COTE: Designing for Equitable Communities (Virtual)

Abby Gordon, Co-Founder and Director of Design for Adaptiv, a Boston-area based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Zoe Davis, Climate Resilience Project Manager for the City of Boston Environment Department, and Catherine McCandless, Climate Change & Environmental Planning Project Manager for the City of Boston Environment Department will join us to share the ways in which designing for equity is deeply rooted in how they approach design, construction and planning efforts locally and abroad. Abby will discuss Adaptiv’s partnership with the Summits Education network to create a framework for upgrading 40 rural primary schools in the remote highlands of Haiti’s Central Plateau. Zoe and Catherine will discuss their work locally developing Boston’s Heat Resilience Plan and the recent Phase II Climate Ready Boston East Boston/Charlestown Plan.

Moderated by Rebecca Rahmlow, Thornton Tomasetti, this presentation will provide a high-level overview of the Framework’s principles as they relate to the Designing for Equitable Communities measure. This overview will be followed by presentations from practitioners demonstrating how the fundamentals of this measure are incorporated into practice with a focus on community centered engagement methodologies that have resulted in sustainable design solutions across varying built environments and scales. The session will conclude with a moderated discussion.