How Social Infrastructure Prepares Communities for Climate Change
By Rebecca Nichols
When connected, we are stronger.
I had an amazing time attending the UCL Canvas event hosted at UCL East in Stratford. A huge thanks to the team, especially Ruth Unstead-Joss for bringing together academics, researchers, practitioners and local residents to explore what the connection between climate change and health means to people.
It was an evening full of interesting conversations and brilliant creativity.
I had a fascinating conversation with two artists, a researcher and an architect, where we discussed how the daily lives of people in cities are continuously changing and affected by climate change. Communities are significantly, and unequally, affected by the changing natural environment, and understanding how the social infrastructure within a place an impact on this has is crucial to finding locally supported and sustainable solutions.
In our discussion, the 2002 study into the 1995 Chicago heatwave was brought up as an example of the direct impact that social infrastructure has on climate resilience. One neighbourhood, which was almost identical in demographic makeup, including age, ethnicity, and levels of poverty, to an adjacent neighbourhood, had one of the lowest death rates in contrast to one of the highest. The former had robust social infrastructure. Eric Klinenberg (the author of the study) said that “the people, places, and institutions that foster cohesion and support” had a significant impact on the death rates, as people in places with more social infrastructure were more connected – more likely to receive help and less likely to die alone
It is clear, then, that social infrastructure matters. It has a significant impact not only on community health and wellbeing, but also on resilience to extreme weather events, disease, and civil unrest. It is important now to understand what and why social infrastructure works, in which places it works, and identify the barriers to accessing this social infrastructure and for who this affects.
At Neighbourly Lab, our work to develop and improve the social infrastructure – both physical and digital – across the UK is a crucial step in ensuring communities are connected, safer and stronger.
This event also highlights the value of genuine community engagement and that by harnessing meaningful participation with communities, we can build systems of climate resilience. It is through our networks of support that we are able to come together to withstand the effects of climate change, including urban heat, flooding, and erratic weather patterns. With each event like the one I attended, people are learning from each other and sharing knowledge about how we connect with and include communities in building these systems of resilience. Understanding the best practices of bringing people’s voices into decision-making spaces is one of Neighbourly Lab’s key missions; working across sectors and with a wide range of partners, our work uses this connected and collaborative approach to drive forward systems change.
This idea of climate resilience is inextricably intertwined with community resilience – a point we made in our Riots to Resilience Report with the VCS Emergencies Partnership. From our engagement with the local VCS across the UK, we found that those places that had closer relationships between organisations of different size and scope, and statutory bodies, were able to communicate, coordinate and collaborate more effectively when responding to the Islamophobic and racist riots of August 2024.
The workshop was just another reminder that there are people working to build resilience, both community and climate, and I’m looking forward to the following 2 events, to make further connections and create solutions.
For more information about the UCL Canvas event, please see the Eventbrite page, and to talk more about our projects with communities, please get in touch: rebecca@neighbourlylab.com