The city of Minneapolis took a bold step last year when it accepted the challenge from the Rockefeller Foundation to hire a chief resilience officer. Simply put, cities too often focus on responding to things — not preparing for them and what could happen after. In an era when cities are confronted by rapid technological change, social unrest, climate change and other rapid-fire challenges, it is not enough to simply respond. The city must prepare to change and thrive in a rapidly changing environment.
As Minneapolis' first chief resilience officer, it has been my job to lead development of a strategy to help our city survive, adapt and thrive in the face of ongoing stresses and whatever big shocks come our way. A resilience strategy requires city government to partner with the community.
As I leave this role ("Minneapolis resilience chief resigns," Feb. 14), I am proud to say the people of Minneapolis have shown they are committed to preparing the city to respond and thrive in the face of big challenges. I spent much of my time in this role listening to people: one-on-one, at events and in workshops. We surveyed people about resilience in Minneapolis. I spent time with city staff members, getting to know how our city government operates from the professionals who make it work. Well more than 2,000 people have engaged in development of a Minneapolis resilience strategy.
While the planning has just begun, I want to honor the generosity and insight of the folks who have engaged in a resilience strategy in Minneapolis by sharing my thoughts coming out of this work.
According to our survey, the critical concerns facing Minneapolis are aging infrastructure, crime and violence, economic inequality, lack of affordable housing, and climate change. By far, the shock people are concerned about most is an economic crisis, which any of these other factors could contribute to.
I heard a lot of satisfaction with the basics of city government, yet there is a palpable sense that Minneapolis is not working for everyone. Furthermore, a lot of good things are happening in Minneapolis, but we are not doing the big things that really matter for taking on the challenges we face.
Doing the big things to meet our challenges is where resilience work adds value.
I believe people feel we aren't capable of taking on the big things because we don't have the tools to do the work we need to do together. In other words, we live in a declining democracy and face challenges that can only be addressed in a thriving democracy. We can commit to building that right here in our city.