Rebuild worked with the Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC)– a government operated NGO whose mission is “to distill, create and share knowledge on liveable and sustainable cities” by using Research, Capability Development, Advisory and Knowledge Platforms – on a project developed to build collaborations and mobilize collective citizen action at the neighborhood-level, towards understanding climate change and co-creating community-led initiatives for stronger adaptive capacities. Through a participatory planning process piloted in the Cambridge Road neighborhood of Singapore, the outcome was targeted to create a replicable model that would foster greater community ownership, resilience and preparedness to cope with the impacts of climate change at the local neighborhood level.
From 2019 to 2022 Rebuild worked with project partners include Participate in Design, Make Public, and the Future Resilient Systems (FRS) programme under the Singapore-ETH Centre to develop an engagement strategy and resilience indicators that could track the understanding that residents have of climate change and their ableness to take ownership over the local improvements.
Through a series of engagement activities, including pop-up booths, tactical demonstrations, community workshops and prototyping, the effort invited residents to share and contribute ideas for building climate resilience as a community in the Cambridge Road neighborhood, suggest and test ideas for community initiatives and projects that can help build up adaptive capacity for the neighborhood, learn and engage in participatory planning and budgeting for community projects, and co-create prototypes or initiate programs and deploy them within the Cambridge Road neighborhood.
When the pandemic hit in the middle of the engagement, Rebuild worked with the City and it’s partners to shift to an online engagement strategy that prioritized the health and safety of its residents.
The effort resulted in pilot “green” projects for the community, while teaching CLC, the neighborhood, and partners how to craft future engagements. The process built capacity within the Centre for Livable Cities, and the City of Singapore to engage residents in a truly collaborative process that also helped residents understand the threat of climate change to their neighborhood and step into leadership opportunities to address it together. This model will be utilized in different neighborhoods in Singapore. Read the report “Building Community Resilience” here>>