Recap: Building Resilient Cities on Higher Ground
On December 1st 2020, NewCities, a global non-profit committed to shaping a better urban future, in partnership with the City of Orlando launched their two day Higher Ground conference. The virtual event explored themes consisting of climate adaptation, resilience, climate migration, financing resilient infrastructure and managed retreat away from high-risk areas. The two-day virtual event consisted of interactive workshops, panels and keynotes that brought together public officials, policymakers, planners, real estate professionals, engineers, academics and climate migrants from across the United States and Canada to discuss how cities are conceiving innovation solutions to combat the climate crisis.
This year’s opening keynote was delivered by acclaimed science-fiction author, Kim Stanley Robinson, who spoke about the perils of sea level rise and the importance of terminology when it comes to talking about managed retreat. He noted that implicit language (i.e. forced migration, managed/planned retreat, community relocation) can lead to assumptions about who makes decisions, how those decisions are influenced and can possibly require the need for compliance. Robinson shared that there are real connotations behind these terms and without the use of more inclusive language such as ‘community’ and ‘choice’ which encompasses the voices, knowledge and lived experiences of people living in those regions – it will be difficult to implement these plans. The call to action which echoed throughout the session reiterated that is an all hands-on deck moment and urgent action is necessary to address climate change.
The Climbing to Higher Ground: Rethinking Resilience panel focused on the realities of climate migration on the ground and how this has heavily influenced economic trends, mobility patterns and the notion of resilience as a campaign from a planning and design perspective. The panel consisted of Dr. Jesse Keenan, Associate Professor of Real Estate at Tulane University; Missy Stults, Sustainability and Innovations Manager at the City of Ann Arbor; Dr. Vivek Shandas, Professor at Portland State University; Abby Hall, Senior Advisor of Local/Regional Planning at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Alexandra Tempus, a Writer and Editor. Panelists highlighted the importance of breaking silos, encouraging collaboration and building mechanisms for institutions to be more fluid in their connectivity. They noted that inevitably there will a level of uncertainty when preparing for climate migration and we need to be comfortable with those disruptions in order for transformative change to occur.
Here are some key takeaways that I found valuable from the conference:
- Community input are central to planning decisions – it is integral to preserve a community’s culture and heritage whilst moving them away from harm’s way;
- Promote a culture of collaboration, build partnership and form allies – working with different stakeholders is crucial to the development of climate solutions, government action should work alongside community led action;
- Inter-city synergies are fundamental for anticipatory planning processes – having strong networks within cities can help to align policies and address issues of red tape;
- Accessible, open-source, public data needs to be available – risk data needs to be presented in a digestible format to the public in order for people to make informed decisions.
View the highlights from the NewCities Higher Ground conference.
Climate migration and human mobility
Rising tides, seasonal flooding, sea level rise and extreme weather events along Canadian coasts have threatened cities and communities across the nation. As climate change continues to exacerbate these threats, people living in vulnerable areas will migrate to areas with lower risks. Human mobility in the context of climate change can be categorized as either displacement, migration or planned relocation (Warner et al., 2013).
Climate induced migration can be viewed as an autonomous adaptation strategy that can be ‘voluntary’ or ‘forced’ depending on the individual’s adaptive capacity. This type of migration can have ripple effects (ex. social, economic, environmental) on receiving communities who might not have the capacity to accommodate for the influx of residents. Engaging communities in advance of natural disasters and building allies amongst those networks is integral to assessing the community’s vulnerabilities and developing employable solutions that works towards greater societal transformative change.
The movement of people in response to climate risk is multifaceted and complex but understanding the characteristics of these movements and how they relate to climate shocks and stressors is key to developing effective policy responses, adaptations plans and investments (Wilkinson et al., 2016). The future of cities is dependent on their ability to rethink, redesign and scale innovation systems to build more resilient communities.
References:
Warner, K., Afifi, T., Kälin, W., Leckie, S., Ferris, B., Martin, S. F., & Wrathall, D. (2013). Changing climate, moving people: framing migration, displacement and planned relocation. UNU-EHS.
Wilkinson, E., Kirbyshire, A., Mayhew, L., Batra, P., & Milan, A. (2016). Climate-induced migration and displacement: closing the policy gap. Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London, UK.