Goal

F

Increase resilience through community knowledge and awareness of and active participation in climate-friendly practices.

Residents often know the best ways to address the issues that they face in their daily lives and need the City to work collaboratively to build mutual understanding of needs and solutions. The City and its partners can support sharing critical climate information, emergency preparedness tools, and climate-friendly practices. Together, the community and the City can be partners in climate action.

Strategy

Fund and support climate communications staff and ongoing climate education, emergency preparedness, and awareness activities.

Expected Outcomes

Design and implementation of culturally-relevant sustainability practices in a diversity of neighborhoods.
Establishment of permanent mechanisms to maintain and increase community voices in the implementation of the work.

How will we achieve this?

Our Actions

F.1

Promote city-wide resilience and climate action benefits through communications campaigns, ensuring that all messaging is culturally relevant and inclusive of all residents.

F.2

Update and distribute the Sustainable Neighborhood Toolkit and targeted educational materials in collaboration with local organizations to inspire healthy lifestyles and share benefits of better walkability and transit, healthy foods, vibrant urban tree canopy, green spaces, and energy efficient homes.

F.3

Maintain two permanent stakeholder groups for coordination and implementation of the SCP: one for businesses, executive leaders, and institutions; and one composed of nonprofits and residents.

F.4

Enhance and expand community communication channels and alert systems, including Notify STL, to reduce harms from flash flooding, extreme heat days, and other climate hazards.

F.5

Support demonstration projects from the City and institutional partners (e.g. Zoo Museum District) that showcase climate positive benefits including innovative sustainable buildings, art installations, rain gardens, etc.

Case Studies

Learn more about the sustainability practices or principles mentioned in the actions above.

Resilience Hubs

Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities that support residents, coordinate communication, distribute resources, and reduce carbon pollution while enhancing quality of life. Various agencies and local governments are designing their own Resilience Hub initiatives. In Baltimore, MD, the city launched the Baltimore City Community Resilience Hub Program. The Program is a partnership between service-based community organizations in Baltimore’s most climate-vulnerable neighborhoods and the Office of Sustainability (BoS), Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and Department of Health (BCHD). There are currently seventeen Resiliency Hub partner organizations in the program. They partner with the city and provide essential resources and community support during times of crisis. One specific goal of the program is to provide Community Resiliency Hub partner organizations with solar power and battery back-up capabilities. This increases access to renewable energy and back-up power in low to moderate income communities in Baltimore.