REGISTER AIA Member: $15 | General: $20 | Student: $5

Contact info@aiasf.org to receive 1.5 LU for attending this program.

For the past decade, communities across the state have faced severe challenges on multiple fronts — from extreme fires and flooding to earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic. How have they responded and what strategies have proved most successful?

Designers are equipped with the technical solutions to address climate impacts, flooding, SLR, heat, air pollution, but communities struggle to finance and implement solutions at scale. The World Resources Institute is partnering with the San Francisco Public Utility Commission, Encourage Capital, and the Liquid Assets Project to design and pilot the Joint Benefits Authority (JBA).

Join us for this conversation that will introduce the JBA, a new governance and finance tool to bring multiple city departments together, in partnership with the community, to deliver infrastructure that transforms neighborhoods and builds resilience in the face of climate change.

This special segment of “Fresh Brew” will also explore the following:

* Strategies for community resilience in California
* New research in the science of fire behavior and flood mitigation and green infrastructure
* Role of evolving technologies in community preparedness
* Ways that designers can engage communities in the effort to adapt to climate change

Speakers

(Moderator) Tom Llewellyn, Host, “The Response Podcast” / Shareable

Tom Llewellyn is a community organizer, consultant, and storyteller promoting people-powered solutions for the common good. He’s the strategic partnerships director for Shareable.net, executive producer and host of the award-winning documentary and podcast series “The Response,” and a sought-after presenter and workshop facilitator who has spoken at over 200 events on five continents. He is also the co-editor/author of several publications, including “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons” (2018), “The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters” (2019), and “Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the Age of COVID-19” (2020). One of his favorite activities is to host community ‘Stone Soup’ events wherever he travels to help communities remember how good sharing can taste!

Lisa Beyer, Urban Water Infrastructure Manager, World Resources Institute

Lisa is responsible for developing and scaling financially innovative, environmentally-sustainable municipal water management solutions in cities across the country. As part of the Cities4Forests and Natural Infrastructure Initiatives at WRI, the goal of this work is to capture co benefits of urban greening by employing advance capital planning and integrated project delivery that can attract new investment. Lisa is leading the development of the Joint Benefits Authority, a WRI partnership with Encourage Capital and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, that will allow departments within a city to jointly plan, implement and finance resilient public infrastructure that strengthens communities by capturing co benefits inherent in integrated solutions. For the last 20 years, Lisa has been designing and managing urban infrastructure projects in New York City, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Lisa is committed to design that advances sustainability, involves meaningful public engagement, placemaking, and long-term viability from project concept through operations and maintenance.

Greg Kochanowski, Studio Director, RIOS

Greg is a licensed architect, aspiring landscape architect, and educator in the State of California. He has been practicing and teaching for over 25 years with projects spanning a wide array of scales, typologies, complexities and disciplinary orientations. His work and research seeks to holistically combine the techniques and strategies of architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism to create unique, sustainable, forward thinking, equitable environments that build upon and enhance the specific qualities of a place. His current research focuses on resilient environments that create synergies between natural systems, culture, infrastructure, and development.

Greg’s work has been recognized and published nationally and internationally within all three disciplines – architecture, landscape, and urban design, and exhibited in both the Venice and Rotterdam Biennales, as well as other venues, and has received recognition from prominent organizations including the Young Architects Forum Award from the Architectural League of New York, AIA, ASLA, and AIACC. He has led education sessions at both the ASLA and AIA National Conventions focusing on the Wildland Urban Interface, and the fire, flood, debris flow weather cycles experienced in Southern California on a recurring basis. This research seeks to engage these unique challenges of climate change within the West & Southwest United States, Australia, Central and South America, and globally. Most recently, he has published a book on the subject entitled “The Wild”, through a grant from LA County Dept. of Arts and Culture and the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

Learning Objectives (1.5 LU pending)

1. Learn about opportunities for designers to enable greater community resilience in the face of disaster

2. Understand the various vulnerabilities faced by communities in a changing climate in California

3. Tools for inviting broader groups of stakeholders into resilience planning and delivery processes and incentivising multi-benefit projects

4. The role designers can play in driving resilience awareness through speculative design and engaging directly with communities who have experience disaster

THANK YOU TO OUR PROGRAM SPONSORS