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Building Community Resilience

The interconnected environmental, economic, and energy crises of the 21st century are already posing complex and often-unpredictable challenges to communities around the world. But conventional forms of urban planning, design, and governance—often centralized, hierarchical, and inflexible—are ill-suited to these new realities. It's time to go beyond piecemeal urban sustainability efforts and meaningfully equip our communities for the the challenges. It's time to build our communities' resilience.

Report

Resilient Against What?
By Jim Thayer, Morgan Rider, and Daniel Lerch • October 16, 2013
This survey of leading U.S. municipalities reveals an understanding of "resilience" that goes beyond the usual concerns about disaster preparedness and climate change.

"Although most talk about urban resilience still focuses just on disaster preparedness, we suspected that some US cities were quietly developing a more sophisticated understanding—especially those cities which were early leaders in sustainability a decade ago. So we surveyed senior staff and officials at selected municipalities across the country on their communities’ perceived risks and vulnerabilities, and how these were being addressed. Sure enough, we found that many of these communities were doing far more than even the most ardent urban sustainability watchers seem to realize. Among other things, the survey led us to some conclusions that are either contrary to conventional wisdom or simply not yet on the radar of most policymakers and sustainability observers..."

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Books: The Community Resilience Guides

	*Rebuilding the Foodshed* By Philip Ackerman-Leist • Foreword by Deborah Madison • Published February 2013 How can individuals and local organizations and institutions build the food security of their communities? BUY NOW WATCH OUR WEBINAR with Philip Ackerman-Leist (Sept. 10, 2013)

	*Power From the People* By Greg Pahl • Foreword by Van Jones • Published August 2012 How can we move away from centralized, highly polluting, wasteful and non-renewable sources of energy and empower local communities with their own energy sources? BUY NOW WATCH OUR WEBINAR with Lyle Estile, Piedmont Biofuels, and Lynn Benander, Co-op Power (Sept. 12, 2013)

	*Local Dollars, Local Sense* By Michael Shuman • Foreword by Peter Buffett • Published January 2012 How can we shift trillions of dollars of regular Americans' investments away from the Wall Street casino and into local economies? BUY NOW WATCH OUR WEBINAR with Jenny Kassan, Cutting Edge Capital, and Dan Rosenberg, Real Pickles (Dec. 19, 2013)

Chapters from The Post Carbon Reader

		EDUCATION: Community Colleges: A Vital Resource in the Post-Carbon Era By Nancy Lee Wood • May 4, 2011 The key question is, "Where in our current educational system is it possible to develop and institutionalize the kinds of education needed to prepare people for work in the post-carbon economy-and to do so relatively quickly?" Read more

		CITIES, TOWNS, AND SUBURBS: Local Government in a Time of Peak Oil and Climate Change By John Kaufmann • April 4, 2011 If government is not responding as we would like it to, we cannot tear it down or abandon it. We must make it work. Government, after all, is us. Read more

		CITIES, TOWNS, AND SUBURBS: Toward Zero-Carbon Buildings By Hillary Brown • November 22, 2010 In many ways, the green building movement represents a broad urge among builders, designers, and citizens alike to proactively respond to climate change and other environmental issues without waiting for governmental action. Read more

		ECONOMY: The Competitiveness of Local Living Economies By Michael Shuman • November 3, 2010 The only thing standing in the way of localization is policy-makers committed to propping up noncompetitive global corporations. Read more

		BUILDING RESILIENCE: What Can Communities Do? By Rob Hopkins • September 13, 2010 Community matters when we are looking for responses to peak oil and climate change because of the power that emerges from working together and creating meaningful change through shared action. Read more

		FOOD: Growing Community Food Systems By Erika Allen • September 1, 2010 The idea of a community food system is much larger than just urban farming. It deals with everything, all the components that are needed to establish, maintain, and perpetually sustain a civilization. Read more

		CITIES: Smart Decline By Deborah and Frank Popper • July 19, 2010 In 2002, after decades of trying to restart economic development like most other Rust Belt cities, Youngstown made a radical change in approach. The city began devising a transformative plan to encourage some neighborhoods to keep emptying and their vegetation to return. The plan, still early in its implementation as we write, would raze...Read more

		CITIES: The Death of Sprawl By Warren Karlenzig • June 23, 2010 In April 2009—just when people thought things couldn’t get worse in San Bernardino County, California—bulldozers demolished four perfectly good new houses and a dozen others still under construction in Victorville, 100 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles... Read more