The Urban Ocean Lab (UOL) has published the new memo “Partnerships as Resilient Infrastructure,” which synthesizes lessons learned from researching the New Jersey Coastal Resilience Collaborative (NJCRC) and six other longstanding collaboratives throughout the U.S.
The authors interviewed the NJCRC’s co-chairs and representatives of organizations in Boston, Miami, Milwaukee, Mobile, Olympia, and San Diego, examining how local partnerships function in practice; the adaptation actions facilitated by these partnerships that cities cannot achieve alone; and where gaps remain, particularly for smaller or under-resourced cities.
“Across geographies and governance models, partnerships performed functions that cities could not sustain on their own: maintaining momentum across political and funding cycles, extending technical and strategic capacity, and building the legitimacy required to carry difficult adaptation decisions forward over time,” the authors concluded, “In practice, these partnerships functioned as critical infrastructure for coastal resilience.”
To download the document or take a UOL survey related to coastal resilience in your area, click here.