Resilience and Climate Change Cooperative Project: An Urban Living Laboratory in Houston
DESCRIPTION
The Institute for Sustainable Coastal Communities (ISCC) at Texas A&M University is conducting a multi-year collaborative research and engagement venture called the Resilience and Climate Change Cooperative Project (RCCCP). The core goal of the RCCCP is to create a fundamentally different way to identify and tackle critical disaster resiliency and climate change challenges that threaten coastal cities around the world. The project has brought together faculty and students from urban planning and landscape architecture, the physical and social sciences, and engineering to collect new data and synthesize existing information on how coastal social and physical systems work. A demonstration project has been initiated in two neighborhoods in the Sims Bayou watershed in inner city Houston with a history of environmental justice issues. We believe in the importance of creating long-term change through co-learning with communities around strategic needs related to coastal hazards and climate change, and supporting communities to actualize their own resilience. We will strive to apply the knowledge developed from our work in Houston to support research, community engagement, and educational activities throughout the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
PHILIP R. BERKE
Philip R. Berke is a Professor of land use and environmental planning in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. He is the Director of the Texas A&M Institute for Sustainable Communities. He has recently served on the Committee on Coastal Risk Reduction of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He currently serves as an advisor to the Rockefeller Global 100 Resilient Cities Program and the Louisiana's Master Plan for Coastal Protection and Restoration.
Berke’s research focuses on community resiliency to hazards and climate change. His research spans the US, China, New Zealand, Thailand, The Netherlands, and the Caribbean. His work is currently supported by the National Science Foundation, and the Science and Technology Directorate, US Department of Homeland Security. He is the lead co-author of an internationally recognized book, Urban Land Use Planning (University of Illinois Press, fifth edition, 2006), which focuses on integrating principles of sustainable communities into urban form, and co-author of a book, Natural Hazard Mitigation: Recasting Disaster Policy and Planning, which was selected as one of the “100 Essential Books in Planning” by the American Planning Association Centennial Great Books. In 2013, he received the Award for Excellence in Doctoral Student Mentoring by the University of North Carolina Graduate School.