Conference on Equitable Resilience (ER): A Necessary and Under-investigated Aspect of Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS); Cambridge, Massachusetts; Summer 2019

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) will host a Summer 2019 conference on Equitable Resilience. Equitable Resilience makes an important contribution to Sustainable Urban Systems by linking research on urban response to environmental stresses with research on the social distribution of those stresses and responses. Important examples include coastal city response to sea level rise, urban flooding beyond the 100-year floodplain, and planned relocation from hazardous areas. The conference aims to go beyond documenting linkages between resilience and equity, toward conceptual and analytical frameworks for re-designing those linkages. The workshops bring together scholars from urban design, urban planning, and building technology, along with urban environmental scientists. It has four panels: 1) Urban ecology, society, and resilient design; 2) Equitable access to urban information, technology, and resources 3) Equitable processes of urban relocation; and 4) Convergence between equitable resilience and sustainable urban systems. In each case, the workshops employ a network-of-networks approach for international knowledge dissemination and exchange, and makes that knowledge available through multiple scientific and educational platforms. The 2019 Summer conference will integrate research on urban resilience, equity and sustainability. The workshops employ an international network-of-networks methodology to engage scientists, planners, and designers associated with MIT labs and centers to wider research networks. The workshops consist of two substantive and two integrative panels. The first integrative panel on urban ecology, social science, and design examines multiple levers for coordinating conceptual, analytical, and normative domains of equitable resilience through chains of modeled and non-modeled inquiry. The first substantive panel assesses strategies for reducing widening gaps in social access to urban resilience data, technologies, and resources using statistical cluster analysis of participants? urban databases as well as innovative social media apps, mapping, and hacking methods. The second substantive panel addresses downstream impacts of environmental hazards by extending Nansen Principles on climate-amplified displacement to equitable strategies for voluntary resettlement from high hazard areas. The final integrative panel revisits the workshops' hypotheses regarding the value of Equitable Resilience research, planning, and design for Sustainable Urban Systems. Each panel invites leading peer reviewers to critically assess the work presented and promising directions. The network-of-networks methodology helps ensure wider critical review and reception of the workshop process, outputs, and proposals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.