On January 11, 2018, Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge announced locations for the resilience design projects to be pursued by 10 international design teams over the next five months. During the Design Phase, local residents, public officials, engineers, architects and other experts will come together to create resilient solutions that address the impacts of climate change and regional inequity before disaster strikes. Here is a list of the selected projects and locations:
Oakland: San Leandro Bay, Oakland Coliseum | The All Bay Collective
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“Local community engagement will ground our team’s thinking in the present while we think long term. Local community groups will help The Bay Collective team generate solutions that have multiple benefits, providing social and economic resilience in the short term while building resilience to the longer-term environmental stresses of climate change and sea level rise.”
— Claire Bonham-Carter, LEED AP, The All Bay Collective
North Richmond | The Home Team
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“We’re thrilled and humbled to be selected to continue the Resilient by Design process in North Richmond. We look forward to working with the community to explore new ecological systems and economic strategies that can both reduce flooding and explore ways to dismantle the systems of racial inequity that have burdened people there for decades.”
— Tim Mollette-Parks, Associate Principal at Mithun, The Home Team
South San Francisco, San Mateo County | HASSELL+
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“We saw San Mateo County as the perfect testing ground for solutions that could unlock potential for shoreline communities around the entire Bay Area. We want to work with the local community to create a place that they love, building on what makes their neighborhood unique and enhancing their resilience to climate change and sea-level rise in the future.”
— Richard Mullane, Principal at HASSELL, HASSELL+
South Bay: East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View | The Field Operations Team
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“The South Bay and Silicon Valley include some of the lowest-lying and most vulnerable communities to sea level rise in the Bay Area, and at the same time are growing rapidly and lacking adequate housing and transit connectivity. And yet, Silicon Valley is a global center of technology and innovation. Future innovations in the global effort to address urban development in the face of climate change are poised to happen in the South Bay.”
— Richard Kennedy, Senior Principal at James Corner Field Operations, The Field Operations Team
Alameda Creek Watershed | Public Sediment
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“We are thrilled to be working in the Alameda Creek watershed, where community groups have been working for some time to enable ecological health and public recreation along the Creek. We believe that by working together with local residents, organizations, and government partners we can transform Alameda Creek from a flood control channel into a replicable, regional model for resilience that bridges local needs and large-scale ecological systems.”
— Gena Wirth, Principal at SCAPE, Public Sediment
San Rafael: The Canal District | BionicTeam
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"We are excited to work in tandem with the BionicTeam, Resilient By Design, and local stakeholders to design community-based, resilient solutions for the Canal District and central San Rafael. BionicTeam and Resilient by Design have shown that they are committed to working in partnership with Shore Up Marin to develop equitable planning and development practices. By putting social equity and community voices at the center of the design process, their approach integrates community members as equal partners and true collaborators, while leveraging local knowledge and priorities to improve and not displace community members from their neighborhoods. We can’t wait to start building a stronger, more resilient San Rafael together."
— Douglas Mundo, Co-director of Shore Up Marin
“We are excited to work in tandem with the BionicTeam to design community-based, resilient solutions for the Canal District and central San Rafael. BionicTeam has shown that they are committed to working in partnership with Shore Up Marin, and we're pleased that they are putting social equity and community voices at the center of the planning process. We can’t wait to start building a stronger, more resilient San Rafael together.”
— Marcel Wilson, Principal at Bionic Landscape, BionicTeam
San Pablo Bay | Common Ground
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“We’d like to look at ways that all the communities around San Pablo Bay could share resources and connect with each other for work, living, recreation, food and health, cultural ties. We’d like to unite these communities with the rest of the Bay Area and not be deterred by hours of auto gridlock. We think the best response to Bay resilience is to really engage with the Bay as a place to live, put the bay to work as a transport hub, and make the Bay our functional front yard and address.”
— Tom Leader, Principal, TLS Landscape Architecture
Vallejo: Mare Island | Team UPLIFT
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“The City of Vallejo is excited about Team UPLIFT’s selection of Vallejo and the greater effort to address environmental resiliency in our region. We support Team Uplift’s stakeholder engagement to undertake this ambitious effort.”
— Teri Killgore, Interim City Manager, City of Vallejo
“Team UPLIFT is honored to be have been chosen to work with the community of Vallejo to design innovative solutions for a socially, economically, and environmentally resilient future. Vallejo’s distinct identity as one of the most diverse communities in the nation combined with its location at the mouth of the Napa River means a sustainable future must be examined through the lens of an integrated, community-centered approach. We will rely on listening to local voices to inspire real transformation so that concepts emerge that reflect community needs and can be funded and implemented. Vallejo’s ongoing transformation is a powerful story of resilience and balancing the local ecological systems with innovative and implementable solutions is fundamental to our region’s resilience.”
— Riki Nishimura, Director of Urban Strategies at Gensler, Team UPLIFT
San Francisco: Islais Creek | BIG+ONE+Sherwood
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“Once the largest body of water in San Francisco, the fate of the historic Islais Creek is in our hands. People are looking to California to provide on the ground leadership in how we protect our waterfront communities and adapt to the impacts of climate change, and Resilient by Design is a proven model for that work. Our goal for this Challenge is that it not only engages a vulnerable waterfront community but that it is a catalyst for innovation and action throughout the region, state, country and beyond. We’re thrilled that BIG+ONE+Sherwood will be bringing compelling ideas and a commitment to community engagement to this important part of San Francisco’s history and shoreline.”
— John Rahaim, Director of Planning, City of San Francisco
“Together with ONE and Sherwood, we propose to create a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable Bay by working across the traditional silos of city-making, re-imagining the Bay as a Social Ecosystem – one where ecology, people, infrastructure and mobility work together, as self-reinforcing systems. We are thrilled to have been selected to work with the communities surrounding Islais Creek and the City of San Francisco, exploring the potential to preserve and grow industrial jobs, strengthen ecological systems, improve infrastructure resilience, and reconnect the city’s industrial heart with its surrounding communities. From Islais Creek to Islais Park – a resilient, green heart for Southern San Francisco.”
— Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner of Bjarke Ingels Group, BIG + ONE + Sherwood Team
Regional Resilience: All Nine Bay Area Counties | P+SET
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“Together with community, P+SET will utilize the next design phase to listen and learn from the insights of local residents, co-designing a resilience curriculum that will be piloted this spring with young leaders from three of the Bay Area's communities most vulnerable to sea level rise. This curriculum will help empower leadership on coastal resilience and climate change issues, ensuring that design solutions proposed for these areas reflect community needs and wisdom.”
— Pandora Thomas, P+SET Team Lead
The 10 site selections are also available on the Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge website here: www.resilientbayarea.org/meet-the-sites