Community-Driven Design for Urban Resilience

This presentation demonstrates the application of community-driven design methods to build capacity, and enhance local and city-wide resilience to climate challenges. The Green Infrastructure Design Studio graduate course collaborated with a community-focused composting organization in New York City on supporting their vision of urban resilience by improving urban soil quality through expansion of the organizations’ operations and identifying innovative ways of compost application in the city.

Planning and community partner engagement commenced prior to the beginning of the course with identifying shared priorities, time commitments and capacities. Resulting course schedule included multiple and diverse engagement opportunities between the students and the community partner, such as site visits, collaborative stakeholder mapping and co-design sessions, and public-facing workshops.

Interdisciplinary graduate students applied their professional skills to address multiple project dimensions, including site analysis, geospatial mapping, relevant policy analysis, funding priorities, job creation and community engagement. The design studio emphasized the interconnection between green infrastructure, climate adaptation, and environmental justice, addressing issues such as soil quality, stormwater management, heat vulnerability, workforce development, and green space accessibility.

This example shows how to democratize the design process and enhance students’ sustainability competencies by centering the needs of community partners, fostering meaningful engagement, and integrating interdisciplinary expertise.