Event Description
As disasters become more intense and frequent with climate change, there is a growing imperative to understand the roles that community members should play in their own recovery process. This presentation examines new community engagement techniques from planning and design practice which not only have the potential to transform post-disaster engagement but also point to the need to re-conceptualize core concepts used in disaster policy and planning. These new techniques and their impacts will be illustrated through community-engaged research conducted in Texas and California after major flood events.
Speaker
Danielle Zoe Rivera is Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning. She joins UC Berkeley as part of a university-wide cluster hire focused on Climate Equity and Environmental Justice. Rivera's work examines environmental planning, urban design, and community development. Within these spaces, she focuses on issues of environmental justice and climate equity affecting low-income communities. Her current work leverages community-based research and design methods to identify and address environmental injustices affecting low-income communities throughout South Texas, the Bay Area, and Puerto Rico. She has conducted research in southeast Michigan, and the regions around Philadelphia and Denver. Rivera directs the Just Environments Lab, which seeks to center concerns of social justice and equity in discussions of the future of our environment.
Rivera's work has been published by the Journal of the American Planning Association, Environment and Planning, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Michigan, a Master of Architecture from Penn, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Penn State. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Rivera served on the faculty in the Program of Environmental Design at Colorado-Boulder and the Department of Architecture at Penn State.
Co-sponsorship
Co-sponsored by the College of Environmental Design (CED).