Resilient Critical Infrastructure

What is Resilient Critical Infrastructure?

In the 1980s, the U.S. went an average of four months between billion-dollar disasters. In 2024 and 2023, the U.S. experienced one every other week. Between 2011 and 2024, 99.5% of congressional districts across the U.S. experienced at least one federally declared disaster declaration for an extreme weather event. As the time between disasters shrinks and costs rise, protecting assets and reinforcing critical infrastructure is becoming more urgent.

The Epicenter defines infrastructure as the physical, economic, and social systems central to the functioning of an economy and a society. Resiliency in critical infrastructure is about the ability to withstand extreme climate impacts and recover from them quickly.

10 Critical Infrastructure Categories

The Epicenter has identified 10 key categories of critical infrastructure that are modeled most closely to the framework developed by researchers Diane Henshel and Jeffrey Ashby. These 10 categories also incorporate the 35 industries included in Tailwind’s Taxonomy for Adaptation and Resilience Investments, but bucket them differently. 

Here are The Epicenter’s 10 Critical Infrastructure Categories:

1. Natural Resources, Water, Land, and Air
2. Food and Agriculture
3. Health and Emergency Services
4. Financial Services and Tools
5. Energy
6. Transportation
7. Real Estate, Housing, and Shelter
8. Communications and IT
9. Jobs and Education
10. Community and Social Cohesion

This briefing offers an overview of these 10 critical infrastructure categories to facilitate an aligned ecosystem discussion about the solutions emerging to build resiliency across each category. For each category, we highlight opportunities and obstacles present in the current environment, and offer examples of the types of solutions that are emerging to foster resiliency within the infrastructure category.

1. Natural Resources, Water, Land, and Air

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Natural Resources, Water, Land, and Air refers to solutions that use and manage natural resources—including water, land, and air—to strengthen community resilience and enable communities to bounce back better from climate hazards. 

Effective land use can reduce a region’s vulnerability to threats like fires and floods. For many, natural resources are considered assets, but it’s their community-driven stewardship that ensures they can remain a type of infrastructure that communities can rely on in the face of growing climate threats and disasters. Non-extractive stewardship of other natural resources, like earth metals from mining, can also strengthen resilience and provide economic opportunities for communities.

Land Use

Opportunities and Obstacles

• Public regulations and incentives can drive private investments in fortifying land from climate hazards, such as incentivizing land use upgrades, stormwater reduction, and adherence to fire-resistance practices. 
• However, local politics, limited public budgets, and regulatory and policy barriers can slow necessary upgrades. It can be difficult to garner support for a policy that is intended to prevent a potential future catastrophe, but might not deliver immediate benefits to the people who have to pay for it up front.
• Meanwhile, migration into the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and other land use practices in the U.S. have shifted over the past few decades, creating heightened risk and costs from wildfires in particular. Between 1990 and 2020, there was a 47% increase in the number of homes in the WUI and a 31% growth in acreage in the WUI. 

Solutions

• Nature-based infrastructure, such as barrier islands that can absorb storm surges along coastal stretches, offer creative resiliency innovations in this category, especially those that protect other types of physical infrastructure (like transportation and the built environment). 
• Regulations that incentivize resilient real estate development, as well as the regional businesses that execute those developments across conservation, construction, landscaping, and environmental testing for development and zoning, offer additional resiliency solutions in this category.
• Solutions are also emerging between nonprofit and advocacy organizations working with local governments in: 1) responsible land use to build community resilience, 2) flood and fire mitigation, 3) community planning and development, or 4) land preservation. One example, Community Wildfire Planning Center, assists state and local governments, fire departments, land managers, and residents to build resilience through fire-resistant land use.
• The tech ecosystem is seeing an influx of land use innovation technologies, such as land mapping technologies that support conservation, resilient zoning, and other developments that protect communities from climate hazards like flooding and fires. One example is Vibrant Planet’s subsidiary Pyrologix, a leader in wildfire hazard and risk modeling.
• The EPA outlines strategies, in this report, for local government officials to prepare for climate change impacts through land use and building policies. It highlights the associated challenges and offers strategies to adapt land use policies and practices to better withstand climate hazards such as flooding, extreme rain, sea level rise, extreme heat, drought, and wildfire.  

Water

Opportunities and obstacles

• Proactive water management—from drinking water to groundwater to stormwater—reduces a community’s vulnerability to disastrous floods, increases access to drinkable water, and builds long-term, safer, and more durable physical water infrastructure. 
• However, water infrastructure in the U.S. is old and in need of significant upgrades. Water infrastructure and drinking water systems in the U.S. lose at least 2.1 trillion gallons of treated water per year due to water main breaks and leaky pipes, and U.S. water utilities need to spend $625 billion over the next 20 years to “ensure the nation’s public health, security, and economic well-being,” according to the Biden-Harris Administration. 
• Meanwhile, persistent drought conditions mean that nearly half of the 204 freshwater basins in the U.S. may not be able to meet America’s monthly water demand by 2071, according to a study by Colorado State University.
• In our current environment, flood risks are also spread unequally, disproportionately affecting frontline communities. For example, one in four Latinos in the U.S. lives in a county that experienced a federal disaster declaration for flooding in 2023.

Solutions

• Nature-based solutions, like tidal wetlands such as the Carl Hershner Teaching Marsh in Virginia, can improve water quality by filtering and trapping sediments and pollutants in the water.
• Meanwhile, new technologies are emerging that offer innovative water infrastructure upgrades and water monitoring solutions, like Opti, FloodMapp, and 2ndNature.
• Small regional businesses that work in local wastewater and septic services, or that manufacture components for physical water infrastructure upgrades, also offer opportunities for local resiliency in this critical infrastructure category.

Air

Opportunities and Obstacles

• Clean air that is free of hazardous pollution is foundational to public health and strong local economies. In the U.S., every $1 spent on air pollution control yields an estimated $30 in economic benefits. 
• And yet, more than 100 million people in the United States live in areas with poor air quality, and nearly 2 in 5 have been living with unhealthy levels of air pollution. 
• Poor air quality is worsening with the increase in wildfires. The U.S. experienced a record number of days between 2020 and 2022 with “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” air.

Solutions

• Regional businesses focused on air testing, air quality, and pollution mitigation will likely continue to grow and will require funding and financing.
• Air monitoring and air cleaning has been a focus of many new tech startups, like the 22 listed here and here.
• Nonprofits are working in disinvested communities to improve air quality through planting trees and reducing air pollution. The Nature Conservancy’s Planting Healthy Air report analyzes cities that would benefit from tree plantings for air quality, in terms of both particulate matter mitigation and heat reductions. The analysis found that investing $4 per resident in tree planting efforts could improve the health of millions of people. Meanwhile, C40 cities, a global network of mayors, is organizing cities that are taking urgent action on air pollution to create greener, healthier, more resilient cities.
• Public-private partnerships with local governments, like Los Angeles’ Community Air Monitoring Plan (CAMP) can address the disproportionate impacts of air pollution in specific communities. 

2. Food and Agriculture

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Food and Agriculture refers to approaches to a complete food system that advance local food sovereignty, strengthen a community’s self-sufficiency in food and agriculture, and improve access to food during climate stress, especially for a community’s most marginalized. When communities gain greater control over their food production, they become more resilient to shocks in the supply chain caused by climate events.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• The entire agriculture and food supply chain (food production, storage, processing, distribution, retail, and consumption) must be transformed to better respond to acute disasters and chronic stressors, withstand more significant environmental variability, and endure heightened uncertainty while protecting the food and agricultural workforce. 
• Resilient food systems in the U.S. are threatened by food insecurity and inequitable access. For example, one in ten households and 33 million Americans don’t have adequate access to food. Meanwhile, there are 6,500 food deserts in the U.S.
• The highly concentrated nature of the food and agriculture sectors also present risks. For example, the top four companies in almost every agriculture sector control more than 60% of the market share. Meanwhile, 17,000 cattle ranchers have gone out of business each year since 1980, and the top four meatpackers now control 85% of the beef market.
• Food and agricultural resiliency are threatened by the vulnerability of global food supply chains. A USDA report predicts that climate change is likely to diminish continued progress on global food security through production disruptions that lead to local availability limitations and price increases, interrupted transport conduits, and diminished food safety, among other causes.

Solutions

• Climate-resilient crop technology startups, like Avalo, are rolling out technologies for assessing risks in food production and throughout the supply chain. 
• Local small businesses and food production nonprofits, like Soul Fire Farm, are innovating with regenerative agroecology and food production practices that encourage community food sovereignty.
• Advocacy organizations, such as the Center for Rural Affairs, are protecting agricultural and farm workers throughout the value chain. Meanwhile, nonprofits, academic, and advocacy organizations are working in conjunction with local, state, and federal governments and policies to advance food access and security, as with the work being done at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins.

3. Healthcare and Emergency Services

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Healthcare and Emergency Services refers to healthcare services for a community during both acute disasters and chronic climate stressors that are 1) comprehensive in the services offered, 2) consistently and equitably available, and 3) resilient to the shocks and disruptions of climate stressors.

Federal agencies like FEMA or major nonprofit organizations like the American Red Cross play an important role in healthcare and emergency services, especially in the aftermath of disasters, but so do local organizations, community healthcare systems, mutual aid networks, and other healthcare services that support communities—whether in the wake of an acute disaster or amidst more chronic hazardous weather events. Both the slow-moving and sudden effects of climate change can exacerbate the burden and amplify the stresses on the healthcare system. Simply put, extreme weather events put greater pressure on a national healthcare system that is already vulnerable. 

Opportunities and Obstacles

• Communities need resilient healthcare systems and emergency services that can respond quickly during disasters, with backup generators and microgrids, clean water sources, and responsive staffing.
• Ahead of disasters, communities across the U.S. need consistent access to health services that span the spectrum from preventative care rooted in the social determinants of health, to routine medical care and mental health resources.
• In the U.S., “heat event days” are expected to add approximately $1 billion in healthcare costs each summer, and are anticipated to be responsible for almost 235,000 emergency department visits and more than 56,000 hospital admissions for heat-related or heat-adjacent illness, according to research from 2023 on the healthcare costs and impacts of extreme heat.
• Meanwhile, increased electricity demands for cooling during extreme heat events can stress power grids, leading to power outages that jeopardize hospitals’ safe storage of medications and vaccines and the use of medical equipment. Similarly, comparable threats to health can be true during periods of extreme cold, as outlined in The Epicenter’s briefing on winter storms.

Solutions

• Innovative public-private partnership models are emerging, such as Pay-for-success (PFS) healthcare interventions where a “private investor [pays] up front for a program, such as home visiting for low-income first-time mothers, and a health system or government partner repays the investor if a rigorous evaluation shows that the intervention has successfully improved some predefined outcomes.” Models like this are emerging with proven results, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership project in South Carolina. Meanwhile, Americares Climates Resilient Health Clinics, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson, aims to roll out 100 climate-resilience focused health clinics by 2025. And the Healthcare Climate Council, a leadership body of U.S. based health systems, is committed to protecting their patients and employees from the health impacts of climate change while becoming anchors for resilient communities.
• Small, local businesses help build the resilience of local healthcare systems while playing specific roles along the continuum of care, alongside service providers like generator installers and communications technology companies that facilitate care coordination and facility resilience. 
• Nonprofits that serve frontline communities, like The Eastside Community Network in Detroit, are supporting climate resilient healthcare in the regions that will be hardest hit by climate impacts.

4. Financial Services and Tools

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Financial Services and Tools refers to the suite of financial infrastructure (from services to tools) that provide a community with the options and resources to 1) build long-term resilience into their communities and 2) respond to the effects of climate change. 

At a household level, this includes access to banking services like credit, risk prediction tools, and forms of insurance. At a community level, this includes access to financial resources to invest in resilient community infrastructure, community wealth-building funds, and other incentives, rebates, and financial resources that expand a community's economic resiliency.

Financial services and tools can soften the blow of climate shocks, preserving wealth, protecting key assets, and getting communities back on their feet after a disaster.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• Nearly 4 in 10 Americans lack enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense, which implies a high level of financial precarity for households in the U.S. when it comes to financial resiliency.
• Even where external capital is available, awareness of existing public and private resources for resilience funding is often limited and public awareness of available funds remains a common obstacle for communities after a disaster. Solutions to bridge this gap are important for building financial resiliency–for example, the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit outlines funding opportunities available for communities, such as FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

Solutions

• Advocacy to shape and strengthen state and federal fiscal policy, especially in rural communities, presents one compelling opportunity to improve financial resiliency at scale, especially amidst a political climate when budgets are being cut. Meanwhile, opportunities exist to influence local, state, and federal polices to allocate more funds and resources to community resilience.
• Unique insurance models and technologies tailored for the era of climate change are also emerging to improve financial resiliency. For example, Dorothy provides immediate (usually within 4-5 days) cash advances in the event of a disaster, using remote sensing to verify that a business or home has been damaged then working directly with a user’s insurance company to file claims.
• Local credit facilities and CDFIs play an important role in providing financial resources and incentives for residents to make climate-resilient upgrades, such as Mill Cities Community Investments, a CDFI in Massachusetts that loans capital to homeowners to make climate-resilient house upgrades.

5. Energy

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Energy refers to reliable and resilient access to energy.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Reliability refers to the ability of a power system to withstand instability, uncontrolled events, cascading failures, or unanticipated loss of system components so as to consistently deliver power to homes and buildings. Meanwhile, Energy Resilience refers to the ability of the grid, buildings, and communities to withstand and rapidly recover from power outages and continue operating with electricity, heating, cooling, ventilation, and other energy-dependent services. Accordingly, energy resilience is a means to increase energy reliability. 

Opportunities and Obstacles

• From 2001 to 2021, 83% of reported major power outages were attributed to weather events. Every year, heat waves across the United States lead the Department of Energy to declare power emergencies, as they did in Texas in 2023.
• The U.S. is plagued with aging energy infrastructure. The majority of the U.S. electric grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, and today 70% of the grid is over 25 years old. Aging energy infrastructure is vulnerable energy infrastructure.

Solutions

• Grid infrastructure modernization presents a critical opportunity to solve for extreme weather impacts on the U.S. energy grid. Installing more microgrids and other off-grid energy investments to build more localized energy reliability and resilience is a key modernization opportunity. Meanwhile, rolling out more renewable energy to reduce fossil-fuel dependence and put less burden on existing energy generation presents another resiliency strategy.
• Community ownership of clean energy offers another exciting solution for energy resiliency. As the marginal cost of clean energy goes to zero, there will be less of a profit motive to produce clean energy on an open energy market. But as this article in MIT Technology argues, “this is a problem for investor-owned energy infrastructure, but [is] potentially transformative for community-owned systems (including public utilities, nonprofit electricity cooperatives, or local microgrids), where cheaper and more abundant energy can power a just transition and a new economy.”
• Policy and advocacy, from the likes of Breakthrough Energy’s policy and advocacy division, can shape federal and state investments in resilient energy infrastructure. Investing in policy/advocacy work to shape state-by-state regulations of utilities can also help accelerate energy resiliency.

6. Transportation

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Transportation refers to the physical infrastructure and the ecosystem of services supporting a community’s human and commercial transportation.

This category goes beyond physical infrastructure (from roads, bridges, rail systems, and waterways) into the ecosystem of services that enables communities to move between places. For example, this might include companies and government agencies that provide transportation, public and private transportation planners, transportation agencies and funders, and local organizations that are helping to strengthen the mobility, access, and transportation of a community.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• The U.S.’s transportation infrastructure needs to get upgraded to withstand the higher frequency and severity of extreme weather. Much of U.S. transportation infrastructure is designed to withstand a 100-year storm (a storm of such severity that it only has a 1% chance of occurring annually), but the frequency of such storms is increasing and threatening existing transportation infrastructure. 60,000 miles of coastal roads in America are exposed to flooding from heavy rain and storm surges. Thirteen of the 47 largest airports in America are within reach of moderate-to-high storm surges, including all three major New York-area airports. 
• Opportunities exist at the local level to advocate for improved transportation infrastructure through local resilience measures and building codes. Such opportunities include supporting local communities, local foundations, and local coalitions in advocating with local city councils and state legislatures, or supporting small local businesses focused on improving transportation infrastructure.

Solutions

• Finding ways to leverage public funding can mean new bridges, roads, and other forms of transportation infrastructure. This includes shaping local tax policy for local governments to tap into federal funding opportunities, like the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which created more than $550 billion in new federal funding for capital improvement projects. However, such federal funding could be impacted by federal funding cuts under the Trump administration.
• From think tanks to research institutions to philanthropic funders, there are opportunities to build the power of the third sector (the nonprofit or voluntary sector) to shape transportation policy. The Urban Institute, founded in 1968, is an independent social and economic policy institution focused on leveraging data and evidence to shape a more inclusive, equitable, and just society. Open Mobility Foundation is creating tools and resources to shape urban mobility management tools that help public agencies accomplish their mobility policy goals. The Transportation and Climate Initiative is a regional collaboration of 13 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia that seeks to improve transportation, develop the clean energy economy and reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

7. Real Estate, Housing, and Shelter

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Real estate, Housing, and Shelter refers to the set of resources, solutions, and physical places that provide community members with access to affordable, consistent, and climate-resilient housing.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• New housing construction needs to be built with climate-resilient principles and building codes. However, it can be politically challenging to navigate local political resistance to new housing and zoning changes.
• The existing housing supply (along with commercial real estate) needs to be retrofitted and upgraded to integrate climate-resilient improvements so it becomes less vulnerable to climate shocks. However, the challenge here is cost: more resilient materials and building methods can add significant cost premiums.
• Housing adds to community resilience as a dimension of healthcare, particularly for disadvantaged and elderly communities. Nearly 96% of older Americans live in the community (not in elder care facilities), and nearly 30% live alone. Elderly Americans with chronic health conditions can make them more vulnerable to extreme temperatures and smoke from wildfires.
• Emergency shelter and robust shelter-oriented disaster preparedness is another key aspect of infrastructural resilience. Ensuring equitable access to emergency shelter and other disaster-preparedness resources can support the resilience of communities (including the unhoused community) after a climate disaster or during extreme weather events like heat waves.
• Meanwhile, communities can build the real estate systems and businesses that will equip them for the inevitable rebuilding that happens after a disaster. Once a disaster strikes, communities need resources, services, materials, and providers who can help rebuild real estate, and robust infrastructure in this category can also help reduce rebuilding costs post-disaster. 

Solutions

• Startups with new business models, data platforms, and technologies are incentivizing and directing homeowners to make more climate-aware housing decisions. One notable example is Homebound, a company born out of the 2017 California wildfires that destroyed 6,000 homes. It simplifies the rebuilding process and alleviates the stress, complexity and uncertainty homeowners face after a natural disaster. PropTech and Construction Tech (ConTech) startups and small businesses working in construction, home retrofits, and other built-environment sectors present additional opportunities.
• Resiliency-focused real estate developers can leverage the federal government’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit) program to build climate-resilient affordable housing and workforce housing.
• Resiliency-focused investment funds can help people relocate out of disaster-prone areas and Opportunity Zone investment funds like Blueprint Local can drive capital into disinvested areas.
• Advocacy and policy organizations are strengthening resilient housing policies at the municipal, state, and federal levels. This includes supporting city planners and policymakers working at the district and neighborhood level to craft climate-resilient policies.
• There are opportunities to help communities rebuild equitably post-disaster. Organizations like The Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition—a group of more than 860 local, state, and national organizations–is dedicated to ensuring the federal response to disaster recovery prioritizes the housing needs of the lowest income people in impacted areas.

8. Communications, Internet, and IT

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Communications, Internet, and IT refers to consistent and reliable access to technology that enables communication, coordination, and an expanded set of opportunities available to communities. 

This includes everything from reliable access to broadband internet to consistent cell phone coverage. From a resiliency perspective, communications infrastructure also needs to be quickly repairable after a climate disaster, to reduce the impacts of long-term outages.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• Lack of access to technology increases how severely a climate disaster will impact a community, according to FEMA’s 2022 National Preparedness Report. Residents in communities without reliable communication infrastructure are initially disadvantaged in distributing and receiving disaster warnings and evacuation instructions. Such disadvantages persist after a severe weather event, as access to technology is critical in the early days of the recovery and rebuilding process.
• Sudden disasters can also threaten internet infrastructure–including fiber-optic cables and telephone poles–and lead to outages at moments when connectivity is desperately needed. Research from 2023 found that ocean and “nearshore” disturbances caused by extreme weather events have exposed vulnerabilities in the transglobal fiber optic cable network, increasing the risk of internet outages. In the 2023 Maui fires, the destruction of telecommunications equipment heightened the confusion for residents and made the fire more dangerous for people in harm’s way.

Solutions

• Rolling out local emergency warning systems, technology, and education can mean the difference between life and death for communities vulnerable to sudden disasters. The nonprofit WatchDuty, for example, alerts communities of nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts in real-time.
• Local public-private partnerships can leverage public dollars in collaboration with internet service providers to invest in building resilience into local IT infrastructure. Bloomberg’s American Cities Climate Challenge is one example focused on upgrading a city’s infrastructure to meet the challenges posed by climate change. 
• Local communities can unlock public capital from public funding like the 2021 Infrastructure and Jobs Act that allocated money to reducing the digital divide and expanding broadband access.
• Opportunities exist to advance policy and advocacy work that strengthens the nation's internet infrastructure and improves mapping and middle mile service at the state level. National Digital Inclusion Alliance is a nonprofit advocacy group that advances digital equity by supporting community programs and equipping policymakers to act.
• Hyperlocal, community-owned internet initiatives like NYC Mesh can fill in the gaps. It offers fast, affordable, and fair access to the internet for all New Yorkers.

9. Jobs and Education

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Jobs and Education refers to a community's human capital, comprising its economic opportunity and prosperity through jobs and education, as well as its social safety net and services.

A resilient community has stable employment with strong wages, job growth, an educated workforce, and a strong social safety net and services that support households (such as available childcare). Communities that are strong economic engines have a form of “human capital infrastructure” that supports them and increases their capacity to be resilient.

Opportunities and Obstacles

• There is a close link between a community’s economic opportunity and its climate resilience. “Regional economic prosperity is linked to an area’s ability to prevent, withstand, and quickly recover from major disruptions [to its economic base],” according to the U.S. Economic Development Association.
• Employment resilience, and employees’ capacity to work amidst climate hazards, are also being compromised by extreme weather events. The International Labour Organization estimates that up to 3.8% of total working hours worldwide could be lost to climate-induced high temperatures. Meanwhile, sixty-five million people in the U.S. are in jobs with climate-related health risks.
• Meanwhile, on the jobs creation side, the green jobs sector is growing and can provide communities with net new jobs. The Department of Energy estimates that the U.S. will need millions of new clean energy jobs. 

Solutions

• Policy & advocacy work can affect state and federal zoning changes and drive incentives that enable economic development, such as opportunity zones where preferential tax treatment incentivizes economic development in economically distressed communities. Advocacy and policy for legislation like the Infrastructure Bill can support job creation. Resilient Energy Economies help fossil-fuel-dependent communities across the U.S. develop strategies to support their local economies.
• Investing in job reskilling and job training programs for people to transition between industries and jobs can strengthen a community’s ability to adapt to climate stressors. The US Green Building Council offers a green jobs curriculum and training program for people looking to transition into green jobs. UpSmith is a tech platform solving the skilled workforce shortage in home services trades, creating opportunity and helping people transition into durable career paths.
• Alternative ownership models and cooperative structures yield resiliency. Co-op Cincy, for example, nurtures a resilient, interconnected network of worker-owned businesses in Greater Cincinnati.

10. Community and Social Cohesion

The resilient critical infrastructure category of Community and Social Cohesion refers to the way a community comes together to mobilize community resources, coordinate efforts, and provide an informal safety net of resources and support. 

Community & social cohesion is one of the least tangible forms of critical infrastructure, but it serves as a glue that binds together the other nine forms of critical infrastructure into a cohesive whole that drives community resilience. Resilient Cities Network describes social cohesion as being founded in “the strength of social relationships, characterized by the presence of trust and participation among individuals within that society.”

Opportunities and Obstacles

• Higher levels of social cohesion strengthen overall urban resilience, enabling communities to better withstand extreme weather events, bounce back more quickly, and rebuild more efficiently after experiencing disasters. Resilient Cities Network’s Social Cohesion Handbook offers a powerful example of social cohesion as a form of critical infrastructure in the great Chicago heat wave of 1995, where 739 Chicagoans lost their lives in a single week, mostly in the city’s most segregated and impoverished neighborhoods. However, notably, “three of the ten neighborhoods with the lowest death rates were predominantly poor communities that, demographically speaking, should have been far deadlier than they were. These places were characterized by a social infrastructure that encouraged local social life and contact between neighbors, making them far less likely to have multiple deaths during the crisis.”
• Civic participation and community cohesion are in decline, with three out of four Americans reporting a feeling that “they don’t belong in their local community,” according to the 2023 Belonging Barometer report. The publication reported that “a majority of Americans report non-belonging in the workplace (64%), the nation (68%), and their local community (74%).”

Solutions

• Advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and community groups can enhance social cohesion and resilience with the rise of community co-ops, Registered Neighborhood Organizations (RNOs), and other initiatives that cultivate a vibrant sense of local cohesiveness and connection. In particular, advocacy organizations and non-profit organizations can unite communities around adapting to climate change. For example, the Center for Rural Strategies advocates for rural communities in the U.S., cultivating economic and social connections. And 2 degrees Mississippi, an organization based in the Mississippi delta, is focused on climate action, community engagement, and education across communities of color, schools, and municipalities.
• Strengthening informal ties within a community through mutual aid networks and technology can build a sense of social cohesion. Gather For is a mutual aid network helping neighborhoods become self-sufficient. Carefully is a digital app that allows communities to exchange childcare with people they trust.
• Meanwhile, city planners can also strengthen their community’s social cohesion in planning for climate effects and developing Climate Action Plans (CAPs).

Have suggestions for additional solution examples to include? Or feedback on our framing of these categories? Send us your thoughts!