopted a new zoning ordinance in 2018 to enhance flood resilience and direct new more intense development to higher ground. The ordinance establishes a Coastal Resilience Overlay (CRO) zone, where new development and redevelopment will have to comply with new flood resilience requirements, and an Upland Resilience Overlay (URO), designed to encourage new development in areas of the city with lower risk of flooding.
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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November 7, 2017
This 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) report recommends ways to enhance urban resilience with reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). The policy proposals offered here describe “how Congress could create a fiscally sound NFIP that provides affordable and actuarially responsible flood insurance and promotes proactive city-level actions to reduce flood losses.”
Resource Category: Solutions
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May 2017
From the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN), this guide is aimed at local government and outlines a framework for designing and implementing a community-driven, equitable climate preparedness planning process. Community-driven planning empowers those experiencing the greatest climate risks to co-define the solutions. Rather than treating equity as a component of climate preparedness planning, this guide suggests that equity should be at the center of any adaptation approach. It outlines why traditional planning falls short of supporting equity, describes why climate change vulnerability is not evenly spread, and identifies how typical adaptation strategies can be reframed to focus on equity. Throughout the document, examples from cities are presented to showcase real-world applications.
Explore more resources like this by joining our Adaptation Equity Portal
Authors or Affiliated Users: Tina Yuen , Eric Yurkovich , Beth Altshuler , Lauren Grabowski
Resource Category: Planning
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May 2017
Informed by community-based organizations from across the country,this report outlines a framework to meaningfully engage vulnerable and impacted communities in defining and building climate resilience. The guide seeks to use climate resilience activities to better build momentum for change, build a new economy and community-based financing, deepen democracy and improve governance, and activate ecological and cultural wisdom. In addition to describing guiding principles and elements of community-driven planning, the report provides examples of case studies where communities have taken a central role in resilience planning. The guide is primarily aimed at other community-based organizations, but it may also be useful for philanthropy and public sector officials.
Author or Affiliated User: Rosa González
Resource Category: Planning
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March 2017
The Innovation Network for Communities’ Essential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation report provides a review of the promising practices in urban adaptation, a summary of recent advances in the field, and a roadmap for communities to continue advancing adaptation practices.
Resource Category: Solutions
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2016
The Harlem Heat Project is a community-based initiative that began in New York City in the summer of 2016. It combines crowd-sourcing, data reporting, and narrative journalism to tell the story or urban heat islands in New York City. Non-profit journalism and community-based organizations came together to provide low-cost heat sensors to homeowners in "heat-vulnerable" areas of Harlem in New York City. The data was used to tell the story of disproportionate risks to extreme heat for lower-income and communities of color as a result of increasing temperatures from climate change.
Resource Category: Solutions
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January 18, 2017
This Georgetown Climate Center (GCC) case study on the Sierra Nevada Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Partnership (Sierra CAMP) explores how local governments in the 22-county rural Sierra-Nevada region of California are coordinating across jurisdictional boundaries to prepare for climate change. This case study describes how Sierra CAMP was formed and has organized its decision-making, what local governments and other stakeholders are involved in the collaborative, what roles it is playing to support climate action in the Sierra-Nevada region, how the collaborative is influencing state decisionmaking and broadening connections between rural and urban adaptation efforts, and how the collaborative is funding its activities.
Authors or Affiliated Users: Annie Bennett , Hillary Neger
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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January 2017
This report focuses on ways that local governments can prepare for climate change impacts through land use and building policies. The report focuses on smart growth strategies that offer multiple benefits beyond climate preparedness including cost-savings, energy efficiency, increasing transportation options, and building economic opportunities. The strategies presented in the report are categorized as modest adjustments, major modifications, and wholesale changes, in order to help local governments determine which options are most appropriate for their own community.
Resource Category: Solutions
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January 19, 2017
The Georgetown Climate Center report, Lessons in Regional Resilience, documents lessons learned from regional climate collaboratives, which are bringing together local governments and other stakeholders to coordinate climate change initiatives at a regional level. This synthesis report shares lessons from each of the collaboratives in individual case studies, and offers insight to their goals, planning processes, and funding sources. The report is intended to help local governments consider models for coordinating at the regional level to facilitate planning and action to prepare for the impacts of climate change and draws on examples from six regional collaboratives from around the country.
Authors or Affiliated Users: Annie Bennett , Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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