Resilience in Community Development

In an effort to maximize the social inclusion, equity, and participation of Pittsburgh’s most vulnerable communities in The City’s new Climate and Resilience Plan GTECH, with financial support from Neighborhood Allies in partnership with The City of Pittsburgh’s Office of Resilience has conducted six months of targeted research to apply this planning process to a community development context. Through a range of national best practice benchmarking, primary interviews, expert testimonials, and local focus groups GTECH has honed overarching observations combined with a contextual analysis of the local community development landscape to inform the recommendations outlined below.

Moving forward, it will be critical to work with partners identified in this report to determine the feasibility of each recommendation. Using the Impact and Ease of Implementation Chart developed for this report, we have assigned each recommendation a ranking based on several criteria to determine which recommendations should be prioritized to receive funding. In the continuation of our work, the next steps in this process will be:

• Sustain coordination with key partners (i.e. The Office of Sustainability, Neighborhood Allies and the RAND Corporation) to verify the prioritized recommendations and determine the feasibility for moving forward in the short-term with a handful of those highlighted as high priority.
• Provide this report to the Office of Sustainability and the RAND Corporation for vetting and incorporation into the City’s Preliminary Resiliency Assessment, and ultimately, the finalized resiliency plan.
• Continue to treat this report as a working document, meaning that recommendations are subject to alteration and enhancement as more work around the final resiliency plan solidifies.

A resilient community can mitigate both its contribution to climate change and the disruption caused locally by chronic and acute stressors. As an organization, we are dedicated to increasing the resiliency of communities in our region, however, increased investment in both people and place is needed to accomplish this. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners in the community development sector in order to identify the resources and champions necessary for building resiliency in Pittsburgh.