In recent years we have seen global movements across the world sparked by racial discrimination with cities at the epicentre of protests, debates and transformative action. Many recent events have not only highlighted racial injustice, but also underscored the need for cities to be resilient in the face of social challenges. Overlapping public health and climate crises have further exposed the realities of systemic racism and deep inequities faced by black and brown communities across North America and how these inequities compound the negative impacts of urban shocks and stresses. France has also been dealing with these inequities, and the country recently launched a 3-year national plan against Racism, anti-Semitism, and Ethnic Discrimination. France has also identified priority neighbourhoods which are the urban areas with the greatest social difficulties, to be transformed through strategic social and spatial interventions.
The tenth session of Cities on the Frontline Speaker Series, 2023, with support of the Embassy of the United States of America, France and co-hosted with The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), focused on ‘Building Resilient Communities through Social Justice’ to explore how cities address racial and social challenges, and how they can leverage the principles of social justice to foster community resilience and inclusive growth. To kick start the session, Angie Mizeur, Deputy Cultural Affairs Officer of the U.S. Embassy of France talked on the importance of knowledge exchange and dialogue on how both US and French cities can learn from each other to work on this pressing issue of social justice across the world.
We were joined by Nicole Ferrini, Climate and Sustainability Officer, City of El Paso, Laila Haddag, International Cooperation Project Manager, National Agency for Urban Renewal (ANRU), France and Ron Harris, Lead, Knowledge Transformation, Co-founder & Chair of the Racial Equity through Resilience Community of Practice (CoP), Resilient Cities Network and former CRO of Minneapolis who shared their diverse experiences from Cities in acknowledging and responding to these challenges and building resilient communities. The panel discussion focused on how cities can leverage the principles of social justice to foster community resilience, ensuring that urban environments are inclusive, equitable, and responsive to the needs of all their residents and help build long term resilience when approached with an equity mindset.
The panel was moderated by Ron Harris and Camille Viros, OECD Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth Coordinator.
Key insightful takeaways from the panel were:
- People are often divided by man-made spatial and social barriers but can coexist as one community by understanding and embracing multi-cultural differences and nuances.
- Resilience is about more than climate action. It’s tough to be resilient as a community without recognizing the humanity within and among us. The greatest asset that a place has is people and how they co-exist with each other.
- It is crucial to empower communities and position people to be part of the solution instead of viewing them as disadvantaged, at risk, vulnerable, marginalized and problems to be solved.
- As city practitioners, it is important to channel resources ahead of time with foresight to issues and build communities of practice to collectively resolve pressing challenges in cities.
- Data is important to analyze situations, but when we focus just on numbers, we dehumanize the issues. City practitioners need to recognize what the community is asking for and translate and convey that to city leadership.
- Urban policies and financial assistance can enable rectifying the issue of social as well as territorial segregation through integrated actions across sectors like housing, environment, employment, health and education.
- Transitioning from mere consultation with the communities to co-creating policies and measures can help in systemic change from residents being not just beneficiaries but full actors in community development.
- Building long-term community resilience needs actions that recognize the voices of the people and then use platforms to amplify and elevate those voices.
- Resilience has to be proactive. Listening is the first step towards understanding the needs of people.
- Communities protest and resist when they feel their choices have been taken away. Building community resilience requires restoring and advancing a sense of trust, agency, and choice.
- Investing in social justice policies and embedding resilience principles in budgets at the city level is vital in restructuring systems and making sustainable changes.
Nicole Ferrini, Climate and Sustainability Officer, City of El Paso
“El Paso’s greatest asset has always been, is today, and will always be her people.” Always. And so everything has to start there. I’ve spent the last ten years really pushing back on this idea that resilience is about place. It’s about people and how they exist in a place and with each other.”
Laila Haddag, International Cooperation Project Manager, National Agency for Urban Renewal, France
“We cannot have a great urban resilience project without including people in the project, accompanied by access to housing, education and economic development. If we do not have an integrated approach to resilience, it will not work.”
Ron Harris, Lead, Knowledge Transformation, , Co-founder & Chair of the Racial Equity through Resilience Community of Practice (CoP), Resilient Cities Network and former CRO of Minneapolis
“One of the challenges is that cities and governments have data in silos in various departments. It is important to approach this in a united way and data integration is needed.”
