Newsletter: Cities Mark the Path to Resilience

With more than half of the world’s population living in urban areas – a figure expected to increase to two-thirds by the middle of the century – it is no surprise that cities have a critical role to play in global efforts to both mitigate climate change and build resilience. City leaders can often work more nimbly than can state and national officials, developing innovative, localized approaches for reducing emissions, managing water supplies, or protecting communities from climate-related hazards.

There are limits to what cities can do on their own, however. Private companies will greatly benefit from the work that cities are engaged in to increase resilience – whether in the form of safer, more reliable public infrastructure or improved planning and preparation for more frequent extreme weather events. Cities are struggling to fund these efforts and often don’t have the internal capacity to evaluate or develop new financing options. While this creates an obvious opportunity for private companies to step in and step up to advance these projects, financing is just one way that cities and companies can collaborate. CDP’s recent report on cross sector collaboration in cities highlights diverse opportunities for cities to engage with their business communities ranging from knowledge sharing to project implementation to financing. Understanding what is already working in cities around the world is key to moving at the speed and scale required to protect our communities.

At Four Twenty Seven, we also see the value in these partnerships, but seek to further understand their impact, and leverage the specific factors that make them successful. How are cities defining their “ask” when working with private companies? What roles can our business community (both large and small) play in building community resilience? Which of our many “wicked” public policy problems will benefit most from business engagement? Increased cross sector collaboration is not an end in and of itself – but it can be a critical step in the right direction.

As on all fronts of the climate challenge, there is more work to do, but much promise in collaborating to build vibrant communities that are well prepared for the rest of the 21st century and beyond.

— Aleka Seville, Director of Community Adaptation