2014 Q&A Teleconference Transcription

Transcription

1 100 Resilient Cities Challenge Apply by September 10, Q&A Teleconference Transcription Max Young: Hello everyone, this is Max Young of 100 Resilient Cities. I m here with Michael Berkowitz, our president and CEO. Welcome to the second annual 100 Resilient Cities Challenge question and answer session. You have all submitted a series of thoughtful and probing questions and Michael will do his best to answer them today. Let s get started right away. Max Young: Last year, 100 Resilient Cities selected 32 cities to join the 100 Resilient Cities Network. Talk to us more about the progress of those cities and how they have benefitted from being part of the network. Michael Berkowitz: Thanks, Max. So far we ve really focused our engagements in those 32 cities. We ve done kickoff workshops called Agenda Setting Workshops in 25 of those cities to date, really bringing a broad group of stakeholders together. In each of those cities, the mayor has attended those workshops high profile, exciting events that have begun to catalyze a community in the various stakeholders around the issues of resilience and start to expose a broad set of resilience issues. Afterwards, we have begun to work with the cities to actually hire CROs. Cities have gone into these workshops with one idea of what kind of CRO they want to hire and often come out with a changed understanding of what the key issues and opportunities are. We have made 8 announcements of CROs to date and we are pretty sure of another 11 or 12 candidates, so close to 20 cities have picked their CROs. We are working closely with the rest. The next step is to kick off the strategy planning process for cities to really look at the risks, what they re already working on, what their existing priorities are, and what the opportunities are for resilience in order to come up with a plan that lays out priorities and initiatives to support those priorities. Max Young: So why the focus on cities? Communities and rural areas are vulnerable too, why focus exclusively on cities? Michael Berkowitz: As part of its centennial year, Rockefeller identified two trends that the world is increasingly becoming an urban place. For the first time, in 2013 more than 50% of the world s population lived in cities and by 2050 that number is estimated to be up to 75%. 3 out of 4 people are going to live in cities. So that is one trend. On the other hand, cities are increasingly facing risks in the forms of shocks and stresses. They are vulnerable to climate change effects and seismic impacts, as we have seen in recent times. They are under strain from rapid growth and their infrastructures are having a hard time keeping up. Many of 100 Resilient Cities is financially supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and managed as a sponsored project by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides governance and operational infrastructure to its sponsored projects.

2 the most pressing issues are felt in cities. That is not to say that rural areas and suburban areas are not important too, but this program focuses on cities. Max Young: So when you say resilience, how is 100 RC defining that? Is it different from other players in the field? Michael Berkowitz: It might be a bit different. I m sure many of you have seen on the website how we define it: the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to adapt and grow no matter what kind of chronic stress or acute shocks they experience. That is often a bit broader than many of the other definitions. I think it is very in line with many of the other things our partners are working on, so I don t think it is a huge leap, but we do have a strong point of view of at least starting the discussion of resilience in a broad place; looking at both shocks acute events or disasters and chronic stresses, at least as a starting point to look at what opportunities and key risks are for a city. Max Young: In addition to the various definitions of resilience, there are a ton of resilience efforts out there. We ve heard that potential applicants want to know how 100 RC is different from other players in the field (UNISDR, UN Habitat, C40, etc.) and if 100 RC is collaborating with these organizations to make sure we re not duplicating efforts. Michael Berkowitz: Let me answer the second part of that question first: We believe very strongly in collaboration and we were one of the drivers of what is now called the Medellin Collaboration, which we announced with a number of partners from the UN and C40 (as you previously mentioned) at the World Urban Forum in Medellin in April. Resilience is absolutely a broad and important pursuit and it is not going to be done by one organization alone, but with the support of many different partners and stakeholders in cities, the international level, and everything in between. We absolutely think there is room and the imperative for collaboration. The way we are different is that we have a theory about helping the city organize itself around its challenges so it can leverage all of these other initiatives. We provide funding to hire a Chief Resiliency Officer a senior person in city government and funding to help that city complete a resilience strategy, a process that helps organize the city around its challenges. We also believe in organizing the market. As you know, we have been putting together a platform of services and resources that cities can tap into; the best curated funding, technology, technical assistance, and best practice opportunities that cities can use to enhance their resilience. That is a very open architecture in some ways. It helps cities define and organize themselves around challenges and helps the market better organize itself so it can support cities. All of these other efforts we really see as complementary because they provide value and capacity in one form or another. Max Young: You ve spoken a little about the things that cities have already done. Will cities that already have a resilience plan in place get preference as we re looking at applications? Michael Berkowitz: We re looking for diversity. We looked for diversity in our first cohort of 32 cities and we re looking for diversity in our next cohort. That is, diversity geographically, where cities are along their resilience journey, and in terms of capacity, size, hazards they re exposed to, and so on. We re not necessarily going to give preference to cities that already have resilience plans. We do like sophisticated cities, for example Rotterdam, New York, and Los Angeles are all among our first cohort, and all of them have some form of a resilience plan. But we also have cities that are very early in their resilience journeys and we think that it is really beneficial as part of this network to have a mix of these cities. 2

3 Max Young: Great. So since this is a multi-year challenge, can cities that applied last year apply again this year? In other words, how many times can a city apply? Michael Berkowitz: Cities can apply with one application per city per year and they can continue to re-apply for our further cohorts. I would like to mention that we received a lot of interesting applications last year, but many of them were very development focused and didn t tie the city s needs and challenges back to shocks and stresses, which is a key element of what resilience is. I think there were a lot of thoughtful applications, but until you begin to really think about the challenges you have in terms of resilience and not just in terms of development, those are the more compelling applications. Max Young: Why should my city apply if it wasn t selected last year? Michael Berkowitz: Your city should definitely apply again. Last year we received 372 applications and only chose 32 cities. So the selection was very, very competitive! There were many great applications that didn t get selected just because 100 Resilient Cities didn t have the capacity to work with them in our first year. I would absolutely encourage cities that didn t get selected last year to reapply this year because many of you had great applications! Max Young: How can cities benefit from the network without being selected? Michael Berkowitz: We are going to increasingly publish case studies and best practice guidance about what 100 Resilient Cities is doing. We absolutely encourage (in fact it is part of our success factor) for cities to do this on their own to hire a chief resilience officer, to go through a resilience strategy, and to partner with stakeholders both in the city and in their region. We think that is important regardless of whether or not you are in the 100 Resilient Cities Network. We are going to continue to look for ways to interface and share information with our expanding network of cities that may not have been selected. Max Young: We frequently hear from prospective cities asking if they can submit an application jointly or if they can apply as a region or municipality. What can we tell them? Michael Berkowitz: This is one of the great tensions of this undertaking. We acknowledge that resilience building is absolutely regional. Resilience in the face of shocks and stresses is often not just a function of municipal government but rather of the multiple stakeholders that operate at the regional, national, and even international level. On one hand, it is a very broad undertaking. On the other hand, we have to start somewhere, and so one of our key interventions is a municipal intervention that we are hiring Chief Resilience Officers for Mayors. Having said that, and to answer your direct question, we want cities to apply, but we love applications that reference other applications, that come as a group. We completely understand this regional dynamic. As many of you know, we are working with the Bay Area in the US the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco on ways they can better understand and coordinate their resilience. Max Young: So if a city is selected, how long is the commitment of to the program? Cities want to be able to plan for engagement with the 100RC. Can you give us a few more details about the engagement cycle? Michael Berkowitz: The funding we commit to selected cities is 1) to hire a CRO for two years and 2) in that first year to put together a resilience strategy. In many ways, that is the first part of the commitment. In reality, resilience building is a much longer process. You don t make your city resilient over the course of two years that s just the beginning. We will be around for a long time, 3

4 particularly this platform of services and resources. We will continue to look for partnerships, to curate the best funding for technology and technical assistance resources, and to continue to be able to direct those resources into our network cities for many years to come. Max Young: You ve mentioned the resilience building strategy process a number of times, other than a CRO that is one of the key engagement points of 100RC. Could you take a couple minutes to talk about what the resilience strategy process will look like? Michael Berkowitz: Without getting into too many of the technical details, it is a process that helps cities over a 6-9 month period to identify its key risks. We re not just talking about hazards here, although that is an important part of it whether a city is vulnerable to earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or industrial accidents but also where it does well or not so well in terms of its capacity to service its citizens. For us, a resilient city has good emergency response and meets its citizens needs. It has diverse economies and takes care of both its built and natural infrastructure. It has effective leadership, empowered stakeholders, and an integrated planning system. All of those things are important for a resilient city. As part of the planning process, we look at the hazards as I described them but also the strengths and weaknesses of the city, as well as what the current initiatives are. For example, if the city just completed a huge waterfront plan or economic development plan, if it is rezoning downtown, or if it is expanding a high-speed rail line. All of these elements are what goes into the beginning of a resilience planning process. Then we look at other key risks and opportunities on the back of that some of which might have already been identified through other planning efforts and we come out with what the key priorities are and what are some initiatives- concrete things that we can execute on to support those priorities. Once that is done, we think that will be a real roadmap and will really signal the market, investors, NGOs, and different stakeholders to each play a part in executing on those priorities. We will also play a part by helping to steer resources into the city to execute on those priorities. Max Young: Now that we ve talked a little bit about what happens during the challenge, let s talk more about what happens after selection. Are selected cities required to provide matching costs or resources? Michael Berkowitz: We don t have hard and fast rules about this, but we definitely encourage co-investment from cities. As I ve mentioned, while we help cities hire a CRO for two years, often this resilience officer is most effective in situations where he or she has a supporting staff, an office, and so on. Having cities help coinvest in making this a real, important, senior position is something that signals that this initiative is going to be a success in a city. So while there are no hard and fast rules about what a match could or couldn t, or should or shouldn t be, we do definitely look favorably on cities that are willing to co-invest with us. Max Young: Similarly, what are the city s commitments to the network? Michael Berkowitz: Right now, the key commitment to the network is that the CRO attend network events. We have one big summit every year and a number of other smaller events. Having the CRO participate in those is important. (We pay for the cost of the CRO traveling to the summit and so on.) A city s responsibility to the network is a little bit larger. We are really looking for cities that are willing to partner with, share information, and be honest and transparent about what they struggle with, what they are challenged with, and their new innovations and successes. We are looking for cities that are open with that kind of information sharing and partnership. 4

5 Max Young: Since, as we ve talked about before, cities will enter the network with different levels of resilience efforts in place, how does 100RC help each city develop a resilience baseline? Talk to us about how 100RC helps cities create a tailored resilience strategy. Michael Berkowitz: That is a good question, and frankly one we have struggled with. We have a very clear view about the diversity of the cities having cities at different places in development, different capacities, with different challenges so helping all of those cities have meaningful engagements is something that we continue to focus on. The thing about our resilience strategy is that it is able to identify what the priorities for resilience building are. Some of those priorities in more advanced cities who already have knowledge about what their infrastructure is, what their vulnerable populations are, and their natural environment, etc. will be to identify real projects for implementation. For example, if they want to enforce a seawall, do a structural retrofit, encourage community building in certain neighborhoods, or focus on economic diversity. Those are all interesting priorities for advanced cities. For some cities, many of their priorities may be to further understand their own profiles. We know that there are many cities that don t understand where their power infrastructure is, who don t have clear ideas of where their vulnerable populations are, and who don t understand in any sort of rigorous, scientific way what drives their economies and where those might be vulnerable or not. All of those further studies are absolutely valid next steps following a resilience strategy. Those could be the priorities for less advanced cities whereas more advanced cities will be on to actually building, doing, and implementing. Max Young: Talk about the first couple of steps a city goes through after it has been asked to join the network. What does the engagement cycle look like? Michael Berkowitz: After some onboarding, the first big step is for cities to run a resilience agenda workshop. We come in with some technical assistance and help cities put on a daylong event. It s a broad, multi-stakeholder convening that we are very insistent that the Mayor will come to, and I try to make as many as I can, that helps the cities cast their eyes across the resilience horizon what are the larger issues, who are the key stakeholders, what are going to be the big challenges and really set the agenda for the rest of the resilience building process. Then we try as quickly as we can to get a grant agreement in place and hire a CRO. Next we kick off the strategy planning process. We have talked a lot about whether the strategy planning process could happen sooner, before the CRO is hired, but right now we have a pretty strong view that the CRO should be on board before that process kicks off. Often the slowest piece of that process is identifying a senior person who has the right skill-set and temperament to lead this resilience building effort. Max Young: We have heard from the cities that the workshops are really beneficial processes and that the experts from the cities have learned a great deal about their cities just from a single day workshop. Could you discuss further the benefits from these workshops that you have seen? Michael Berkowitz: Cities often come into this process very aware of the most recent, serious incident or threat that their city has been facing, for example hurricanes, murder and violence, and earthquakes. Cities come in with very focused lenses about the resilience building process. What the workshops help to do (on a high level since it is only a one day event) is to unpack that a little bit and get to some of the other ancillary pieces of that risk profile for a city. We worked with one city that was very focused, because it was recently impacted by a hurricane, on hurricane planning. We also found that they were doing interesting work around murder and violence reduction as well as public health. 5

6 When we started to look at the communities in which they were working and some of the solutions that they were discussing around public space, transportation, and economic opportunity, all of a sudden those three pieces of work started to overlap. We were very excited to find the synergies. That is what can happen in the workshop those kinds of connections begin to be made. Max Young: From the workshop, the CRO takes the process forward. Can you tell us more about how the CRO is selected in each city? Does 100RC select the CRO or is it a city-led process? Michael Berkowitz: It is absolutely a city-led process. We provide recruiting help in the form of a large recruiting firm if cities want it. We advise on the job description to make sure that it matches our expectations. But ultimately, cities need to choose and be comfortable with their CRO. At the end of the day, while we can be an advisor, a nudger, a critic, a supporter, a cheerleader, ultimately the cities are going to need to make those decisions and be comfortable with them. Max Young: Thanks Michael, these are the questions that people submitted. Any final thoughts before we close? Michael Berkowitz: No, just to say that we are really looking forward to the next cohort of cities. It has been a wonderful year since we last launched the initiative and I look forward to a great next 12 months and a new cohort! Max Young: Thanks everybody. This is Max Young again, the Lead for the Challenge Process for 100 Resilient Cities. Before we close, I just want to say a couple of things. One is that the transcript for this call will be posted in Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish online. If you want to review our answers or share them you will be easily able to do that. If you have additional questions, we are always happy to answer them. You should them to challenge@100resilientcities.org and we will get back to you as soon as possible. If you are interested in hearing more about what specific cities have found to be the benefit of this program, we can absolutely share that with you as well. Again, thanks for getting on the call. I know it is either very early or very late for you depending on where in the world you are. We appreciate your commitment to resilience building and we look forward to receiving your applications! 6