'Rise of 'Resilience Centers,' Community Spaces Built to Withstand Climate Disruptions, Extreme Heat
‘A Living, Breathing Building’: The Rise of Resilience Centers Amid Extreme Heat in the US, The Guardian, Sept. 23, 2022. Gabriela Aoun.
- Emergency shelters don’t adequately protect residents. Enter community spaces – centers built to withstand climate disruptions and offer long-term preparedness. -
The Saturday before Labor Day, in the east Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, temperatures outside climbed to 105F (41C). It was the fourth day of California’s longest September heatwave on record. That afternoon, the entire state was under a “flex alert”, in which Californians were asked to turn down their air conditioners and unplug appliances to avoid putting so much demand on the power grid that utilities would have to intermittently cut electricity.
New York solar panels are seen along with a view of the neighborhood and lower Manhattan from the rooftop of Timber House, the city's first mass-timber condo building, in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. But at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory, or BHAC, children sat around a table engrossed in the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. The thermostat read a cool 72F. As a chaperone set down pizza lunches, Leo Felix, 11, surveyed his figurines and strategized his next move. When asked what he would be doing on a hot day like this if he weren’t at the BHAC, Felix shrugged. “I’d probably be outside, trying not to die from heat.”
BHAC is a career training center that has been preparing young people for jobs in media arts for 11 years. But recently, BHAC has been taking on a new role in its community – shielding some of east Los Angeles’s most vulnerable residents from extreme weather.
The conservatory is an example of what is known in California and beyond as a “resilience center” – a community space built to withstand climate disruptions like storms and power outages, but that also builds long-term preparedness by offering programs that improve people’s social, physical and economic health so they can withstand crises. Community members have found that temporary, reactive disaster responses like emergency shelters don’t adequately protect residents, and that, especially in disadvantaged communities, climate resilience must also address pre-existing inequities.
As hazards like wildfire smoke, extreme heat and power outages last longer and happen more often, more communities across California are turning to these centers for support, and the state has committed nearly $200m in funding to developing more...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/23/california-extreme-heat-resilience-centers
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