Climate change threatens the health and well-being of all Americans. To build climate resilience, cities are reshaping their economies and infrastructure to transition to renewable energy and withstand climate harms, but the benefits of these changes are not shared equally. Under the status quo, the most under-resourced communities and neighborhoods face the greatest climate risks and receive the fewest benefits from clean energy investments.

The Urban Institute’s Transformative Climate Action in American Cities (TCA) project, funded by The Kresge Foundation, is helping communities disrupt the climate status quo. In partnership with community and economic development organizations nationwide, Urban is providing data, technical assistance, and network-building opportunities to accelerate transformative climate action.

What is Transformative Climate Action?

Transformative climate action is an approach to managing climate change that seeks to reduce carbon emissions while helping people adapt, with the goal of ensuring that all people can thrive in a warming world. It emphasizes:

• Understanding and addressing the root causes of vulnerability to climate impacts.
• Prioritizing place-based strategies for climate action that respond to local needs and conditions.
• Empowering residents to join, lead, and benefit from climate change efforts.
• Ensuring that local government can be responsive to climate needs and opportunities.

Practical experience and evidence show that the building blocks of strong communities are also the foundations for effective climate action, such as accessible and high-quality jobs, thriving businesses, strong civic institutions, safe and affordable housing and access to health care. Community and economic development organizations have decades of experience offering these supports to under-resourced households and neighborhoods, so they are uniquely positioned to help advance transformative climate action.

We believe that community and economic development organizations, responsive to community needs and aligned with local values, are uniquely positioned to advance transformative climate action in American cities.

 Working with Local Leaders in 3 Communities

In addition to national research efforts, the Urban Institute is working with community and economic development leaders in three mid-sized cities facing serious climate challenges — Newark, New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; and Tucson, Arizona — to address climate change through transformative actions. Together they are co-designing projects that build local capacity to address the root causes of climate vulnerability, fairly share climate resources and meaningfully engage community perspectives.

The following partnerships are receiving 12 months of Urban Institute research, technical assistance and network building support to drive transformative changes locally:

The following partnerships are receiving 12 months of Urban Institute research, technical assistance and network building support to drive transformative changes locally:

Newark, New Jersey: Bridging policy and practice to tackle climate vulnerability. Urban is supporting a coalition of Newark actors, led by LISC Newark, the Newark Alliance and the Newark Office of Planning and Office of Sustainability, to develop a community-led and equity-driven implementation framework to tackle key challenges like extreme heat and air pollution and advance decarbonization across the city.

Norfolk, Virginia: Strengthening the capacity of community-based organizations to address coastal resilience. Urban is supporting the City of Norfolk’s Office of Resilience to develop strategies and resources to increase collaboration across the community and economic development ecosystem, address capacity gaps and better position community-based organizations to benefit from and participate in resilience programs and projects across the city.

Tucson, Arizona: Preparing small business and workforce ecosystems for climate-driven economic development. Urban is supporting Local First Arizona and the Tucson Office of Resilience to better understand the region’s green small business and workforce landscape and accelerate strategic and coordinated investments in skills training, education opportunities and small business development to ensure local communities can benefit from the region’s future clean energy development and resilience investments.

Insights from these local engagements, along with national research focused on the climate priorities and capacity of the community and economic development ecosystem, will be shared publicly through 2026. Updates and resources developed through this project will be available on Urban’s website. To learn more about the TCA project, please reach out to [email protected].

Andrew Rumbach is Senior Fellow, Oriya Cohen is Policy Program Manager and Sara McTarnaghan is Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute.