Community-Driven Climate Resilience Planning

Cook County allocated $16 million dollars in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to support suburban municipalities in developing Climate Resiliency Plans and to fund initial implementation of those plans. Our team alongside our project partners has been supporting the Villages of Bellwood, Franklin Park, Justice, Lynwood and the City of Markham in a year-long community-driven planning and prioritization process. Together, we have worked to establish goals and identify projects aimed at enhancing climate resilience. 
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Over the past 11 months, we have built strong relationships with each municipality, actively engaging residents, businesses, community leaders and other stakeholders in the planning process. The project has followed an ambitious outreach schedule, featuring a variety of activities designed to maximize community input. 

The process began with close collaboration with municipal staff to identify key community stakeholders and gain insights into each municipality's unique challenges and strengths. This approach ensured that no two meetings, workshops or outreach events were the same.

Throughout the summer, we worked closely with municipal staff and leaders while engaging directly with residents at community events to gather valuable input. We utilized interactive activities to ask residents about the extreme weather impacts they experience and potential solutions to these challenges. Engagement at these pop-up events resulted in feedback from over 600 community members across all five communities over a span of just six weeks.

Our team has facilitated an inclusive approach, leveraging the knowledge and diverse experiences of residents, businesses, organizations and other groups to help shape the vision, goals and recommendations of each Climate Resiliency Plan. This has included directly engaging youth and seniors, having materials available in multiple languages and having interpreters available at events to provide real-time translation in Polish, Spanish or Arabic based on community demographics.

Engagement efforts wrapped up in November with a community open house in each municipality. The open houses included both traditional exhibit boards and comment forms but also fun interactive activities like an educational watershed demonstration model, a resilience planning exercise, a resilience-themed coloring activity and giveaways. Over this last year, we have had almost 1000 interactions with community members which will help create plans that truly reflect community needs and priorities.