Graham H. Smith, Cornell University

Joshua F. Cerra, Cornell University

Libby Zemaitis, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation

Abstract

Developments in resilience theory emphasizing the interdependence of human and natural systems indicate that community resilience can be improved with governance strategies, like adaptive comanagement, that account for and respond to social-ecological complexity. Resilience-related research suggests the nature of social capital connectivity, in combination with other capital assets, may influence the adaptive capacity of interlinked social-ecological systems amidst change. 

Seeking to advance resilience-related design research, the Cornell Climate-adaptive Design studio program (CAD), in partnership with state and regional agencies and NGOs, incorporates a participatory action research approach to develop adaptation strategies with Hudson River communities. Earlier development of a climate-adaptive design studio framework viewed resilience primarily in terms of physical assets. Acknowledging the importance of social factors in resilience, the CAD team began exploring its potential social outcomes for a more catalytic impact on engaged communities. In 2016, we began identifying CAD participant groups by sector and scale of influence to help broaden participant outreach to possibly improve the potential for enhancing social capital within a studio setting. This paper discusses our evolving outreach approach and key program additions to improve catalytic potential beyond the studio.

Introduction

Singular engagement of the social realm or natural world at the exclusion of the other limits opportunities for academic inquiry that are made more integrative and useful for professionals in practice by emphasizing the dependence and influence of human social systems on natural systems, and vice versa (Machlis, Force, & Burch, 1997). Rather, social-ecological systems exist as “linked systems of people and nature” where “humans must be seen as a part of, not apart from, nature” and “the delineation between social and ecological systems is artificial and arbitrary” (Stockholm Resilience Center, no date). The concept of social-ecological systems has become a fundamental tenet of resilience theory and research.

Resilience, originally a concept born of ecology, can be briefly summarized in terms of ecological resilience as the capacity for an ecosystem to respond to change without fundamental shifts in population relationships or other state variables (Holling, 1973). This was quickly translated to theoretical applications in many other fields, giving rise to a variety of related definitions (Folke, 2006; Galaz et al. 2008; Fleming, 2016). For example, engineering resilience stresses efficiency and consistency, resistance to change, and quick return to a single equilibrium state following disturbance (Folke, 2006). Social sciences, too, have developed theories of social resilience. Based on their review of the literature on social resilience, Keck and Sakdapolrak (2013) found social resilience to be a “concept in the making” (p.13, emphasis theirs) that is yet to be defined. However the concept of social resilience for “social actors” – people, communities, and institutions – can be understood in terms of their capacity to a) deal with present adversity (“coping capacities”), b) learn from the past and adjust accordingly in reaction to challenges in the future (“adaptive capacities”), and c) find ways to systemically and institutionally enhance individual and societal robustness sustainably in preparation for crises (“transformative capacities”) (Keck and Sakdapolrak, 2013, p.14).

Synthesizing these, Folke (2006) clarifies resilience as not simply a system’s return potential or its ability to resist change, but also its capacity to take advantage of disturbance to adapt and reorganize, opening new developmental pathways. He describes social-ecological resilience in three ways – how much disturbance a system can handle without crossing thresholds, how well the system self-organizes, and, critically for the social side of social-ecological resilience, “the degree to which the system can build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation” (Folke, 2006, p.260). Viewing our urban landscape architecture studio program and participating communities through this lens of social-ecological resilience, we began to speculate on how design and public engagement could possibly enhance the potential for adaptive response in communities.

With regard to ecosystem and resource management, Galaz, Olsson, Hahn, Folke, and Svedin (2008) identify the spatial and temporal diversity of interactions in social-ecological systems as a potential source of misfit between biophysical systems and capacity for governance. Galaz et al. (2008) note the tendency for social and political institutions to focus on goals predominantly measured in the social or economic domain often because of perceived obscurity of ecosystems and/or the lack of appreciation of the interconnectedness of human and ecological systems. In other cases, institutions may underestimate human influence. To address this, they cite the possibility of adaptive comanagement, incorporating cross-scale, multi-institutional, experiential learning and experimentation to better respond to social-ecological system dynamics.

The comanagement aspect of this highlights the role of social capital in the governance of social-ecological systems. “Social capital refers to the norms and networks that facilitate collective action” (Woolcock, 2001, p. 70), or, generally, the resource that is the relationships between members of a community. Harrison et al. (2016) note how Woolcock (2001) builds on previous work (e.g., Gittell and Vidal, 1998; Granovetter, 1973; others), which in turn builds on the work of still other sociologists, to draw a distinction between three types of social capital, describing them as follows:

1. “Bonding social capital refers to relations with individuals of similar backgrounds (e.g., education levels, ethnicity/race, language, political beliefs, wealth) within their community.” (Harrison et al., p.527)

2. “Bridging social capital refers to relations with individuals of different backgrounds within their community.” (Harrison et al., p.527)

3. “Linking social capital is the relations with individuals outside their community who have the power to impact community outcomes.” (Harrison et al., p.527)

Harrison et al. (2016, p.527) go on to say that “power dynamics of social relationships can be better understood by differentiating social capital into these three types." As indicated above, it is specifically linking social capital which adaptive comanagement relies on to improve fit across scales, increasing governance complexity for greater response diversity.

Recent case studies indicate that different forms of social capital can correlate with changes in adaptive capacity in response to disturbance. Harrison et al. (2016), for example, found that the presence of both bridging and linking capital led to more widely beneficial outcomes in rural, forest communities facing changes in the Pacific Northwest. Importantly, they note the potential benefit of either bridging or linking capital may be undermined by the absence of the other. They also note, as have others (e.g., Gittell & Vidal, 1998), that greater bonding capital can correlate with less bridging capital. Emery and Flora (2006) suggest that social capital in various forms can be strategically leveraged to improve other capital assets, such as political or cultural capital, leading to cascading gains in community capacity. This paper discusses our initial efforts to understand the potential for an engaged design studio to open the floor for expanded community interaction and relationships that could ultimately lead to greater community social capital and capacity for future climate adaptation.

The Climate-adaptive Design studio

In 2014, we began an engaged studio process that pursued opportunities for enhancing the climate-adaptive performance of urban waterfronts by working with stakeholders on place-based questions of resilience in their municipality. This work builds on a long history of service learning in landscape architecture investigating pedagogies for studio-based community engagement described by Forsyth, Lu and McGirr (1999), Lawson (2005), and many others. The Cornell Climate-adaptive Design (CAD) studio emerged from studio curricula piloted in 2013 exploring the integration of comprehensive, physical climate-adaptation strategies in urban design studio coursework (Cerra, 2016). The initial approach was primarily informed by existing strategies for resilience of place, contextualized by current climate change projections. Students were immersed in studying the risks and threats of climate change as well as adaptation strategies such as green infrastructure, resilient planting design, and floodplain storage. Early curriculum development focused heavily on ecosystems, hydrologic systems and built-environment support, with an emphasis on site-level metrics to target and evaluate design effectiveness, to build a comprehensive framework centered primarily on physical and ecological aspects of climate-adaptive design (Cerra, 2016).

Beginning in 2016, new partner relationships allowed the CAD studio to build on this design framework by testing it in a community-engaged studio setting. This renewed focus on engaging communities in a process of waterfront visioning took on a participatory action research (Deming and Swaffield, 2011) approach. The CAD studio engagement process targets three outcomes – academic and experiential learning for students, planning and design visioning for stakeholders, and climate-adaptive design research development (Figure 1). This engaged approach has grown since 2016, incorporating new partners and resources for a more robust and ongoing program with multiple municipalities.

In 2016, we also began exploring new approaches for understanding stakeholder involvement, and have since begun to adopt an outreach approach that seeks to involve actors across sectors and scales, such that the potential for bonding, bridging and linking interactions and other goals discussed in the literature might be enhanced. This paper discusses the catalytic potential of considering these factors within a studio context, shares initial lessons learned during our own process, and describes some early indicators of the community-level benefits of our work.

STUDIO APPROACH

Process

The Climate-adaptive Design studio is an interdisciplinary program comprising academic, governmental and nonprofit partners, led by co-author Associate Professor Joshua Cerra at Cornell University. Staff at the Hudson River Estuary Program help coordinate and engage the municipality CAD works with each semester in addition to linking in state regulatory and funding programs. Non-governmental organization (NGO) partners focused on regional environmental policy, planning, and outreach such as Scenic Hudson and Cornell Cooperative Extension, and technical partners such as NYS Department of Environmental Conservation ecologists and Cornell Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering faculty and staff, help round out the CAD team. The process begins well ahead of the academic studio by building on a major climate outreach initiative developed by the Estuary Program. CAD draws on the relationships developed through this initiative to identify municipal partners within the Hudson River Valley to participate in the studio process. Following the studio, the Estuary Program works with its partners to follow up on municipal partner interest in moving climate action forward in their community (Figure 2).

The studio is designed to engage community stakeholders throughout the semester. Municipal staff, volunteers, landowners and other stakeholders are invited to participate in the design process and meet the student design team during three visits to the community (Figure 3). The first site visit introduces students and stakeholders to the engaged process, allowing stakeholders to express their vision for their waterfront as well as concerns about waterfront flooding and climate change impacts. Back in the studio, student design teams consider stakeholder input, draw conclusions from analysis and consult technical partner experts to develop initial design concepts. The teams share these initial design concepts for stakeholder feedback with at least three subsets of stakeholders during an interactive set of workshops on the second visit. Returning to the studio, teams refine their work through a series of desk critiques and formal reviews with active practitioners, faculty, visiting community stakeholders, and technical experts. Between these three events, stakeholders and studio partners often engage students via remote video conferences, phone interviews, and in-person studio presence as guest reviewers. Finally, students present their final design work in an open house format at the end the semester. The informal, conversational environment of the open house allows stakeholders to ask clarifying questions and begin discussions with one another about design concepts and elements they see as most innovative and feasible for their community moving forward.

Outreach strategy

Outreach strategies for early community-engaged CAD projects in 2015 and 2016 leveraged existing stakeholder relationships and/or key city contacts to build representative stakeholder groups to participate. In each community, the CAD team has been relatively successful at engaging municipal staff and volunteers and environmental organizations, many of whom participated in task forces, sponsored by the Estuary Program, that focused on climate impacts and adaptation opportunities in their community. Engagement of local residents, community groups, and site users in the CAD process had been less consistent in these early stages of the program. We saw the possibility to be more inclusive and methodical in our approach to engaging these stakeholder types.

Inspired by existing work around social resilience and bonding, bridging, and linking capital, in 2016 the CAD research team developed an adaptive approach to identifying and reaching out to community participants within the CAD process. To better understand the nature of existing networks and social resources on which CAD engagement relied, the research team began to parse community roles of participating actors and stakeholders by scale of influence (local grassroots to state-level roles) on a vertical axis and, as a surrogate for interest, sector of activity, as public, private, nonprofit, and academic, on a horizontal axis (Figure 4), roughly corresponding with the vertical and horizontal dimensions of social capital suggested by Woolcock (2001). The potential for introduction or enhancement of linking capital can be indicated by connections and relationships between stakeholders at different points on the vertical axis of scale, the same for bridging capital along the horizontal axis of sector, and within individual boxes, bonding capital.

The stakeholder matrix was initially conceptualized as a post-engagement, descriptive product to classify the capacity for participating stakeholders to generate social capital. We quickly realized its potential to identify gaps of representation in sectors or scales, allowing us to target additional participants early in the outreach process according to their potential role relative to other stakeholders, with the goal of fostering new social capital throughout the CAD engagement process. We used the stakeholder matrix in varying capacities during three community-engaged CAD studios – the CAD Block Park/Island Dock project in Kingston, NY (Kingston I, Fall, 2016), the CAD Kingston Point project in Kingston, NY (Kingston II, Spring, 2017), and the CAD Piermont project in Piermont, NY (Piermont I, Fall, 2017).

Study areas

The City of Kingston (pop. 23,000) is 90 miles north of New York City and one of the larger waterfront municipalities in the mid-Hudson Valley. The Kingston I study area sits along Rondout Creek a mile west of where it meets the Hudson River as its largest tributary. Nearly the entire study site is in the 1% (“100 year”) floodzone, abutting a steep shale hill. At the time of the studio, despite a park and marina on site, users of the Kingston I study area were relatively few and homogenous. The study area had only three major landowners: one public (the City) and two private.

The Kingston II study area comprises Kingston Point Park, an 18-acre land mass extending into the Hudson River that is well-used and loved by the community. It contains a collection of recreational opportunities including a public beach, boat launch, dog park, softball field, BMX track, and nature park, as well as a privately-owned oil transfer facility. Parts of the site already experience flooding during high tides.

The Village of Piermont (pop. 2,500) is a small waterfront community 30 miles north of New York City, in the lower Hudson Valley. Piermont is a relatively wealthy and well-educated community that considers itself “existentially threatened” by sea-level rise due to its relatively low elevation and frequent existing flood susceptibility. The CAD study area comprised the entire Piermont waterfront, featuring marinas, a downtown shopping and dining district, marshland of high estuarine ecological value, residential neighborhoods, and a large pier extending from the downtown, the village’s distinguishing feature. Beginning with the CAD Piermont studio, we developed and disseminated a CAD guide ahead of the engagement process to orient municipal partners to the program, its benefits, limitations, and possible next steps.

STUDIO OUTCOMES

Each CAD studio produced six to 10 alternative design concepts. Responding to sea-level rise projections, many designs envisioned changing uses and value as sites would transition from being periodically flooded to permanently inundated. These included options for floodable parks, seasonal event locations, estuarine wetland creation, and relocation of key water-dependent uses. Where development or enhancement was suggested in upper elevation areas, teams often proposed and sized green infrastructure features to limit surface flooding and contributions to combined sewer overflows. Many concepts focused on dwindling available space to accommodate water-dependent and water-enhanced uses onsite while moving water-independent uses elsewhere. Marsh migration strategies were developed across studios due to the high ecological value of existing onsite wetlands. Opportunities for environmental education and interpretation were highlighted by stakeholders across all three studios, leading to several teams exploring innovative ways to engage people through 'ecorevelatory' features and site programs that profile shifting shorelines and wetland boundaries.

Since we began developing the CAD stakeholder matrix concurrently with the Kingston I studio rather than in preparation for it, we populated the matrix to track our engagement success midway through the semester but were constrained in our ability to fill gaps with the project underway. Although we successfully engaged onsite private landowners and municipal staff, studio engagement objectives could have benefitted from more systematic outreach to the users of the on-site public park (such as softball players) and residents adjacent to the study area. The CAD team received feedback after the final open house that a more diverse representation of stakeholders should be included in the Kingston II studio and beyond, affirming our own sentiments.

Responding to feedback, and considering the site’s popularity, the CAD team deployed new engagement techniques in the Kingston II studio. Staff began methodically tracking stakeholders, including primary point of contact, invitations sent and RSVPs received, and hand delivered flyers and invitations on several occasions throughout the study area. Staff also joined Facebook groups for the on-site softball field and BMX track to engage users through social media. Despite these greater outreach efforts, we did not significantly increase attendance of residents and site users at the first two community stakeholder events. The on-the-ground engagement process did however lead to many insightful, one-on-one conversations with stakeholders onsite. The studio also successfully engaged a major decision maker on the site: an energy company that owns and operates a waterfront oil storage facility.

In contrast, the Piermont studio experienced unprecedented stakeholder engagement, highlighted by the over 100 attendees at the final open house. Many people who represented the municipality in our process were also residents, business owners, or private association members, and therefore played multiple stakeholder roles in our process. Piermont stakeholders were eager to participate in the CAD process from the beginning, so the extended outreach tactics used in Kingston II were not necessary. There are two possible contributing factors outside of the CAD process. First, Estuary Program staff found Piermont residents to be more educated on and engaged in climate adaptation issues than other municipalities. Second, just prior to the CAD studio, a specialist consulting firm facilitated living room meetings in four neighborhoods for residents to openly discuss the sensitive issue of adapting to climate change, perhaps making these topics more top of mind for some of the stakeholders who participated.

INSIGHTS AND LESSONS LEARNED

The stakeholder matrix was an effective assessment and planning tool

In our experience, breaking down stakeholder participation by sector and scales of power – either desired or actual – was very effective for us in planning for and evaluating diversity and extent of stakeholder participation in our process. After adopting the matrix perspective toward the end of our Kingston I process, strengths and weaknesses in community representation during our engagement became quite evident to us, in ways that were both visible and quantifiable, upon placing our stakeholder members within the matrix framework. Stakeholder representation in Kingston I was particularly strong within public and academic sectors both across scales of influence (in the interests of inviting opportunities for linking and bridging relationships) and within certain sector/influence cells (in the interests of inviting opportunities for bonding relationships). Kingston I stakeholder engagement was particularly weak in both the private grassroots (lower scales of influence) sector cells and private sector mid-scales. While it was too late for us to bolster involvement in our process, we noted the gaps and the need to fill them in future studios. In Kingston II our sector strength areas remained similar, in part because of relationships already garnered in Kingston I. Also, our intensive work to address gaps in private and nonprofit stakeholder involvement were limited in their success. In planning for the Piermont studio, we used the matrix to identify and build outreach in gap areas, achieving moderately greater success in the grassroots private sector levels. Notably, however, this may have been because of the volunteer nature of the Village of Piermont’s public agencies and the size of the village. Regardless of outcome, as the program matured over the course of multiple semesters, the outreach matrix became an important tool in planning and evaluating our outreach efforts.

Identifying gaps is only the start

The stakeholder matrix proved very effective in identifying gaps in participation from project to project. However, we soon learned that identifying stakeholders for participation is not the same as acquiring their participation. In Kingston II, despite our best recruiting efforts, including use of flyers, social media, and even door-to-door requests, it was hard to garner participation from certain sectors, particularly grassroots-level site users and nearby residents to Kingston Point Park.

The reasons for this latency are likely complex, yet important to understand. Barriers, including lack of time, financial resources, or transportation, and social barriers including language and racial discrimination – intentional or not – can leave many members of the public, and often the most vulnerable, out of the conversation (Shi et al., 2016). Additionally, climate change and climate adaptation topics are themselves technical and complex. A candidate likely needs to understand the nature of the information you are sharing and how it will impact them, trust the source providing the information, value the process within which they are being asked to participate, and, as discussed, have the capacity to participate.

Evident to our team is the importance of both engaging a more diverse stakeholder base and the need to improve our outreach in order to enhance enrollment across scales and sectors that we seek. This includes both what we share and how we share it. Options we have begun to discuss include adjusting communication and language so that it is more compelling to the public, holding multiple meeting times for the same events to accommodate different participant schedules, holding interactive webinars at diverse times of day and week, and creating websites with a blog component for feedback. It also includes where we engage; while we often held meetings near participating neighborhoods, going to spaces that community members view as “their spaces” within a community may be even more helpful and important. We will continue to experiment with venue and format to improve participant involvement in the project effort.

Understanding the role of the studio within a broader climate outreach program

The more embedded the CAD studio has become with its partners, the more we realize the potential for the studio to catalyze community outreach toward action, and how it may be further optimized by pre- and post-studio events associated with the Estuary Program’s Climate Outreach program at-large. While the studio lasts only sixteen weeks, the Estuary Program has a long history of working with Hudson riverfront communities on climate issues, often with participating CAD municipalities. Engaging stakeholders through an extended planning process, which includes the studio, fosters co-learning and trust building that are needed to ultimately build social capital and resilience. As the program has matured, we have begun to plan for a much more concerted outreach approach ahead of the design studio to enhance the scope and breadth of community participation.

Similarly, while the studio appears catalytic in inspiring interest toward action on climate change, we are still learning how to best take advantage of this energy. From the standpoint of CAD municipalities, after the studio is over, the important issues and opportunities the studio has explored do not go away. In addition to improving outreach ahead of the semester, we see potential after the studio to broaden and deepen relationships across sectors and scales through further events profiling the studio work, to motivate action toward climate adaptation.

Evaluating effectiveness over the long-term

Establishing cause and effect is challenging. Over the course of this studio sequence, we imagined the potential for an outreach approach that incorporated a tracking tool to monitor and enhance opportunities for cross-scale and cross-sector networking amongst participants, ostensibly to invite the potential for enhancing social capital (and possibly therefore adaptive capacity and social-ecological resilience) of engaged communities by setting the stage for more focused and meaningful interactions amongst stakeholders. However, while the CAD program engaged successively more stakeholders each semester, it is difficult to credit the extent to which stakeholder engagement was actually driven by our approach to outreach and measurement versus other factors already present amongst the many different characteristics and capacities of each individual municipality. While the extent of stakeholder participation increased with enhanced engagement campaigns in each successive studio, the issues and composition of stakeholders changed from project-to-project. The stakeholder matrix was valuable in helping us see how effective (or ineffective) we were in attracting diverse participation. We look forward to learning more about how this tool can be used to best measure diversity of participation by stakeholders, and how to advance our outreach efforts to fill gaps we identify. As discussed, we will also seek ways to capitalize on dialogues around climate adaptation and resilience that began during our process so that they may carry forward after the studio.

The CAD studio process, as part of the Estuary Program’s broader Climate Outreach initiative, may be able to set the stage for dialogues and interactions across sectors and scales, yet the extent to which the program is actually stimulating these dialogues still needs methodical evaluation to be understood. In the spirit of the social capital theory work that inspired the outreach framework, its potential to enhance social capital of participating communities should also be evaluated. However it will be some time before we can begin to ascertain whether those who engage across scales and sectors as a result of the CAD program contribute to the social capital and adaptive capacity of their sponsor municipality, both in terms of their planning and resourcefulness (social resilience) and in terms of taking physical action towards climate adaptation (physical/ecological resilience).

Nonetheless, in each of the communities we have worked with, we have seen some interesting action toward change. After the CAD studios ended, the Estuary Program and its partners have hosted follow up meetings in all CAD communities to help decision makers further review the designs and strategize how to move toward actionable projects. State permitting staff were included in some of these meetings to bring a "reality check" to the designs and help bring the community farther along toward implementation. All CAD communities are moving forward with climate-adaptive projects, many of which appear to be inspired at least in part by the CAD process and products. Kingston has referenced CAD designs in meetings and Requests for Proposals for funded waterfront projects including upgrades to Kingston Point, with improved ADA access at the beach, adapting the flooding parking lot, and installing a small soccer field on an elevated area. Kingston also received a national grant to host a climate-resilience festival through which the studio work is profiled. Piermont is incorporating CAD design concepts into their Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (LWRP) resilience update and proposed projects, which, if approved, will be linked to a significant funding stream from the state. Piermont also hired a part-time resilience coordinator to move climate projects forward and has received funding to train community facilitators to assist neighborhood discussions on relocating from the highest flood risk areas.

While it is difficult to draw a direct link between CAD efforts and any actions that we observe cities to take, we do anticipate that the CAD process can be effective at catalyzing change by encouraging stakeholders to meet and discuss issues over the course of the studio, inspired by alternative design strategies that visualize a compelling, climate resilient future. We are in the process of evaluating a battery of surveys and stakeholder interviews to assess the program’s effectiveness in garnering community, teaching, and research benefits. Beginning with the CAD Piermont studio, we began distributing surveys to participating community members following each of the three, student/stakeholder meetings, with questions ranging from climate understanding and assessment of student work to adaptive behaviors and program-relevant, social interactions. For example, two of the questions in the stakeholder survey following the second meeting directly asked whether participants had conversations at the meeting with other stakeholders from a different sector or scale of influence than their own. We hope that conclusions from this research will help us move the CAD program, and our municipal partners, toward greater success in achieving objectives for adaptation throughout the Hudson Valley, and can be used as a springboard for further evaluation of the potential for the CAD studio and Estuary Program to catalyze action toward climate adaptation by participating municipal partners and beyond.

CONCLUSION

Participation in an academic design studio environment focused on issues of climate adaptation may have valuable benefits for communities interested in moving toward action while confronting projected climate change impacts. This work is still ongoing, and time will tell how effective the CAD studio and its larger outreach program may be at inviting bonding, bridging, and linking opportunities for stakeholders in the interests of moving toward adaptive action. Moving forward, we seek to be more effective in helping communities become more socially and physically resilient by tracking municipal actions and evaluating our outreach strategy during the studio and as part of the larger outreach programming of the Estuary Program and our partners.

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