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1246 Hearst Ave
Berkeley, CA, 94702
United States

510-289-1508

My work is providing innovative environmental education, public speaking and community building programs rooted in regenerative design principles that engage and empowers diverse audiences to action around climate change

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Community Driven Climate Resiliency Planning

Changing The Way Our Cities Are Designed

As a designer with the Urban Permaculture Institute(UPI), and a fellow with Movement Strategy Center(MSC), I partner with communities to transform the process of ‘community engagement’ to one of authentic partnership and capacity building – to initiate site design by first increasing the capacity of the resident community recognizing, leveraging, and enhancing the already existing assets and initiatives in a place. This capacity building approach, in its most elaborate form, intends to redress structural inequities of the present and past and result in a comprehensive, living, People’s Plan that becomes a more effective starting point for the complex process of our collective adaptation to living in an uncertain climate.

What is a Community Driven Planning and People's Planning?

Community-Driven Climate Resilience Planning complements public sector planning efforts. It is the process by which residents of vulnerable and impacted communities define for themselves the complex climate challenges they face, and the climate solutions most relevant to their unique assets and threats.

A People’s Plan is a living (adaptive), iterative container to hold and convey the expression of the rationalized intentions and aspirations of a community of place. It looks like a collection of maps and documents that records the assets, risks, issues, and strategies to move elements in place and time to celebrate what is beloved in community and address challenges and problems. 

A People’s Plan is especially relevant to communities who have not regularly participated in municipal general or specific planning due to structural discrimination and oppression. 

The strategies in a People’s Plan might include solution forms related to housing, infrastructure, landscape management, and land use in general. In the era of climate change, People’s Plans will be more and more focused on addressing risks to resilience including sea level rise, extreme storm events, fires, famines and chronic stressors related to lack of affordable housing, economic opportunity, and mobility.

 

RECENT AND CURRENT PROJECTS:

COMPLETED

  1. Partnering with the County of Boulder for initiating a Community Driven Planning Process - As part of my fellowship with Movement Strategy Center I had the honor to partner with Corrine Van Hook Turner and Jovida Ross to support the County of Boulder with their goals of launching a Community Driven Planning Process. We designed four sessions to work with five different stakeholder groups representing Boulder County to help them 1. Orient to the Community Driven Planning Framework 2. Clarify Goals and Vision, 3. Ecosystem Map Community leadership 4. Strategize next steps

  2. Acterra Community Driven Planning Pilot - To understand community vulnerability and adaptive capacity, Acterra, with support from San Mateo County Office of Sustainability and guidance from the East Palo Alto Climate Change Community Team, enabled a unique project to engage the community to assess vulnerabilities and identify adaptation strategies through a community-based planning methodology. 

    The Pilot Project, led by Urban Permaculture Institute in partnership with Acterra, sought to empower socially vulnerable communities in EPA to respond to climate change, sea-level rise, and other climate change-driven stressors, to develop the following outcomes: 1. Increase the commitment of key stakeholders to taking roles and responsibilities in sea-level rise and climate change-driven vulnerability planning by and for the EPA community. 2. Increase representation of socially vulnerable EPA community members in sea-level rise and climate change adaptation planning efforts by county and city. 3. Identify preliminary community-defined priorities and adaptation strategies.  Final Report

  3. San Francisco Estuary Institute(SFEI) Community Partnership Process - UPI and MSC worked for 18 months with the leadership from SFEI to support their goals of centering Community needs and priorities within their planning work. The following memo outlines the process and strategic goals and next steps SFEI Closing Memo

CURRENT

  1. Marin City People's Plan(MCPP) - In my role of designer and facilitator with UPI, we are currently supporting a grassroots, Community Driven effort in Marin City to implement a “People’s Planning Process”. This process includes 1. Launching a community based organization called the Marin City’s Peoples Plan ran completely by African American community leaders using a deep democracy approach, 2. Launching the Watershed Training and Build out which will train 20-30 Marin City Community members in Permaculture Design and People’s Planning to design a resilient landscape to mitigate flooding and other issues relating to resiliency in Marin City. This training will result in the renovation of a plot in Marin City that suffers from flooding and showcase the strategies and skills that the participants gain. MCPP Video