“Fight or Flight? Rethinking the Urban Footprint“ is a six-part series that will address how the urgency of climate change requires design professionals to rethink the built environment. Rising seas, extreme heat, drought, and wildfires are among the environmental stressors that will continue to affect communities throughout the United States and the world. We are now confronted with the urgent need of creating relocation strategies for individual households, communities, and cities.
As architects, planners, landscape architects, and related professionals, it is our ethical responsibility to integrate thinking about relocation into our practices. The economic, social, and environmental impacts associated with climate migration and relocation will be a large part of this conversation, along with equity and environmental justice. We recognize that it is incumbent upon us to find appropriate pathways forward as swiftly as possible. To that end, this series is organized into six sessions:
Stemming the Tide
This program in the Fight or Flight series will focus on community-scale visioning and strategies across cultures and community systems. Speakers will discuss how American cities are gearing up for climate change challenges. What are the planning processes? Where are the gaps? How do cities make decisions about ways to support residents in locations of risk? How do cities and communities clarify differences between refugees and migrants and define migration, including forced migration, internal displacement, and planned relocation?
