Urban Heat: the role of the VCS in community resilience

Funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), the Urban Heat project (2015-2017) examined the potential role of the local voluntary and community sector (VCS) in the development of local community resilience.

Resources:
Read the full Final Report here.
Read the Executive Summary here.
Full bibliography.
Independent evaluation by Resources for Change.
What is community resilience?

The final report from the Urban Heat project provides:

• A compelling, evidence-based analysis of the untapped potential of the VCS to contribute more fully to local planning and practice in climate resilience and emergency planning;
• A snapshot of the UK ‘heatwave planning’ and ‘community resilience’ national, regional and local policy and practice landscapes;
• A critical analysis of the current challenges in these landscapes, most importantly: the national policy disconnect between the heatwave planning and community resilience policy domains; a relatively narrow framing of ‘community’ in national community resilience approaches, which tends to underplay the potential of the VCS; a vision of ‘community resilience’ that is over-reliant on the characteristics of floods; and, a worrying lack of attention to long-term spatial planning and adaptation to manage the impacts of climate change across these policy landscapes;
• An analysis of the ways in which these national challenges are reflected in local practice;
• Recommendations for change that respond directly to these challenges (including a novel proposed description of community resilience for use in policy and practice);
• A comprehensive description and critical analysis of the features of the participatory action research, with a focus on what ‘worked’ and what did not;
• Meaningful evidence of the value to policy stakeholders of participatory, action-based and community-based approaches, and reflections on the ways in which the benefits of such approaches might be better appreciated in policy domains.

Urban Heat was a highly participatory project and placed a lot of emphasis on policy engagement and impact.