The city’s resilience plan seeks to identify shocks and stresses while fostering equity and community.
Mark Wessel reports on Resilient Chicago, a plan that focuses on the city’s neighborhoods, infrastructure, and community preparedness. It keeps resilience efforts moving forward after the Rockefeller Foundation announced it would not continue the 100 Resilient Cities initiative.
The Resilient Chicago planning process started in 2016 by seeking public input to identify the city’s most pressing challenges: neighborhood disparities, crime and violence, critical infrastructure, and community preparedness. The plan highlights the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund and equitable transit-oriented development as effective strategies to address disparities, notes Wessel.
Wessel writes that the initiative’s future is unclear as the city prepares to bring on a new mayor. "But at least for the moment, [Stefan] Schaffer remains focused on what he feels is the most pressing task at hand: addressing the key, underlying disparities that cause challenges to Chicago’s most vulnerable residents, such as poverty rate, housing cost burden, and neighborhood flooding, among others."
Read the full story: Chicago’s Resiliency Plan Aims for Equity
Op-Ed: Seattle Resilience Roadmap Feels 'Retrospective'
Natalie Bicknell notes several deficiencies in the roadmap that resulted from Seattle's participation in the Rockefeller Foundation's now-defunct 100 Resilient Cities program.
More Detail on What Happened to 100 Resilient Cities
The Rockefeller Foundation has cited costs and a new strategic direction to explain why it abruptly cut off the program this year. While the work may live on in some form, the move underscores the risks of relying on private funding.
New Resilience Center to Replace 100 Resilient Cities
The new Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center will build on the earlier work of the 100 Resilient Cities program.
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
California plans to bury El Niño’s downpour
If the state plays its cards right, it may be able to store a billion acre-feet of El Niño’s water in aquifers.
Desperate measures: Advocates weigh draining Lake Powell to fill Colorado River
Draining the reservoir could reduce evaporation losses by a couple hundred thousand acre-feet.
In Texas, data centers are swallowing promised parkland
Residents who moved to Taylor, Texas for a rural community now have to contend with three data centers in their backyard.
How a Chicago-sized wind farm beat the odds and powered on
The project spanned five presidential administrations and a standoff with a U.S. military base.
MTA gives itself 30 days to transform pit into basketball court
The site has been under construction since 2022; the city originally estimated it would finish the court in 2024.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Rosemead
Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
City of Cambridge
Montrose County
The Pocatello Development Authority