Waterfront Conference 2023

Social media plays a rarely explored role in communications that occur to and within communities facing neighborhood-scale changes from infrastructure projects. This panel discusses social media as both a driver of support and of opposition, and the ways project practitioners can manage and address its power and drawbacks. Changes in the use of Twitter will be addressed as well as the role of social media in crisis communications.

The full menu of methods for informing communities and obtaining public input is vast, yet many continue to rely on the use of public meetings or open houses as the primary tool for public participation. What is the full menu of tools for involving communities, soliciting information, gathering input, and building trust?  What else is needed to make sure methods go beyond the public meeting model? What methods are most equitable and what are the costs and implications of a wider range of commitments to other methods by project sponsors?

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A wave of energetic resistance has been rising against key resilience projects and infrastructure development. Some projects have become mired in public controversy, with epithets such as NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) thrown back and forth. These dynamics of community opposition present challenges for the future of climate-resilient infrastructure projects. As neighborhoods and communities face change, how can we steer the environmental movement to think creatively and innovatively about what our future communities need to look like? What are strategies that work for engagement processes experiencing resistance and hardship? How can projects that expect resistance prepare for it? How do design teams balance incorporating legitimate community concerns with misinformation? What has worked well and why?