Our project with the Tech Museum is very closely related to the idea of urban resilience that we discussed in class on Monday. Our project involves collecting stories of climate change adaptation and mitigation - which is a form of urban resilience. Through our interviews, we are learning about different forms of urban resilience in the Bay Area. Although, like we talked about in our discussion on Monday, there are several different categories of urban resilience, our project focuses on environmental resilience in particular. We have been, and will continue to reach out to communities, individuals, and organizations to hear about how climate change is affecting them, but also what they are doing to adapt to climate change, and create resilience within their lives, work, or community. I will now describe an example of a resilience story we have encountered in the community through our project.
One individual we spoke to works in agriculture, and spoke about the negative effects of climate change on the weather and seasons, and how he can’t even remember what “normal” seasons are like. Because of climate change and drought, farmers are grafting their plants and trees more often than in the past. Grafting is the process of training two different plants to grow as one. For example, a farmer might use a plant with a more drought-resistant root structure, and graft it to the top of a plant that produces good fruit. This is a process that farmers are using to make their crops more resilient to climate conditions. By growing resilient agriculture, food supply in the city is generally more resilient, making the urban sphere more resilient in general. This example represents only one kind of resilience effort - agricultural - in the Bay Area, although there is so much being done. Through our project we are aiming to collect stories of resilience from farmers, urban planners, individual community members, and many others - we can’t wait to collect as many voices as possible and share them with communities through our small part of the exhibition in the Tech Museum. Resilience as was stated during class, is the ability for a system to handle a shock or disruption and endure livelihood for the people in the city. The reading provided the three examples of approaches for resilience management: engineering, social, and organizational. One of the biggest takeaways from the reading and lecture was that social capital matters a lot in resilience. Social capital is the social network that one has. This can be an issue under resilience because if people are not connected then they may not be able to reach resources that would help them or contact the right people needed. By being resilient and creating social capital, people are connected to others in their community which can allow for mutual growth and a mutual force to combat climate change such as in voting, organizing, farming, and creating connections to companies that also have large impacts. Social capital allows for connections across disciplines and geographic boundaries which is helpful in a large space such as the bay area. Resilience is needed here because it gives low-income communities an opportunity to reach out to people in power positions or to even organize with themselves and create movements for change and to advocate for their communities that are impacted largely by climate change. Another issue that can fall under resilience is gentrification of neighborhoods that have cultural and ethnic/racial roots. Resilience is needed here in order to stop housing prices from rising and forcing people to move, causing cultural shifts and making the affordable housing crisis worse. Environmental racism is also a problem that falls under resilience. Placing toxic chemical waste dumps, trash dumps, or even harmful medical supply dumps near low-income, or predominantly Black/Latinx neighborhoods has had serious health issues. With climate change and these dumps releasing more toxins and pollution, the health risks will be greater for these neighborhoods who can’t afford proper health treatment. Resilience is needed here for their own safety and well-being. In terms of agriculture, resilience is needed in food deserts and in areas of drought. These issues are impacting food access and an economic industry. People’s livelihood depends on the production of these agricultural products and people need these products for their food consumption. Resilience would allow for proper distribution of water sources for these areas while being conservative of water resources. Resilience would allow for solutions to food access. Overall, in all of these issues and many others, resilience is needed for survival. Resilience combats the impacts of climate change and the injustices that are byproducts of this crisis. Particularly, low-income neighborhoods of color are more susceptible to the impacts of climate change and there needs to be community resilience in order to create strategies of mitigation and adaptation and receive proper aid from other communities or organizations. Considering our project focuses on the impacts and adaptation/mitigation to climate change, the ABAG and MTC should prioritize low-income communities of color as they are the most vulnerable to climate change. Not only are these communities subjected to environmental racism, but they lack the socioeconomic mobility to be able to respond to ever more threatening natural disasters. In specific to California, natural disasters such wildfires,droughts, and sea level rise are all threats to low-income communities of color who may not have the resources to prepare/migrate in response. However, we recognize that our project doesn't solely focus on just low-income communities of color as we are supposed to collect stories of all people in the bay area who have been impacted/mitigated to climate change. We are still currently looking for a balance between stories that elevate voices which need the most exposure versus those who may be most accessible to us. As we consider topics talked about in class like the four pillars of sustainability, it is important for the MTC/ABAG to preserve the cultural and social aspects of these low-income communities of color as they may be vulnerable to harmful pressures such as gentrification. As of now, both the ABAG and the MTC have created a project called Horizon that won't only look at transportation and housing but at economic development, resilience, and the effects of technological development. These are important topics in that they may explicitly help low-income communities of color since they require the most help in addressing economic and technological inequality. Planning should be careful in that these communities are already facing increasing property values and pressures of the silicon valley to relocate. We suggest that the MTC/ABAG be especially careful in the Horizon project in focusing the needs of its most vulnerable populations. Comments are closed.
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