While the severe climate changes around the world are forcing attention on resilience, we need to rethink what resilience really means. It is not just the building of physical infrastructure to deal with storm surges and floods, there is also the building of social resilience of communities. Hurricane Katrina and Sandy have shown us that communities that were used to coming together were able to bounce back more easily than communities where people hardly knew each other. This talk will focus on how architects and urban designers can design public spaces and buildings to build the social capital of communities so they are more resilient to climate, terrorist incidents, and other shocks.

2 LU/HSW AIA credits are available

About the Presenter:
Dr. Geeta Mehta is an adjunct professor of architecture and urban design at Columbia University and the founder/president of Asia Initiatives where she innovated Social Capital Credits (SoCCs), an innovative community currency for social good that is being used in India, Ghana, Kenya and USA. Geeta is also the co-founder of “URBZ: User Generated Cities”. She serves on New York Mayor’s Advisory Board for Waterfront Development, and several non-profit boards. She has been recognized as One of the 21 Leaders of the 21st Century by Women’s eNews, and by HSBC Bank as the Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2017.