Climate Resilience through Community Resilience: A Model for Engaged Design from Coal Country

In 2021, the authors launched Climate Resilience through Community Resilience, a multi-year engagement in Central Appalachia between the University of Kentucky’s Studio Appalachia and Hazard KY, approximately two-hours away. Challenging the traditional expert-client relationship, the initiative aligns local expertise, community leadership, and design capacity to address both historical disinvestment and the compounding effects of climate change in the region through sustained engagement and participatory design. There are multiple examples of design pedagogies with robust components of community engagement, notably the University of Minnesota’s multi-year engagement in North Minneapolis and famously Auburn’s Rural Studio. Likewise, there are multiple examples of design pedagogies addressing the climate crisis. Less prevalent are ongoing institutional projects that apply sustained community engagement methodology to climate resilience, particularly in a rural setting far afield from the university campus. This paper articulates the urgency and the precarious nature of climate resilience in the region; situates our program design within broader engagement and pedagogical practice; and introduces an assessment method as a means of documenting potential impact.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.85

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6