By Karen Thoreson

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”   — Viktor Frankl, neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

“[We are] using 20th century solutions for 21st century problems.”  — Peggy Merriss, city manager, Decatur, Georgia

These quotes are perhaps the most important takeaways from the provocative discussion on building resilient communities that took place at the invitation-only conference—2014 BIG Ideas: The Future of Our Cities—held October 24–26 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from adversity, but it is more than recovering; it is adapting better for future challenges.

Acknowledging the many challenges facing communities around the globe, leaders focused on how to prepare and emerge stronger, no matter the circumstances. These key themes emerged in discussions throughout the conference:

• Prepare and plan today. Conduct a risk and impact assessment, acknowledge your vulnerabilities, and prioritize and integrate strategies.
• Institutionalize resiliency. It is a continuous process and it should be integrated into the day-to-day routine.
• Use a collaborative process. Connect with others. Empower, engage, and build relationships with staff, residents, nonprofits, business leaders, and the region.
• Remember that communication is critical. Establish trust and transparency.

This article includes information that can help jump-start discussion in your own community. Seize the opportunity to become a resilient community that isn’t defined by adversity, but by your response when faced with challenges.

Vulnerability, Resilience, and Innovation

Alliance Resident Futurist Rebecca Ryan kicked off BIG Ideas 2014 by encouraging participants to welcome adversity. “After all,” she said, “Only adversity will teach us about resiliency.”

She framed the conversation through research. Resilience research distinguishes between protective and promotive factors.1 Protective factors are actions you take to protect or insulate yourself from adversity; promotive factors are characteristics, networks, and traits that enable us to deal with adversity. Research shows that local governments rebound from adversity along a spectrum:

1. Resilient reintegration. The best-case scenario, where disruption leads to stronger protective and promotive factors and individuals emerge more well balanced.

2. Homeostatic reintegration. Individuals “just get over” the disruption, but don’t make any substantive changes in their protective and promotive factors.

3. Reintegration with loss. Occurs when individuals regain their balance, but with reduced protective and promotive factors and greater vulnerability to further imbalance.

4. Dysfunctional reintegration. Individuals remain imbalanced and rely on such destructive coping strategies as substance abuse to deal with the stress of imbalance.

Arizona State University Associate Professor Clark Miller noted that “Ryan concluded by discussing the importance of preparing through ‘disruption scenarios.’ By thinking early about potential disruptions, we are better prepared to face our vulnerabilities. Welcome adversity; innovation and resiliency will occur to those best prepared.”

The Ripple Effect

Bringing years of experience from national and municipal platforms, David Kaufman of FEMA and James Hunt of Amazing Cities set the stage for a discussion on environmental resiliency.

Kaufman began by citing the number of disasters worldwide and the reality that the number is rapidly increasing from decade to decade.

Resource constraint is now commonplace. The structural deficiencies of infrastructure only add to the potential for catastrophic environmental events. But beyond the direct impact of local catastrophic events is the ripple effect these events create. The massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, for example, caused iodine buyout, and, ultimately, a change of energy policy in Germany.

Kaufman closed his remarks by highlighting the current situation for local governments. Basically, the means and methods of service delivery are changing.

Typically when an environmental event occurs, the public is the true first responder. Moving forward, local governments should augment their emergency response by proactively building relationships with the huge, untapped pools of public sector, nonprofit, and community groups.

Having served the city of Charleston, West Virginia, for years, James Hunt provided a municipal point of view. Calling on his experience with a chemical leak in Charleston, Hunt discussed how environmental disasters can wreak havoc on the public’s psyche for years, even after a solution has been implemented.

The chemicals from the leak had been seeping into the local water system, affecting the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents. Now, when visitors come to the city and stop by a local restaurant, waiters typically insist they order the bottled water even though the contamination has since been cleared.

Hunt has a motto: If you think something bad will happen, it will, and if you think it’s the end of the story, it’s not. The key for local government is how city leaders manage a crisis when it is beyond their sphere of influence.

Achieving Economic Resiliency

Dr. Robin White, senior mediator and program director with the Meridian Institute, introduced the discussion on economic resiliency by defining five primary barriers to achieving economic resiliency in our communities.

First, economies are only as resilient as the community/region is resilient. As a nation, we do not recognize how unprepared we are to handle foreseeable risks or to respond to uncertainties. Second, communities lack appropriate frameworks for managing economic issues and priorities on a regional scale. Disasters are both local and regional.

The third barrier shared by White is incentivizing nonresilient behavior and dis-incentivizing resilient behavior. Fourth, communities are not poised for effective risk assessment. White stated, “We have prepared people to be rescued.” Community-based resiliency is needed.

The final barrier is failing to deliberately prepare for economic recovery and resilience. Communities plan for emergency response, but not resiliency.

How does a community prepare for economic resiliency? White suggests leaders ask themselves these five questions:

1. What makes up our economic ecosystem?
2. What can’t we afford to lose?
3. What is our plan for recovering economic function in our community?
4. Who on our staff is responsible for economic resilience?
5. Where might the capital for rebuilding, restoration, and recovery come from?

Adding to the discussion on economic resiliency, Kristen Jeffers, with Kristen Jeffers Media, shared a personal and emotional plea to not write off the poor. She encouraged the attendees to ask themselves: “What do we do for these people, in an age where science says they are hopeless, but your service provision and tax rolls say otherwise?

Jeffers emphasized that poverty of spirit and economics can happen to anyone. She asks, “Can you be that civic leader who rallies this grass roots? Can you draw from your own pain?”

Emotional Resiliency

Peter Kageyama, author of the books For the Love of Cities (Creative Cities Productions, 2011) and Love Where You Live, Creating Emotionally Engaging Places (Creative Cities Productions, 2015) began the discussion on emotional resiliency. Kageyama believes emotional resiliency comes from small things, as well as normal and different things.

Small things. Small things create major impacts. Kageyama used the 2010 Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake as an example. Christchurch did the big things well, responding to the disaster; however, the real opportunity was in the small things on the emotional level.

During the recovery, residents built pop-up establishments with shipping containers, soccer fields in the rubble, bicycled-powered movie theaters, a dance floor with lights hung from temporary poles, and book-lending devices out of old refrigerators.

Normal things. The normal things create a sense of relief and represent progress showing that the community is getting back to normal. Kageyama discussed the rebuilding in Joplin, Missouri, following the devastating tornadoes. For a long time, a blinking yellow light served as a symbol of the devastation, but after being restored to a full stoplight, it came to represent progress to the community.

Different things. Building up resiliency is found in civic experiments and the attitude toward trying something new. The new thing might fail, but we learn about our capacity for change and innovation opportunities increase. Kageyama discussed the difference between competent failure and incompetent failure, stating that our competent failures are opportunities to learn and become change-ready.

Kageyama closed by encouraging leaders to take advantage of the slow times, challenging assumptions and training themselves to become more resilient. Through training, we become change-ready and comfortable with uncertainty, and will have the ability to build an emotionally resilient community.

Nancy Freed, deputy city manager, Aurora, Colorado, continued the discussion on emotional resiliency, sharing Aurora’s story and lessons learned from the movie theater shooting in 2012. Freed shared that Aurora now has a playbook for communities that suffer through a tragic situation and encourages others to think about their playbook as they are just one phone call away from a life-threatening event.

Drawing on the emotional event, she shared these key lessons learned:

• This can happen everywhere.
• Be confident, but recognize your role will change.
• Coordinated communications is key.
• Quality of internal and external relationships is critical. You can’t create relationships when disaster strikes.
• Think about how you will handle the money coming in to support victims.
• Mental health services need to be addressed.
• Everyone grieves, but everyone grieves at different times.
• You have to take your time and lead from the victims.

How did Freed know the community was going to be all right? She related how she had received a note from a resident encouraging Freed to look at pictures of the doors of the theater as people ran out that day.

Instead of looking out for themselves, people were holding doors for those who were running out of the theater. At that moment, she knew Aurora had a resilient community and it would be all right.

Moving Forward

If there’s one thing that BIG thinkers are good at, it’s challenging what we all thought we were good at. The conference gave attendees much to think about. Here are the top three insights I came away from it with:

Resiliency isn’t just about coming back. It’s about coming back better than you were. Through intentional planning and dialogue with the people affected, we can use the crisis and the opportunity to rebuild in ways that we had only imagined. We can redesign communities as New Orleans has done or create centers of healing as Aurora has done, and in so doing, make our communities better than they were before disaster hit. But we can’t remain stuck in the event that changed us. We have to move forward, acknowledging it, but refusing to let it define us.

Community resilience is about neighbor-to-neighbor connectedness. We are all responsible for creating and nurturing those connections that will sustain us in times of crisis. In all that we do, we must demonstrate and model authentic human response and a commitment to supporting people in helping each other, rather than creating an expectation among our residents that government will rescue them. It can’t.

We can’t heal without justice. We in positions of leadership must reach out before crisis occurs to those most vulnerable in our communities and create the trust and credibility that will be necessary when disaster strikes. We cannot build credibility at the time of crisis . . . that will be too late.

We must use crisis to rebuild prosperity and opportunity for the least among us, and build trust by telling the truth, facing our weaknesses together, and creating the spirit of resilience as an inspirational and collaborative goal. Our lives and our communities may depend on it.

Endnotes

1http://www.cssp.org/reform/child-welfare/ppf/SF_ProtectiveFactors.pdf.