We will create a community planning process to engage all stakeholders in community-specific climate adaptation strategies
Protecting our infrastructure is crucial, but we also need to prepare our city to deal with the consequences of climate change, especially in flood-prone areas. There are obvious impacts to people's property and livelihoods from windstorms, flooding, heat waves, and other direct effects of climate change. Shifting climate patterns can take lives and pose major public health dangers.

While all five boroughs have vulnerable coastline, each community's risk and the optimal solutions to minimize that risk will vary. Therefore, preparing for these impacts must include community-specific planning.

A successful community planning process provides the neighborhood with the tools necessary to understand the challenges, engage in problem solving, and effectively communicate preferred solutions. In addition, the process must take into account the unique challenges associated with planning for climate change. Beyond a broadening awareness of the general issues, the details about climate change remain unfamiliar to most of the public-and most publications on the topic are extremely technical and difficult to read. Also, all scenarios are based on projections that continue to evolve.

To begin addressing these challenges, the City has partnered with Columbia University, UPROSE, and the Sunset Park community to design a standardized process to engage waterfront neighborhoods in conversations about climate change adaptation.

We will work with the community to inform them about the potential impacts of climate change and possible solutions-and seek to understand their priorities moving forward. By 2008, we will have a process that can be applied to all at-risk neighborhoods across the city, mostly along the waterfront. We must ensure that all new plans consider the effects of climate change and develop strategies that respond to each community's unique characteristics, including building types, access and use of waterfront, and existing community planning efforts, such as 197A plans and Brownfield Opportunity Area applications.

Progress (as of 4/22/08):
The City has begun working with UPROSE (The United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park) to develop a model planning process and "toolkit." The City held its first pilot workshop in Sunset Park on February 21, and its second pilot workshop in Broad Channel on March 15, the feedback from which is being used to develop the model outreach strategy. Over the next few months, the city will hold additional pilot workshops before launching a citywide campaign to hold workshops in all vulnerable communities.

Progress (as of 10/22/08):
The City completed five pilot workshops in each of the five boroughs: Sunset Park, Brooklyn; West Harlem, Manhattan; Broad Channel, Queens; the North Shore, Staten Island; and Hunts Point, Bronx. Over the next few months, the city will refine its materials based on feedback from the pilots and will launch a citywide campaign to hold workshops in all vulnerable communities.