CAAD Forum: Frontline Community Partnerships for Climate Action

The Frontline Community Partnerships for Climate Action was founded as a part of Planet Texas 2050. The project is a partnership with local community leaders to raise community awareness and mobilize action around environmental injustices that low-income communities, and youth in particular, face. The project made significant progress in South Texas through community engagement, including coalition building, photovoice, participatory mapping, design visioning, and capacity building. We submitted a $14.6 million grant proposal to the EPA that would have supported three years of engagement, design, and implementation of community-identified green infrastructure and public space improvements in Pharr. While this funding is now on indefinite hold, our work together has continued. 

This presentation will offer an overview of the project and its multi-modal, cross-disciplinary approach to participatory youth action research. Along the way, we will share reflections on what it takes to collaborate across disciplines, across community and academic expertise, and across generational experience—and why this model of work is so valuable in supporting community voices.

The CAAD Forum series is hosted by the Center for American Architecture and Design to bring faculty, students, and staff together for informal and inquisitive discussions about ideas relating to architecture and its history, theory, practice, and future. Presentations introduce and off insight into new and ongoing research, and are followed by time for Q&A. Lunch provided; first-come first-served. View past CAAD Forums on the Texas Architecture YouTube channel.