Resilient Together

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Locally, we are experiencing longer, hotter heat waves, more destructive storms, wildfire smoke, and invasive pests. Scientific projections show these challenges will increase in the coming years and decades, with implications for our community’s health and well-being.

Resilient Together is a County, City, and UVA collaborative planning and implementation process designed to ensure our community is strong, safe, and healthy in a changing climate.

Working together will result in a more resilient community.

Natural hazards do not stop and start at the jurisdictional boundaries between Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Studies have shown that we have similar vulnerabilities and challenges. Collaborating will help us to produce better, stronger results.

We

Locally, we are experiencing longer, hotter heat waves, more destructive storms, wildfire smoke, and invasive pests. Scientific projections show these challenges will increase in the coming years and decades, with implications for our community’s health and well-being.

Resilient Together is a County, City, and UVA collaborative planning and implementation process designed to ensure our community is strong, safe, and healthy in a changing climate.

Working together will result in a more resilient community.

Natural hazards do not stop and start at the jurisdictional boundaries between Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Studies have shown that we have similar vulnerabilities and challenges. Collaborating will help us to produce better, stronger results.

We anticipate the planning effort to take 18 months, resulting in two complementary plans that support each other and recognize the similarities, differences, and unique needs of both jurisdictions.


We are committed to a thriving future for all.

Resilient communities work together to ensure everyone can access a safe, healthy, and thriving future. In our area, some community members do not have the same level of access to public services and may, therefore, face greater vulnerability during extreme weather events.

For example, individuals who live in homes without air conditioning or access to public parks and street trees will be more exposed to heat waves and lower air quality. Additionally, some individuals face elevated risk due to factors such as age or medical conditions beyond their control.

We must engage with these community members throughout our planning process to ensure that our solutions extend access to services for everyone and reinforce community systems that bolster resilience across the board.


One climate. One community. We need you to get involved.

Your voice matters in this process. Creating effective climate adaptation and resilience plans for the City and County that serve our community requires meaningful collaboration among local government, partner organizations, and you.

Things you can do today include:

  • It's been one year since we started

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    We completed the Discover phase at the end of May, having held workshops with staff from the County, City, UVA, partner agencies, and community organizations. Additionally, we reviewed extensive notes from community engagement conducted during other recent planning processes like AC44 and Cville Plans Together.

    In June, we received a competitive Environmental Justice Government-to-Government (EJG2G) grant of just over $460,000 from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This grant enabled us to create the Climate Resilience Cohort, which will provide subgrants to 10 community-based organizations (CBOs) that serve disadvantaged community members. CBO grantees will help center the needs of our most vulnerable community members in the Resilient Together strategies. We look forward to our first workshop with the participant organizations this month.

    Over the summer, we completed the Define phase, which included three steps: First, we identified themes from the information we gathered during the Discover phase. Second, we used these themes to draft guiding principles and long-term goals for Resilient Together, which will continue to be refined during the next steps. Third, we researched over a thousand strategy options from around the country and curated a list of the most locally relevant for consideration in the Design phase. In the coming months, we will look to you and the community to help us identify and refine the best resilience strategies to pursue in the years ahead.

    Read our One-Year Progress Report to learn more about our process, what we heard so far, the project vision, guiding principles, goals, and next steps.

  • Human-Centered Design is part of the foundation of the Resilient Together process

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    The Resilient Together project utilizes human-centered design principles in several key ways throughout our climate adaptation and resilience planning process:

    1. Emphasis on community engagement: The project places a strong focus on involving community members at every stage, from discovery to implementation. This aligns with the human-centered design principle of putting people at the center of the process.
    2. Inclusive participation: The project aims to create welcoming and inclusive participation opportunities for all community members, ensuring diverse perspectives are considered. This reflects the human-centered design approach of understanding and addressing the needs of various stakeholders.
    3. Storytelling and experience sharing: During the discovery phase, the project encourages community members to share their personal stories and experiences related to climate change impacts. This aligns with the human-centered design principle of developing empathy and understanding user experiences.
    4. Iterative process: The project follows a phased approach (Discover, Define, Design, Decide, Do) that allows for continuous refinement based on community input and feedback. This iterative nature is a key aspect of human-centered design.
    5. Collaborative problem-solving: The project involves multiple stakeholders, including community members, partner organizations, and government staff, in developing resilience strategies and actions. This collaborative approach is central to human-centered design.
    6. Focus on local context: By considering the specific vulnerabilities and challenges of the Charlottesville and Albemarle County area, the project demonstrates a commitment to understanding and addressing local needs.
    7. Addressing equity: The project recognizes that some community members may face greater vulnerability to climate impacts and seeks to engage with these groups to ensure equitable solutions. This aligns with the human-centered design principle of designing for inclusivity.
    8. Prototyping and testing: The "Do" phase involves implementing strategies, monitoring progress, and evaluating success, which reflects the human-centered design approach of testing and refining solutions.

    By incorporating these human-centered design elements, the Resilient Together project aims to create climate adaptation and resilience plans that are truly responsive to the needs and experiences of the local community.

  • September 2023 Newsletter

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    We are excited to announce the launch of Resilient Together, a new collaboration between Albemarle County, the City of Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia.

    Resilient Together is a collaborative planning and implementation effort designed to ensure our community is strong, safe, and healthy in the face of a changing climate.

    Locally, we are experiencing longer, hotter heat waves, more destructive storms, wildfire smoke, and invasive pests. Scientific projections show these challenges will increase in the coming years and decades, with implications for our community’s health and well-being.

    We know that natural hazards do not stop and start at the jurisdictional boundaries between Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Studies have shown that we have similar vulnerabilities and challenges. Collaborating will help us to produce better, stronger results.

    About the Project

    Through this project, we seek to define resilience, identify opportunities, and design strategies to build resilience.

    We can think about resilience in terms of preparedness, emergency response, and recovery -- before, during, and after a severe weather event. Building resilience starts with identifying strengths (where the community is working well) and gaps (where there is a need for improvement) in how we prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters or extreme weather events.

    This project will build on community strengths.

    Our community possesses numerous strengths we can leverage to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. These include neighborhood groups, local businesses, service-oriented nonprofits, schools, local governments, and informal mutual aid networks among community members, to name a few.

    Solutions can take many forms, such as protecting and enhancing tree cover to provide cooling shade during a heat wave to increasing the capacity of emergency responders during a flooding event.

    Through this planning process, we will gather input from community members, nonprofits, businesses, and local government staff to identify strategies that build on strengths and address needs for meeting the challenges that climate change is bringing to our region.

    The planning effort will take approximately 18 months, resulting in two complementary plans that support each other and recognize the similarities, differences, and unique needs of both jurisdictions.

    One Climate. One Community. We need you to get involved.

    Your voice matters in this process. Creating effective climate adaptation and resilience plans for the City and County that serve our community requires meaningful collaboration among local government, partner organizations, and you.

    Things you can do today include:

    • Visit our project website to get informed about the topics, share your input, and learn about upcoming opportunities to participate.

    • Save the Date! Our Community Kick-off and Open House is on Tuesday, September 26th from 4-7 pm at Carver Recreation Center.

Page last updated: 19 Feb 2025, 03:07 PM