The resilience balancing act: how New York has balanced built environment and community approaches in it’s resilience framework

Abstract

Ensuring that cities are resilient against increasing risks of flooding is one of the greatest challenges for planners, especially within coastal cities like New York. Current literature has examined different pathways to resilience, including strengthening the built environment and enhancing community social capital and bonds. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to how different local governments have balanced these two strategies within their resilience framework. This paper explores the balance of built environment and community approaches within resilience measures proposed in the 2014 New York Rising Community Reconstruction Program and from the Mayor’s Office for three New York neighborhoods: Lower Manhattan, Red Hook (Brooklyn), and Breezy Point (Queens). The research sought to determine what neighborhood factors influence how local governments balance these two approaches. The research was performed via a desk review of government reports, news media, and academic journals to assess community social capital and neighborhood relevance to city development goals. These results were triangulated by responses to a survey among residents of each neighborhood. The findings were that stronger bias towards a built environment approach is linked to weak community social capital and high development interest for the city. Neighborhoods with strong community social capital and low development interest for the city, however, can leverage their strong organizational bonds to push for more built environment investment. These findings provide needed insight for how local governments opt to protect different coastal neighborhoods..