By Dr. Michael Shank

When we think of what makes physical infrastructure and the built environment more resilient to flooding and fire, hurricanes and heat, torrential storms and wilder winds, the following words come to mind: adaptive, flexible, redundant and permeable. There are many words to describe resilient infrastructure, but these are a helpful starting point.

And local governments around the world are focused on exactly this, working tirelessly to make their buildings and bridges, roads and recreational areas, public works and public spaces more resilient to the increasingly extreme weather and sea level rise that’s worsening with global warming.

The motivation to act, of course, is about saving lives and saving money as the death and disaster tolls tick upward each year. Last year alone, global disasters caused over $400 billion worth in damages and over a half million people died from rising heat levels, numbers are set to rise annually with climate change. Any effort by local governments to reduce that damage, then, by making infrastructure more resilient to forthcoming shocks is welcome.

What we need, then, simultaneous with this physical infrastructure retrofitting process, is an effort to make our human and social infrastructure equally resilient to upcoming shocks, be they environmental, economic, political or other.

Right now, we’re not as resilient as we need to be. In fact, we’re pretty precariously perched on an increasingly divisive moment. Trust is very low, be it trust in government or trust in our fellow humans.

Taking a lesson from how we build more resilient physical infrastructure, we can begin to slowly account for and create more resilient human and social infrastructure. The words above to describe a resilient built environment – adaptive, flexible, redundant and permeable – can be applied to social science and the building of a more resilient social ecosystem. And local governments are already leading in this space, too. Here’s how:

First, local governments are building more adaptive and flexible social infrastructure.

It’s easy to understand why we’d want to make our local physical infrastructure more adaptive and flexible to increasingly extreme weather. Harsher winds and water flows and temperatures and torrential downpours require a more resilient built environment. Otherwise, it’ll get washed or worn away slowly but surely, or suddenly, similar to what we’re seeing in the devastating floods in Texas this month.

The same goes for human and social infrastructure. The more we can make human interaction and social connection more adaptive and flexible the better.

While there are many examples that could be shared here in terms of how climate leaders are responding adaptively and flexibly, one example from Amsterdam illustrates how to adapt and pivot in response to a geopolitical shock to the system.

Responding nimbly to the news cycle, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Amsterdam’s former alderman Marieke van Doorninck called for immediate action to get off Russian gas, which created a community-wide effort called 15% GasTerug, or GasBack. The citywide campaign, involving partners from across public and private sector, focused on reducing gas use across the metropolitan area by 15% by the end of the year and then reduced long term.

The team effort across the whole of society, around a shared, short-term goal that was responsive to the moment, captures many of the successful ingredients for crafting a more socially resilient infrastructure that can respond to shocks. The campaign was so successful that it continued year after year, building a city-wide and ultimately nation-wide social movement to get off Russian gas.

The Amsterdam case study understood that people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and this whole-of-society movement created the social infrastructure for it, by adapting flexibly and responsively to the geopolitical shock. This is what adaptive and flexible climate mobilization can look like, responding nimbly to shocks happening here and now.

Takeaway: Establishing city or nationwide campaigns like this can help knit together a society-wide response to a system shock, be it a political, economic, or environmental shock. And that is what’s needed now as these shocks become more common. As political systems become more unstable and extreme, our ability to adapt and pivot, in response, will be hugely helpful in building a more resilient social infrastructure.

Second, local governments are building more redundant social infrastructure.

For shocks that the built environment might experience over time – whether it’s flooding or fire – having several layers of backup is also going to be essential. That’s true for all of our needs, be it power and water or heating and cooling. Redundancy is critical so that no matter the shock there will always be a backup. That’s how you build resilient physical infrastructure.

The same goes for human and social infrastructure. The more we can think about redundancy in our work with communities, the more likely it’ll have solid and resilient backup, regardless of shocks and attacks to the social fabric.

While there are many examples that could be shared here in terms of how climate policymakers are embedding redundancy into the work, one example from Cleveland, Ohio, is especially illustrative.

For years, the City of Cleveland has been using an ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ process to engage stakeholders from all across the Cleveland community in the designing of the city’s sustainable future. Created by David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry of Case Western Reserve University, the approach involves the whole community in the cocreation and codesign of the larger system’s future. It invites to the table a broad swath of institutions and individuals invested in the city’s future.

For Cleveland, that brought 700 people into the room, representing hospitals, universities, businesses, community-based organizations and nonprofits, parks, museums, unions and workers, and youth leaders, as well as external stakeholders from other cities. For several days, they were all involved in Appreciative Inquiry’s cocreation process on the city’s sustainable future, with the task of creating “an economic engine to empower a green city on a blue lake”. That was the goal of the summit, with prompts to discover and dream “what could be.”

A process like this takes time, patience, and careful facilitation, of course, as well as human resources. But the return on investment is high, and by shifting power to the community throughout the process, the product is more durable, and the path forward more sustainable, not just environmentally, but also socially as well.

Takeaway: How this relates to redundancy is obvious, as it’s not hard to imagine a shock to our existing systems. A sustainability or climate office is suddenly downsized or eliminated or renamed due to a new political administration or faces substantial budget cuts. But with an Appreciate Inquiry process, or something like it, preempting this shock, we’ve embedded redundancy into the system. We’ve brought along the entire community in the codesign and cocreation of the work, and shifted power to them throughout the process, so that leadership continues regardless of local government office closures or budget cuts. That’s one way to build more resilient social infrastructure.

Third, local governments are building more permeable social infrastructure.

The built environment’s ability to let water move through it, as downpours get more torrential and dump more water per minute due to warming air and atmospheres, is what will make that structure more resilient. We know that we need to shift from the impervious to the more permeable in the built environment. As a result, we’re seeing more roof gardens, more green spaces, less pavement, and fewer asphalt parking lots, which are some of the myriad ways we can better respond to heavier rains and higher temperatures in our communities. And sponge cities are popularizing.

The same goes for human and social infrastructure. The more we can think about how to create greener and more permeable spaces to cool our overheated political climates and make space for our individual or community waterworks to flow, the more resilient we’ll be as a social system. Those emotional waterworks need a healthy and spongy space to flow and go, too.

While there are many examples that could be shared here in terms of how climate leaders are supporting social permeability in their communities, Resilience Hubs are notable in their capacity to attend to this essential, softer side of climate resilience work.

Many communities around the world have rolled out resilience hubs. These are buildings that aren’t just focused on physical needs—like backup energy, emergency food and water, temporary heating and cooling, and access to power—but also social needs like after-school programming for students, activities for elders, and job training. It’s also about quilting, community movie nights, and conversation with friends, which helps reduce the stigma associated with requesting help.

The essential ingredient driving these hubs is that they’re trusted, organized, and operated by the community. That trust-building happens slowly and requires an intent to repair, care, and shift power over time. It’s also where social permeability is possible, as we knit together social connection, cohesion and relationship – a particularly timely task when trust is low and partisanship is high across many communities.

Takeaway: These resilience hubs illustrate well the power of a third place and space where people can come together to be human with each other and to be vulnerable together, literally and metaphorically. It’s where we can cool down political temperatures and make space for emotional connections, as disasters often bring people together in this way. It’s in permeable spaces like these where we become more socially resilient and better able to face the next shock to the system.

This is the work ahead. Creating resilient physical infrastructure and built environments, as well as resilient human infrastructure and social environments and ecosystems. All of which can help withstand unforeseen shocks to the system.

Local governments have been prioritizing the physical infrastructure for years and are now starting to prioritize the social infrastructure as well, which will not only be life-saving but community cohering and trust building. The whole system deserves resilience, now it’s past time we prioritize it.

Dr. Michael Shank is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and a visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.