If your project can benefit from thinking about resiliency, it is eligible for pro bono technical assistance to help communities develop a strategic vision and promote community resiliency, usually by focusing on a specific issue and/or geographic area.
Design & Resiliency Teams (DART) will work with community, political and administrative decision-makers and stakeholders during an intensive three-day planning process that could otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars. A DART helps a community advance resilience solutions through public conversation, a final presentation and a final report.
DARTs catalyze local action with a community-engagement process using outside perspectives and technical assistance on resilience. The process allows communities to focus for a few days on the resiliency picture without local politics and daily demands distracting them from planning for a critically important local issue. There are technical (knowledge base and expertise), political, administrative, and institutional challenges to building consensus on the challenges and needed actions. An outside multi-disciplinary team can galvanize a community by bringing in new expertise, expanding existing conversations, identifying new approaches, and providing support for or refinement of existing approaches. DARTs build the community conversation and advance consensus for the proactive planning, resource allocation, and paradigm shifts needed to address resilience challenges.
In 2016, the DART program earned the APA-MA chapter’s Social Advocacy Award. DARTs build on the AIA’s five decades of experience fielding 220+ Design Assessment Teams. These programs create design, resiliency and sustainability opportunities building on 1) the multidisciplinary team approach, 2) objectivity of team members, and 3) inclusive public participation and support.
DART application deadline is March 6, 2017.
Sponsored and Funded by: American Institute of Architects (AIA), New England Municipal Sustainability Network (NEMSN), and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN)
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