Check Out The Final Projects That Will Shape The Future of The Bay Area
Bay Area Challenge Final Design Concepts Announced
In May 2017, the Bay Area Challenge launched with a regional call to action to bring together local residents, community organizations, public officials and local, national, and international experts to develop innovative solutions that will strengthen the region’s resilience to sea level rise, severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes.
Now a year later, the final design concepts are ready to be shared – each meant to inspire, catalyze action, and push the Bay Area along the path to a more resilient future. Click below for all design concepts or individual projects.
The suite of seal level rise projects in North Richmond, ouR-HOME emerges from the community’s ideas for building health, wealth, and home ownership for over 5,000 North Richmond residents – turning investments in sea level rise adaptations and aging infrastructure into opportunities for all.
Estuary Commons creates a network of public spaces, adapts ecological systems, and strengthens social and economic relationships for a future of community-driven resilience.
Elevate San Rafael lifts all aspects of life for the city and strengthens a nexus of the Bay Area metropolis.
Islais-Hyper Creek
Addressing risk from coastal and stormwater flooding, Islais Hyper-Creek serves as an opportunity to bring the existing industrial ecosystem into the next economy.
Public Sediment for Alameda Creek aims to reconnect sediment flows from Alameda Creek to the marshes and mudflats at the Bay’s edge, creating protective ecological infrastructure that adapts to sea level rise.
Designing Our Own Solutions
The Permaculture and Social Equity Team proposed a social design process to build community capacity in leading the challenges of coastal adaptation and resiliency planning.
The South Bay Sponge is a design framework for adaptation – for adapting our shoreline and infrastructure and for advancing our methods of planning, design and cooperation to achieve new and resilient forms of settlement on the bay.
Collect & Connect – Resilient South City is a proposal to create more public green space and continuous public access along South San Francisco’s Colma Creek.
The project proposes to resolve the transportation problem of Highway 37 by designing a scenic causeway elevated on columns 20 feet high, allowing tidal flows and marsh migration to return to a natural condition.
Varying in scope and scale, early design ideas imagined in the Collaborative Research Phase have served as a springboard for the Collaborative Design Phase. At each site selected, initial design ideas honed in on addressing ongoing climate issues facing the Bay Area, like sea level rise, severe flooding, and seismic risks, alongside other, sometimes more pressing challenges, including lack of housing, displacement, gentrification, limited access to public land and outdated transportation.
In May 2018 each Team along with their local stakeholders presented their final design concepts and a roadmap toward implementation to the Resilient by Design community and members of the interested public at The Resilient Bay Summit. The projects now have networks of community organizations, city officials, local electeds, designers, engineers, scientists, and other experts that have been activated and inspired to work together to continue to move each project forward. The extraordinary collective effort over the course of the Bay Area Challenge serves as a call to action for the region to continue to work together to build a more resilient Bay Area.
