Toward integrative resilience: a healing justice and trauma-informed approach to urban climate planning

ABSTRACT

Cities are on the frontline of the climate crisis and, as such, are poised to experience more frequent and severe climate-related disruptions including heat waves, floods, and epidemics. The personal and societal costs of these threats will only escalate as the effects of climate change continue to be felt more acutely, yet municipal action plans currently lack comprehensive indicators for tracking their impact on human health and wellbeing. In response to this gap, this paper proposes an integrative approach to urban resilience that is premised on: 1) a bioecological reading of vulnerability; 2) a trauma-informed approach to climate planning; and 3) a ‘healing justice’ orientation to policymaking. Informed by the cases of New York City and Copenhagen, it offers theoretical and policy contributions not only to the process of building resilience to climate change in cities, but to many other contexts where disaster and health emergencies, systemic risk mitigation, and community empowerment are concerned.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• vulnerability
• urban resilience
• trauma
• mental health
• healing justice

This article is related to:

Research for city practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Indeed, a notable consequence of trauma exposure is the potential for ‘vicarious trauma’ and ‘compassion fatigue’ in support figures such as first-responders, social workers, psychotherapists, and other community members at large (see, for example, Rothschild and Rand 2006, Smith et al. 2014). With climate disruptions predicted to increase over time, vicarious trauma highlights the urgency of planning interventions from a systems-level and preventative perspective, so that those providing support can, in turn, be supported themselves in order to keep themselves safe and keep institutional responses effective.

2. The Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Resource Center is an initiative of the Center for Health Care Strategies, a policy design and implementation organization that works to improve health outcomes for people in the United States who face barriers to wellbeing such as poverty, complex health and social needs, and systemic racism. While their work is U.S.- and healthcare-based, the principles of trauma-informed care they outline on their resource page are now a worldwide reference and are adopted by agencies and frontline organizations operating in many other contexts, countries, and domains.

3. For a summary of the draft plan, see.

https://www.weact.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Final_NMCA_Print_UpdateNov2016.pdf

4. This statement is in reference to research findings quoted by one of the local civil society speakers on the rising loneliness epidemic in Western societies. They were referring to a media article that had been recently published by The Independent, see: Harris (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chiara Camponeschi

Chiara Camponeschi is a postdoctoral research associate at York University’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research. Her research investigates urban resilience to climate change from a trauma-informed and healing justice perspective. In particular, her work documents how the principles of wellbeing, solidarity, and collective healing can provide a blueprint for building resilience in ways that are more equitable, inclusive, and just. She is also the Founder and Director of Enabling City, an international organization working at the intersection of social innovation and urban sustainability. She has spoken at events such as the White House GreenGov Symposium and the inaugural South by Southwest Eco conference, and is the author of two popular publications— Enabling City Volumes 1 & 2—which are available in 5 languages.