Climate-adapted neighbourhoods. Green boulevards. Community food forests.

Around the world, more and more cities are committing to ambitious projects aimed at building resilience in light of climate change. Can emerging models of participatory urbanism provide opportunities for resilience to be negotiated and engaged with by a wide-range of actors? Or are resilience and social innovation being co-opted to advance an increasingly neoliberal regime of urban governance?

Join us for an exciting public event exploring the timely topic of urban resilience and how it intersects with issues of local governance, participatory democracy, and climate preparedness.

On February 24, 2015 we will convene at The New School to draw from the  experiences of grassroots organizers, co-design champions, urban planning professionals, storytellers and representatives from many other fields of social innovation (that’s you!) to explore how to make resilience a collaborative and inclusive process of “civic imagination”.

Together, we’ll be gathering the insights and voices of a lively and diverse group of local leaders in NYC (again, you!) to stimulate a dialogue around climate governance and how it extends to questions of wellbeing, quality of life, and social justice.

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We’ll kick off the evening with presentations from Enabling City, Solidarity NYC, WeAct, Adapt NY and more to provide us with a glimpse into the diversity of approaches already in existence in the city. We’ll continue with participant-driven content through facilitated, hands-on conversations designed to stimulate creative action around these pressing issues. Following the event, we’ll conclude by sharing lessons learned and a final report to set the stage for our follow-up gathering in 2016.

This event is part of an international series exploring creative community resilience practices in New York City and Copenhagen. Join us!

Get to know our speakers below – and check back often for updates on speaker line-up, event activities and more: