Description

From flooding to wildfires, mass shootings to hate crimes, extreme events seem to be a constant topic on the nightly news. Is your community connected enough to help each other through such events? What if there was a way to bring harmony to our communities both in the way we engage with each other as well as how we engage with our environment? Could that be the key to our resilience? As public works professionals, we have a large role in shaping the look and feel of our communities. We also have the opportunity to help our communities be more resilient. In this Dare to Ask session, we will hear from two local leaders that have been through an extreme event. They’ll lay it on the line about what worked and what they would have done differently. Then we’ll have a discussion about regenerative thinking as applied to how we interact with our community members and how we design and deliver projects. Join us for this interesting conversation. Let’s challenge our current thinking about what it means to be resilient and how we approach our communities about infrastructure projects.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, you will be better able to: 

• Recommend improvements in how your community approaches resilience based on the lessons we’ve learned from past events and a regenerative framework.
• Describe how regenerative thinking can improve project performance and community connectedness.
• Apply a “sense of place” framework to community engagement activities.

Speaker(s):

• Kim Lundgren, ENV SP, CEO, Kim Lundgren Associates, Inc., Woburn, MA
• Jim Newman, LEED AP O+M, Principal, Linnean Solutions, LLC, Cambridge, MA
• Jennifer Winter, PE, Director of Public Works, City of Cedar Rapids, IA