The Urban Institute is working with community and economic development leaders in three midsize cities facing serious climate challenges: Newark, New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; and Tucson, Arizona. The partners are receiving 12 months of Urban research, technical assistance, and network-building support to drive transformative changes locally.
Together we are codesigning projects that build local capacity to address the root causes of climate vulnerability, fairly share climate resources among neighborhoods, and meaningfully engage community perspectives in climate-related decisionmaking. Read more about each project below.
Newark, NJ: Bridging policy and practice to tackle climate vulnerability
Urban is supporting a cross-sector coalition of Newark actors—co-led by LISC Newark, the Newark Alliance, and the Newark Office of Planning and Office of Sustainability together with neighborhood- to state-level stakeholders—to develop a community-led and equity-driven implementation framework to tackle key challenges like extreme heat and air pollution and advance decarbonization across the city.
Norfolk, VA: Strengthening the capacity of community-based organizations to address coastal resilience
Urban is supporting the City of Norfolk’s Office of Resilience to develop strategies and resources to increase collaboration across the community and economic development ecosystem, address capacity gaps, and better position community-based organizations to benefit from and participate in resilience programs and projects across the city.
Tucson, AZ: Preparing small business and workforce ecosystems for climate-driven economic development
Urban is supporting Local First Arizona and the Tucson Office of Resilience to better understand the region’s green small business and workforce landscape and accelerate strategic and coordinated investments in skills training, education opportunities, and small business development to ensure local communities can benefit from the region's future clean energy development and resilience investments.
To learn more about these projects or to signal interest in bringing future engagements to your city, please reach out to [email protected].
