11:00—11:45 am Greater Food Access in Greater Hartford presented by Amber Smith, MA Political Science Student at the University of Connecticut with Martha Page, Executive Director, Hartford Food System, as chair and discussant
11:15—12:15 pm Lunch
12:15—1:00 pm Panel: Academic and Career Development in Planning Leadership facilitated by Kevin Fitzgerald, University of Connecticut
1:15—2:00 pm Using Gardens to Build Stewardship & Healthy Habits presented by Lauren Little, Environmental Education Manager, Knox, Inc.

Being both a Hartford native and current Political Science MA student at the University of Connecticut leaves me in an interesting position where I both study urban development in Hartford but have also personally lived through the pitfalls of urban design issues in the city. The one that affected the livelihood of myself and my family the most was the brutal commute we would have to undergo to even purchase a single apple. With this unique perspective, I am able to reframe these personal experiences and link them to the political process utilizing scholars on the subject of food access. Hartford, Connecticut as a city has inadequate access to healthy and affordable food for its citizens. This is commonly referred to as a food desert. In the interactive talk/teach-in at the symposium, there would be a discussion on how food access should be one of the central focuses when moving forward with sustainable local development. The city of Hartford has only one supermarket in its 18 square miles. This makes access to fresh fruits and vegetables in the diets of Hartford's residents especially difficult. The journey to and from food access points can be incredibly challenging especially when utilizing Hartford's public transportation system. My family would have to take three different buses both ways in order to get to the grocery store from the north end of Hartford. The teach-in will feature a brief history of how Hartford's racist food deserts came to be, the complication that arises with racist food deserts, and current initiatives to combat Hartford's racist food deserts. In addition, the current literature on food insecurity will be analyzed through a personal lens taking into account the emotional toll it has on people’s lives that may not always be examined. During the teach-in to further illustrate this there will be an immersive activity that will provide attendees the opportunity to confront the particular struggles presented in trying to provide your household with a healthy diet with varying complications. Hartford residents may face a variety of complications that could include relying on the public transportation system, having certain dietary restrictions, financial restrictions, etcetera. When thinking about food access and how to make it more widely available one has to think not only of where (geographic location) but also who (socio-economic status) is accessing it. Approximately a fifth of Hartford residents live in poverty and a third live more than a mile from a supermarket. Accessing healthy food such as fresh fruits and vegetables is essential in order to maintain a diet that will help maintain one's health. When envisioning the future of sustainable urban development in Hartford and Connecticut one must also envision the health of the citizens residing in these areas as well.

I propose a multidisciplinary student section to introduce emerging planning professional and academics in urban planning, social work, and climate studies. This should be structured around concept themes such as economic development, climate justice, talent development, mapping, transportation, and law. I believe that it is equally important to facilitate professional development by connecting these professionals to talk about their career growth. Participants will be encouraged to share career goals and skills to target & sources. Participants will put these career goals into a 'career road map.' This session will be used to create a email or forum to continue the discussion on the conference's topics and to create collaborative teams to create policy solutions.

Learn how KNOX, Inc. engages students and families in garden education to help them understand where their food comes from, be good stewards of the environment, and have access to more healthy food. We know the distance our food travels has a huge impact on climate change. This interactive session will give participants an opportunity to experience a snapshot of KNOX's work with students in Hartford and our efforts to help families have access to fresh local produce. Presenters will also share how participants can encourage similar projects in their community.
 
We also know that restoring the health of our tree canopy can be a tool for combating climate change and improving health outcomes in urban areas. During the session, participants will also hear about our efforts to plant resilient trees at schools and in other locations to maximize their ability to mitigate climate change and improve the health of people in Hartford.
 
Participants will learn the importance of urban farming and urban reforestation in the age of climate change. At the completion of the workshop, individuals will understand successful strategies to encourage environmental stewardship and address climate change in their communities.

Overview of KNOX's Environmental Education Program:
Children who participate in KNOX's Environmental Education program understand where their food comes from and take an active role in cultivating it. From harvesting produce in the fall, to winterizing garden beds, and then planting seedlings in the spring...our students develop a personal connection with their local environments. We empower youths to have conversations on climate impact and vulnerabilities. Since 2014, 1100 students per year have participated in our program. The result is their active participation is environmental stewardship.

12:00 pm  Green Minds and Cool Cities: Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Mitigation and Environmental Justice in Connecticut presented by Susan Masino

4:30 pm Forum: Vacant Urban Land and Climate Change with panelist Julie Gamble, Trinity College; Mark Lewis, Brownfields Coordinator, DEEP, Remediation Division; Patrick Doyle, KNOX, Hartford and Derrick Bedward, Gardener at Knox, Hartford

6:30 pm Talk: Conservation of Urban Wilds for 21st Century Climate Benefits presented by Mary Pelletier

A panel about vacant land/open space and climate.

4:30– 8:30 pm Botany, Zoology, Geography, and Ecology Stories, lessons and activities presented by The MTCNE elementary staff and students; School Gardens and Sustainable Practices in School Settings presented by MTNCE alumni and local teachers; Farm to Table – A Vietnamese Montessori School Budget presented by Tim Nee

MTCNE staff and elementary training course students will give presentations, tell stories, and facilitate discussions in the areas of botany, ecology, earth science, and zoology.

MTCNE alumni and local Montessori teachers will give presentations, tell stories, and facilitate discussions in the areas of  school gardening, composting, beekeeping, incubating salmon and duck eggs in the classroom, and reducing school waste.

Learn how an inner city Montessori school in Hanoi benefits fro their farm land in the nearby countryside.

- Everlasting Harvest: Food Justice and the Adolescent presented by Daniel Duesing, Alexia Zuliani and Students from Annie Fisher Montessori Erkinder at Auer Farm, 158 Auer Farm Road, Bloomfield

- Remington Woods: A Connecticut Urban Forest Under Threat presented by Samantha Dynowsky, State Director, Sierra Club Connecticut

- 5:30-7:30 pm Amplifying Community Voice through Deliberative Dialogue: How a Team of Parents is Training Neighbors to Create a New Environment a Parent Inquiry Initiative (Parentii) presented by Doreen Abubakar, Carmen James, Cheryl Peterson, Karla Woodworth, Erin Kenney and Angelia Frusciante at Whitneyville Cultural Commons, 1253 Whitney Ave, Hamden

At Annie Fisher Montessori Magnet School, our program's food justice initiative works to incorporate these elements in a developmentally appropriate manner. As teachers, we continue to educate ourselves on the diverse components that drive and define the movement. In our adolescent program, we work to provide students with: access to healthy foods, the skills to prepare their own foods, knowledge about the structures that influence food production and distribution, and opportunities for meaningful contribution.

Guests are invited to tour our field site at Auerfarm. This is an opportunity for guests to see students working in their Food Lab and garden occupations. Students will also share projects related to their work at the farm and their learning around food and climate change.

Samantha Dynowski, State Director, Sierra Club Connecticut will lead a discussion about the past, present and future of Remington Woods, 422-acres of forest, wetlands and meadows in Bridgeport and Stratford. The session will include crowd-sourcing on the strategies and opportunities to save this local urban forest from development.

Climate change and the related environmental challenges are at the forefront of the media, academic research, advocacy agendas and often protests. Crisis awareness and polarized back and forth are abundant, but discussion about what needs to change and how to change it are often blocked by divisiveness and politics. In this session, a group of Connecticut parents demonstrates the process they developed for bringing community members together in conversations that lead to action.

This session is critical to addressing the climate change crisis in Connecticut. Communities are already seeing the ramifications of climate change and its intersection with the realities of poverty and institutionalized racism. Clean water, access to healthy food, and exposure to toxins are not new to Connecticut neighborhoods. While expertise is necessary to understand the effects of climate change and to identify technical possibilities, the power to make change is a value-laden challenge. This challenge needs to be addressed democratically and in the civic sphere.

Parentii (the Parent Inquiry Initiative) started almost a decade ago as an effort to bring a team of parents together to develop materials, conduct training and build experience in facilitating conversations about topics important to Connecticut communities. The parents, serving as co-researchers, co-designed informational tools and a training approach to build a network of communities equipped to, together, take on contemporary challenges. Focusing on equity and civil discourse, the approach is geared toward moderating and recording community discussions on targeted social issues in ways that: raise up individual voice across diversity; unearth the values in underlying disagreement; illuminate the role of each person in change; and highlight individual and collective actions needed to address the issues at hand.

In this session, (maximum 50 participants) the parents will share their story of co-designing the dialogue process. They will describe a tool that they are currently using to bring together communities in discussion about issues that are identified by communities themselves. Most of the session will be dedicated to a hands-on experience with the participants actively engaging in a conversation about an environmental issue that has been addressed in one Connecticut community.

Participants will:
- Learn about a parent driven co-creative process for amplifying community voice
- Be exposed to a tool for community driven deliberation
- Identify the important elements of deliberative dialogue
- Experience a deliberative dialogue about an environmental issue

By learning about and experiencing a deliberative conversation, participants will have access to the resources needed to engage their neighbors in dialogue and action to help guide Connecticut's environmental change efforts.

Please email angela@ctcivic.net to register or ask questions.

Session 1A: Trinity College Liberal Arts Action Lab (LAAL) (main space)
Measuring Neighborhood Well-Being and Climate Resilience in Connecticut presented by Mark Abraham, Executive Director, Data Haven, and Partners

Session 1B: HPL Center for Contemporary Culture
Youth-Powered Partnerships: Engaging the Next Generation of Conservation Leaders presented by Nicole Freidenfelds and Amy Cabaniss, both affiliated with UConn Natural Resources Conservation Academy

Session 1C: LAAL (seminar space)
Empowering Middle School Youth to Take Environmental Action with UConn Extension presented by Stacey Stearns, Marc Cournoyer and Jennifer Cushman

Presentation and panel discussion regarding results of the 2019 Greater Hartford Community Wellbeing Index, a cross-sector publication supported by 100 public and private agencies in CT, and based on analysis of various federal, state, and local data sources including our live, in-depth interviews with over 32,000 adults throughout Connecticut.  The work is being used for all health assessments in the Hartford region (and beyond) as well as current city-led planning activities such as "Hartford 400". The discussion would seek to address issues around resilience and climate adaptation, including the relationship of social and built environment, as well as our experiences in upstream and downstream strategies to use data and community-based research to engage residents in advocacy. The theme of the panel can be further tailored (Hartford-specific or statewide) or become a shorter oral session.

The Natural Resources Conservation Academy (NRCA; http://nrca.uconn.edu) at UConn is an innovative program in conservation and land use planning that engages Connecticut high school students, adult conservation volunteers and teachers with conservation efforts at the community level. The NRCA benefits students and adults by conducting education on natural resource management and geospatial technology, and facilitating the use of these new skills in the implementation of local conservation projects that benefit the community.

During the 45-minute session, UConn NRCA faculty members will discuss recruitment strategies, identify tangible projects that can help meet local environmental needs, demonstrate technologies and resources helpful in achieving on-the-ground community project success, and provide tips/tools to support youth-adult conservation projects.

Connecticut Environmental Action Day (CEAD) is a one-day conference coordinated and hosted by UConn that inspires middle school students to take active roles in addressing environmental and natural resource issues related to climate change. Our team uses 4-H youth development programming and instruction to create behavior change in youth around environmental action.

Students participate in exploratory workshops in the morning session, and then create action plans for their home, school, and community during the afternoon session. Faculty, staff, and students from UConn work with the students prior to and following CEAD to ensure the greatest educational impact and continued momentum on their environmental actions.

The role and objectives of CEAD are to increase awareness and community engagement among middle school aged children with Extension sustainability and 4-H programs. UConn undergraduate students are a secondary audience and participate by volunteering with the middle school students and participating in the Climate Change Challenge.

CEAD has three core goals: to increase students' understanding of the environment and natural resources; to foster students’ capacity to become environmentally responsible citizens through individual and collective actions; and to introduce students to the educational opportunities at UConn.

CEAD also has programs for undergraduate students at the UConn Storrs, Hartford and Avery Point campus. In the spring of 2020 we are distributing digital kits statewide, and offering curriculum kits to 32 middle schools.

In this session we will discuss:
- How we built collaborative partnership across disciplines in UConn to provide educational outreach through CEAD.
- Needs assessment results from middle schools on environmental curriculum for youth.
- Best management practices for curriculum development and implementation for middle school students to foster ownership of the environmental actions and create behavior changes.
- Curriculum and tools available to replicate this program in your community, or adapt it to the age group(s) that you are working with.

We believe that environmental action must start at the grassroots level in order to have a sustained impact and grow beyond the scope of our communities. Youth have a unique opportunity to make positive changes in their home, school, and community. We can instill civic engagement, leadership, and a love of lifelong learning in our participants by engaging them in solving one of our most pressing issues, climate change.

Keynote: HPL Center for Contemporary Culture

Sara Bronin, Chair, Hartford Planning & Zoning Commission

Session 2A: Panel Session at HPL Room 139
        Green Minds and Cool Cities: Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Mitigation and Environmental Justice in Connecticut participants Susan Masino, Professor at Trinity College, Mark Silk, Aram Ayalon, Mary Rickel Pelletier and Chelsea Armistead

Session 2B:  Two Paper/Presentations at LAAL
Navigating Freedom, Creating Sustainability: Marronage in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina (ca 1800-1850) presented by Renée Neely, Archivist and Artist, The National Coalition of Independent Scholars
Resilient Architecture: Adapting Our Buildings to Advancing Climate Impacts presented by Seth Holmes, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Hartford

Session 2C: Three Presentations at HPL Center for Contemporary Culture
Everlasting Harvest: Food Justice and the Adolescent presented by Daniel Duesing and Alexia Zuliani, Erdkinder Guides, Montessori Magnet at Annie Fisher
       Urban Development and its Environment: A Case Study of Bridge Construction and its Impacts on Urban River Waters Quality presented by Bin Zhu, Associate Professor, University of Hartford, and Students
       Simulation Modeling: A Tool for Understanding the Mechanisms of Climate Change presented by Dave Cappaert, Science Educator, Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy, Hartford Public Schools and Renzulli Academy Students

We need our big brains more than ever to address complex problems that span multiple disciplines. The changing climate is something we need to confront directly in our communities as we try to forge the best future for the region. One of the most important actions to mitigate the effects of a changing climate is protecting and restoring nature and developing and enhancing green infrastructure. A nature-based approach also improves our health, sense of well-being and quality of life. The session will be moderated by Mark Silk and will discuss several ways that the natural landscape and green infrastructure in Connecticut can save money and promote the health of residents and the urban landscape. Aram Ayalon discuss the making of a tree ordinance in New Britain and the challenges and dilemmas involved in implementing and enforcing it. Mary Rickel Pelletier will summarize the need for comprehensive green infrastructure planning that includes recreational and economic development opportunities that support conservation and revitalization of ecosystem service benefits provided by forests and wetlands along the North and South Branches of the Park River. Susan Masino will highlight scientific research on nature and brain health, including short- and long-term effects in healthy people and in people facing health challenges. Finally, Chelsea Armistead will share the results of a recent public opinion poll on the values and priorities for our public forests - a complement to and respite from urban living. Taken together this session will help to translate science, planning and public opinion into concrete actions that leverage and respect the natural world, provide inherent environmental justice and support healthy urban living for the future as we face the uncertainties of a climate change. All of our current and proposed actions are practical to implement, not expensive, and can make a difference to everyone on a daily basis. Going forward, protecting nature is the foundation for community well-being and a sense of common purpose. It is a critical building block in planning for a future to look forward to. Nature-based solutions can simultaneously keep us healthy, fight climate change, mitigate flooding and urban heat islands, and strengthen communities at multiple levels.

Why is the history of antebellum marronage in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina relevant to communities facing today's environmental challenges?  This presentation will answer this through a visual exploration of period photographs, popular culture and geography of this resilient yet little known community.  

The phenomenon of fugitive slave communities, or marronage, is immediately associated with Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil, and parts of South America, as well as Florida and Louisiana in the United States.   A lesser-known history is that of the Dismal Swamp Maroons in an ecosystem abutting the southeastern border of Virginia and the northeastern border of North Carolina.  To this geography, self-emancipated African slaves, whites fleeing cruel indentures and members of indigenous communities, escaped to create a safe haven in the midst of the Tidewater slavocracy.  The inhabitants of the swamp were feared by slaveholders as rebels and threats to their authority, yet to the women, men and children who chose this harsh environment instead of bondage, the Dismal Swamp  became a landscape of freedom.  

The history of the Dismal Swamp Maroons crosses boundaries of political freedom and environmental justice.  This study sheds light on an aspect of United States and global environmental history seldom discussed:  the knowledges, practices and values of the enslaved.  Consider the worst of human conditions' chattel slavery -- in which people took back their freedom by creating survival strategies to live in an environment thought uninhabitable.  Dismal Swamp Maroons' co-dependency on nature was born out of their determination to be and remain free.  That freedom depended solely on their successful adaptation to the swamp's ecosystem.  In creating and sustaining this relationship, Dismal Swamp Maroons created a new position of environmental stewardship linking free and green.  

The Dismal Swamp Maroons did not see themselves as environmental stewards or proponents of environmental justice as we use those terms today.  Yet by creating and sustaining communities for hundreds of years in the midst of the Tidewater slaveocracy, Dismal Swamp Maroons created a new position and a new way of understanding environmental stewardship.  How was this accomplished?  They achieved and maintained their autonomy by reliance on strong societal and familial ties, and the practice of traditional ecological knowledge systems.  Dismal Swamp Maroons relied on the same survival strategies, reciprocities and strong familial and societal ties practiced by indigenous communities today.  

The maroon settlements of the Dismal Swamp no longer exist.  Maroon communities disbanded with the ending of United States slavery in 1865.  Their knowledges, resource imperatives, and social interactions linking freedom and green can offer insights for those seeking solutions to today’s environmental problems that can improve the lives of society’s most marginalized communities in ways that are both sustainable and just.  Certainly an understanding of a community’s history and internal knowledge systems counters the possibility of their being further marginalized by well meaning practitioners..

The author will discuss her art as a form of symbolic representation to hear historical silences.

At Annie Fisher Montessori Magnet School, our program's food justice initiative works to incorporate these elements in a developmentally appropriate manner. As teachers, we continue to educate ourselves on the diverse components that drive and define the movement. In our adolescent program, we work to provide students with: access to healthy foods, the skills to prepare their own foods, knowledge about the structures that influence food production and distribution, and opportunities for meaningful contribution.

This presentation will give participants a brief overview of how our program concentrates on the food justice movement in order to meet the needs of the adolescent for meaningful work that contributes to the community and sustains the individual. This work provides avenues for the adolescent to practice and refine using their sense of justice for the greater good and the creation of a better world. We will highlight key areas of focus such as: gardening, cooking, food waste management, culturally responsive design, policy, and advocacy. We will also share lessons learned for implementation.

Construction activities in and along urban streams may cause an overall decline in water quality and aquatic ecosystems. In this case study, water quality impacts of local bridge construction in an urban stream were investigated. At the site of interest in the North Branch Park River in Connecticut, workers removed a stream crossing with a small bridge in an effort to improve flow capacity. Water samples were taken at four sites. Turbidity, dissolved oxygen (DO), nitrate and total phosphorus (TP) in water were measured. Benthic macroinvertebrate samples were also collected and analyzed for taxon richness and species diversity. Data were compared between upstream and downstream sites and before, during, and after the bridge construction. The results showed during construction, turbidity increased temporarily by 60.9% (from 2.48 to 4.00 NTU). Once construction was completed, DO increased locally from 11.0 to 13.0 mg/L. Benthic macroinvertebrate taxon richness and species diversity declined by 61.6 and 32.6% respectively, with no recovery observed in the year following construction. However water quality was only affected within 50 m downstream. It is concluded that small-scale construction temporarily increased the turbidity as a result of increased sediment input. Benthic macroinvertebrate communities declined in the immediate downstream vicinity of construction but are expected to recover soon given that turbidity recovered to pre-construction levels, and DO increased. These outcomes emphasize that urban development and construction activities at a small scale may have large environmental impacts and therefore environmental monitoring is necessary.

Middle school students at Renzulli Academy in Hartford have been studying climate change, with the goal of understanding how key variables such as greenhouse gases, albedo, and human behavior interact to affect climate. They have created simple dynamic models that can be used to make predictions about the future. Some outcomes are simple: increasing fossil fuel emissions trap heat and increase temperature. But the interesting models incorporate variables with multiple effects (e.g., water vapor), and demonstrate the importance of feedback loops. In this session, students will run sample models onscreen to elucidate these ideas, and discuss the role that more sophisticated models play in forecasting the uncertain future of climate and weather over the course of their lifetimes.

Session 3A: Two Presentations at LAAL
Resilient Urbanism: Bridging Natural Elements & Sustainable Structures in a Post-Industrial Urban Environment presented by Nicholas McGee, M.Arch Candidate, University of Massachusetts Amherst
The Journey of a Student Becoming a Climate Leader presented by Jeff Dyreson, Director of Environmental/Sustainability Initiative, Gratia Lee, Director of Sustainable Agriculture, Neil Chaudhary, Assistant Science Department Chair and Adviser for the Loomis Chaffee Climate Action Group, and Students

Session 3B: Two Papers at  HPL Room 139
Urban Africa and Climate Change presented by Garth Myers, Trinity College
Environmental Justice and Urban Climate Change presented by Emily Yen, Kelter Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies, Trinity College

Session 3C: One Panel at HPL Center for Contemporary Culture
Sea-Level Rise and Flood Vulnerability Assessment for Planning Resilient Connecticut presented by Yaprak Onat, Assistant Director of Research UConn Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA), Joanna Wozniak-Brown, Alex Felson, and Peter Miniutti

How can the revival of nature combined with the introduction of contemporary structures improve a city's appeal and chance to live resiliently? This design project attempts to present a way in which to better utilize Hartford's natural resources for public use by re-establishing and utilizing the existent green infrastructure of the City. This plan, involving the relocation of I-91 to the opposite side of the Connecticut River, would use existing infrastructure in a clean, concise way in order to provide a new public space along Hartford’s waterfront and would allow the Riverfronts of the Connecticut and Park Rivers to bring nature back into the heart of the city, thus creating connections across the River at the Human Scale. An ancillary effect of this project would be to relieve traffic of those traveling through Hartford and allow for easier/increased access for local traffic, both automobile and pedestrian, to access the downtown area and central business district, And to add safer, more pleasing connections from East Hartford to Hartford. Using existing bridges and rights-of-way also does the least amount of damage to current residents of East Hartford and its own waterfront, as there would be no new land needed for this new configuration. The new land opened up from the removal of the Whitehead Highway and I-91 can allow for a more natural counteraction to the growing threat of climate change and sea-level rise, as the best way to accommodate flooding is not to try and trap water, but to let it flow freely. And finally, a new, "green", habitable bridge across the Connecticut River with pedestrian and bicycle access can connect Downtown and East Hartford while providing water purification, mitigation, and potential for hydropower as well. Bringing the citizens back in touch with the waterfronts of Hartford serves many purposes, of course. However, much like the original purpose of Olmstead's "Ring Park Plan" for Hartford, and the original purpose of the Park River and Bushnell Park at their conception, the primary purpose of a green corridor through downtown is to break up the urban environments of asphalt, concrete, and hardscapes in order to allow for a more resilient urban lifetime. This is ever-present in today's downtown Hartford, where most of the blocks are completely taken up by parking lots, garages, office towers, and walkways. Rather than removing parking (and starting a revolution in the process), or retrofitting all of the downtown buildings with green roof infrastructures, it is more feasible and cost-effective to utilize the existing greenways in a way that would benefit the people, the environment, and the infrastructure around the city. The growing issue of climate change and sea-level rise is another driver for this plan, whereas the new greenways can absorb any potential flooding without any monetary or physical damages. To simplify the thesis of Gilbert F. White, a prominent geographer and flood scientist, if you don't build in the flood plain, you don't have to worry about flooding. The green spaces can also be teaching tools, where people can collect data from floods by water levels, absorption rates, etc.

Learn how students and faculty at Loomis Chaffee empower themselves moving from climate education to climate activism.  Director of Environmental Sustainability, Jeff Dyreson and Assistant Science Department Chair, Neil Chaudhary will share the current curriculum offerings geared towards climate education and how students are empowered to take action through a variety of programs.

Programs will highlight the following:
Science course offerings
Global & Environmental Certificate
Environmental Proctors (community work program)
Gilchrist Environmental Fellowships
Loomis Climate Change Advocacy group

The newly energized 1 MW Solar array will be the featured example.

The paper "Tools for Building an Urban Environmental Justice Coalition" draws from  five years of ethnographic research on an environmental justice coalition in Los Angeles.  The pape draws from five years of ethnographic research on an unlikely set of actors who created a powerful coalition that put Los Angeles at the forefront of the environmental justice movement.  The coalition's victories created national policy that allowed environmental justice coalitions across the United States to thrive.  This paper examines the successful strategies that can be applied to the movement in Hartford.

The Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) has initiated Resilient Connecticut, as part of Phase II of the HUD National Disaster Resilience Competition.  Resilient Connecticut will provide the state with a regional and watershed focused planning framework piloted in the Superstorm Sandy-impacted regions of New Haven and Fairfield Counties.  The project‚Äôs guiding principle is to establish resilient communities through smart planning that incorporates economic development framed around resilient transit-oriented development, conservation strategies, and critical infrastructure improvements. The project focuses on community development around transit and creates resilient roads to connect the communities to climate change. Resilient Connecticut aims to create opportunities for affordable housing, preserving and enhancing the quality of life for existing affordable communities, develop energy, economic and social resilience and protect communities by adapting critical services and infrastructures in the flood zone to withstand occasional flooding.

As part of this effort, CIRCA developed an integrated flood and vulnerability assessment model that has been incorporated with planning and capacity building activities to include economic, health, and landscape architecture aspects. Resilient Connecticut identifies the projects that assess regional infrastructure challenges and opportunities and develop implementable plans and pilot projects with broad benefits. The plans include the hydraulic modeling of extreme flood events including precipitation and water surface elevations on the communities that face common challenges in the New Haven and Fairfield counties of Connecticut including the sea level rise projections. Integrated risk assessment accounts for projected disaster impacts from real-time data to support decision making for the communities that share risks among or between groups that need to be prioritized for flood management policies and improve flood mitigation activities. The coastal resilience is analyzed in terms of vulnerability to the sea level rise by the development of a spatial data analysis of land worth investigation from an economic outlook.

During this session, CIRCA will have three 30-minute presentations to inform the Resilient Connecticut project overview, the technical assessment to tackle the challenges of future storms, sea-level rise, and riverine flooding and assessment of the zones of shared risk for regional, municipal, and site scale planning.

Keynote: HPL Center for Contemporary Culture