Capacity building and grassroots governance in implementing neighborhood-scale climate adaptation

Keywords: governance, community resilience, adaptive capacity, urban resilience, environmental justice
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Neighborhood resilience projects offer a response to climate risks and envision urban transformation for community benefits. Urban infrastructure and public spaces play a significant role in climate adaptation and face challenges with the current ownership, management, policies and regulations, and funding mechanisms. Thus, community advocacy, political will, and governance are essential for implementing these multi-system projects. This paper will examine case studies that align design actions with city/state government and community organizations.

The city of Houston, Tx, presents an interesting case study due to its urgent need to address climate risk, its neighborhood and municipal, institutional structure, unique planning regulations, and financing mechanisms. The city is developing a neighborhood resilience strategy to bridge climate adaptation and environmental justice issues, emphasizing the capacity building of local community organizations.

In this study, we will review these unique governance components and how they led to disinvestment and inequities in the past and are now used to generate new forms of community leadership to foster adaptive capacity. The review will focus on the overlap between the proposed actions and the needed frameworks for funding, implementation, operation and maintenance, and policy. The evaluation will be based on three key aspects: the existing and proposed governance and planning tools, the proposed actions and co-design process, climate justice, and community resilience in urban commons resource management. This paper concludes how leveraging the urban transformation for climate adaptation and management as urban commons can produce and reinforce community governance structures to allow equitable access and community co-benefits.