Implementing Change: Progress on Climate Resilience in Atlanta, Georgia

This month, we're welcoming practitioners from Atlanta Regional Commission: Katherine Zitsch, Deputy COO, and Jon Philipsborn, Climate and Resilience Manager.

Regional commissions work on many subject areas across a metropolitan area, from community development and transportation to water security and climate change. At ARC, resilience is a key defining factor in how they make decisions around all of these topics and more. In this episode, hosts Alysha and Todd and their guests discuss how ARC is helping Atlanta tackle big development questions, challenges and opportunities.

The group also tackles larger questions like the role of government, specifically local governments, in engineering and environmental decisions, as well as specific projects ARC is working on to solve problems and build relationships across Atlanta.

"What's interesting about resilience is that everybody comes at it differently. Every city is in a different space, and every county is in a different space, and what we're trying to do at ARC is leverage the ones that are ahead towards helping the ones that are interested, but haven't had the space to get there yet."

Both guests also responded to our usual request for a haiku about their episode's subject matter, despite some debate about syllables...

Katherine's poem:

Atlanta's future
Knitting our resilience
Bridges to new paths

Jon's poem:

Disasters happen
Our choices influence the impact
Future is open

Learn more about Atlanta Regional Commission here.