Communities are addressing a growing range of challenges related to climate change. These can be new challenges like sea-level rise or existing conditions exacerbated by climate change, like flooding or drought.
To be effective, local resilience efforts must build the capacity of the entire community – including individual residents, neighborhoods, businesses, city planners and first responders – to cope with both chronic stresses like increasing temperatures and acute shocks like extreme weather events. Under the resilience umbrella, cities are upgrading roads, improving neighborhood cohesion, changing transit routes, and updating building codes. Resilience is not new for most cities; it is an ongoing effort to align city functions and resources in ways that benefits residents, businesses, and the environment today and in the future.