Panel: Building effective city-university partnerships for accelerating resilience implementation

Panel Abstract: Climate change-driven chronic and acute weather events, such as flooding and temperature extremes, are already having profound impacts on urban livability. These challenges are growing in scale and complexity and cities need new collaborations to stave off the worst climate projections and adapt to changing environmental conditions. Universities can play an important role in designing, testing, and implementing solutions for a more climate-resilient city. In this panel, presenters will discuss their experience with city-university partnerships that explicitly attempt to accelerate progress on climate resilience and urban sustainability. The collaborations are part of a network of city-university partnerships in which very different cities and very different universities are coming together to develop solutions to pressing climate challenges. Presenters in this panel include Arizona State University discussing their partnership with the City of Tempe, Portland State University and the City of Portland, and Leuphana University and Lueneburg, Germany. The panelists will also discuss similar work taking place between the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexico City, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. The aim of the network is to build climate resilience and urban sustainability locally while generating and sharing insights that help other cities do the same. Reframing urban resilience necessitates a reframing of the roles of those involved in ensuring that urban systems are resilient and sustainable. This panel will tackle the critical role of universities and city administrations and the unique partnership they can forge to deal proactively with climate challenges and build better cities.