 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here are live. Welcome to Community Matters on Think Tech. I'm your host, Elizabeth Sartouris. And our show today is called Making Honolulu Into a Resilient City. And we're going to talk about the Rockefeller Foundation and how the Rockefeller Foundation has stepped up and everyone should know about what it takes to make Honolulu a resilient city. If you want to ask a question or participate in the discussion, you can tweet us at thinktech-h-i or call us at 437-2014. Our guest for the show is Joshua Stambrough of Honolulu Halle, who is going to talk about how we can make Honolulu into a resilient city. What it means, actually, to be a resilient city and how the Rockefeller Foundation is building 100 such cities around the globe, Honolulu included. Welcome to the show, Josh Stambrough. Thanks, Elizabeth. Pleasure to be here. So I am so excited to have you as a guest on the show because I've been very excited about the Rockefeller Foundation choosing 100 cities around the globe to become more resilient against climate disasters, things of that kind, as well as solving their chronic problems. So the CRO position, Chief Resilience Officer, is brand new and is cropping up all over the world in 100 different cities. So tell us a little bit about how this began for Honolulu. How did we apply? Why did we get chosen? And what does it all mean for us? Sure. Yeah, well, it's a really exciting story. So the Rockefeller Foundation actually celebrated their 100th anniversary a few years back, about five years back. And at the time, Judy Rodin, who is the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, she had written a book called The Resilience Dividend that really talked about this concept of resilience, why it was important for cities as we head into the 21st century and the challenges we face in this new era of climate change, increased technology, the globalification of the world economy. And so she posited that as cities became more adaptable to these and were able to sort of bend rather than break in the face of them, there would actually be cost savings and significant benefits to cities that adopted some of these principles. So what they did for their 100th anniversary is they decided to launch this initiative that would select 100 cities around the globe. They created an organization called 100 Resilience Cities. So it's not actually Rockefeller Foundation, per se, that selects the cities. Rockefeller Foundation provides financial support to 100 Resilience Cities, which is a nonprofit that then goes out and selects and works with these cities. So there were 1,200 cities around the globe that applied for sort of this honor of being selected as one of the 100. And happily, and it's a big source of pride for our city, I think that we got selected out of that 1,200. We were one of the 100 selected by 100 Resilience Cities. It's a great timing for us. We were actually selected in the third cohort. So there was the first year, which is about three years ago now, there was 33 cities that were selected around the globe. And this includes cities like Melbourne, Australia, and New York, and all around the globe. And then there was a second cohort of 32 cities that were selected. And Honolulu made it in. And the third cohort, the final cohort, and where we were one of the final 33 cities selected. And that announcement just came last year around summertime. And that actually coincided with a charter amendment that was on the ballot before voters here in Honolulu, which asked the voters of Honolulu and the city and county of Honolulu, the island of Oahu, should we have an office dedicated to climate change, sustainability, and resiliency? Great results from that election. By almost an 18-point margin, the citizens of the island said, yes, we absolutely need to address these issues. Sure, we will both include it. I often ask when I go out to crowd, how many voted in the election? And hopefully you voted to support this, because it really puts us on the leading edge. There's not barely any cities. Lots of folks have sustainability departments. There are these 100 cities that are embracing this concept of resilience with the support of the Rockefeller folks. But very few cities have an office dedicated to climate change, how we adapt to the changes we already see happening around us, and how we mitigate and try to reduce our own impacts to the problem. So it's a really exciting time in the city. We've got both of these things flowing together, both the creation of the office and the selection of 100 resilient cities. And it's working together through these activities to really try to make Honolulu more resilient. Right, so you've just come back from a resilient city summit, haven't you, in New York. And as I understand it, there were 80 CROs or 81 CROs there. And that means all the ones that have been chosen so far for the first two cohorts and coming in now for the third cohort. And 500 people in all from all these cities around the globe. So it would be great to, I notice they called the CROs senior points of contact that drive the agenda. So we're going to get to the agenda by having you talk a little bit about what have those cities that were in the first cohort already finished their two-year project to get going and to have mobilized their cities by now. So what were the most important things you took away from that conference? Well, every city is in a different context, and every city is at a different stage in this process. So the variety was incredible. There's folks like New Orleans, who is a city that's in our cohort of cities. There's these smaller groupings out of the 100. And Miami, New Orleans, and Honolulu are part of one of those groupings, which is really helpful because they're dealing with some of the very same issues of sea level rise and water and flooding that we will deal with. So in a city like New Orleans, they were one of the first to come out with their resilience strategy. Their chief resilience officer had served in economic development before. They came out with a plan that Mayor Landro and the city wholeheartedly embraced. And now they're making all of their budgeting decisions in the city based around that resilience idea. So how do we incorporate our spending, our capital projects, our operations, and how we fund the workings of the city based on this lens of how do we make ourselves more resilient? And they had every reason to do that. After Hurricane Katrina, they really wanted to release their resilience strategy on the 10th anniversary of Katrina to show that we are taking this seriously so much so that we're actually orienting our budget around it. And the chief resilience officer there now is sort of the deputy director and in charge of budgeting for the city. So that's one really profound example of how a city can embrace resilience and orient its priorities, its spending priorities, around making the city more equitable. Their new mantra there is instead of living against water, we're going to live with water, trying to redesign green infrastructure to make sure that they're basically operating as flexibly as possible when they get flooding and flooding events. And so it goes from that to cities that just started, just like us. I mean, we are just fresh out of the gate. So what new ideas did you get for Honolulu from what other people are doing? Because that's important, all this dialogue around the world so that each city doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. But did you get some good ideas from other CROs who have been through this now about how to proceed here? Yeah, certainly. I mean, when you look at what Boulder, Colorado is doing around looking at where their risks are around heat, that's what they identified as one of the major barriers for them to being a resilient, livable community was the rising temperature in their particular location. And they used one of the partners that's available through the 100 Resilient Cities platform to do an analysis of all of the trees in the city, where the shade was being cast. And if they were to spend a certain amount of money and maximize those dollars, where would they plant each tree additionally in the city and what type of tree would it be? So it's that type of really specific analysis of how do we get the most out of our dollars to provide the most public benefit and quality of life for our citizens. As we walk around the streets here in downtown Honolulu, you can watch how people actually follow the parts of the sidewalk that have trees shading them. And they void the ones that don't. And so as we begin to think about, what are the vulnerabilities that we face as a city? And it's not just environmental stressors. It's not just climate change. A lot of cities have thought really carefully about what really is their main vulnerability to being able to adapt and thrive in the face of a shock or a stress. And oftentimes, it's an equity issue. It could be an income inequality issue. It could be an affordable housing issue, which we have here in Spade. And so each city is looking at it in a different lens. And so as we progress through our process of doing the resilience strategy, figuring out where our chief vulnerabilities are, we're going to reach out to each individual city and connect with them to say, hey, we're facing some of the same issues around affordable housing. What have you learned through the 100 Resilient Cities process that has worked for you? So we'll be very specific about how we reach out to our partners once we begin identifying the vulnerability. So I hesitate to say, hey, I went to the summit, came back with all these things we're going to do, because we're really right at the beginning of the process, which is great. It's a perfect opportunity for folks to get involved to help inform us of what they think resiliency issues are on the table and where we should be focusing with this unique opportunity from the 100 Resilient City platform. And I know that one of the reasons that we got it was solving chronic problems and building resilience against disasters and other things. The chronic problem that was on top of the list for Honolulu was, of course, homelessness, no surprise to anyone. And so I'm wondering what strategies are we going to? There are a lot of people working on homelessness already here in the city. And so what I'm wondering is how can this project help to consolidate all those efforts and add to them? So we'll see with the arena of homelessness. Mayor Caldwell and the administration have been really proactive about trying to figure out, what are the best solutions to homelessness? They've been working with Seattle and LA and other cities that are, in some cases, we have the highest per capita homeless population. But in some of those other cities, the problem just by scale is really sort of off the charts. And so the adoption of housing first as a newish policy to make sure that people get housing primarily and then work on issues that are keeping them in a homeless situation has really been a sort of a revolutionary approach that clearly pays off. And we've seen progress. There's a housing office at the. Yeah, we have to take a break for a little bit here. So we'll get back to that topic of homelessness after the break. Some say, divers are the poor man's astronaut. At DiveHeart, we believe that to be true. We say, forget the moon. DiveHeart can help children, adults, and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on Earth. Search DiveHeart.org and imagine the possibilities in your life. For the sales slide, also right after the break. OK, we're coming back to you. Three, two, one. OK, so we're back. We're talking here about Honolulu as a resilient city with Joshua Stanbro, chief resilience officer, chosen by our city in response to the Rockefeller Foundation with its 100 cities around the whole globe. I'm an evolution biologist by training. And if we could have the slide, I've written an article called A Tale of Cells and Cities. And I would like you to see just one picture of how very much cities resemble cells when you see cities from the air, whether it's by day or by night. You see a central city hub. You see the transportation systems. You see the outlying regions reaching into the countryside. And I had hoped that we would get that slide up just so that people can see that cities are living entities. And I am absolutely convinced that cities are going to play a more important political role in the world in the future than either nation, national governments or state governments. I think cities are where the connections can be made. We don't have standing armies. We talk to each other peaceably. And that's why I think this 100 resilient cities sharing around the globe is so very important. But my heart is here in Honolulu. And so homelessness at the top of our list of chronic problems to solve. And you mentioned getting homeless people into homes. And I think several places in the world now have demonstrated that just by housing homeless people, you save money. And that with the right kind of health care, you avoid having people on the street constantly going back in and out of emergency rooms which is very expensive. So we have to get real about what costs too much money and what doesn't. And that's what I'm excited about. Yeah, so I mean, we can talk about the economics of prevention. We have about 5,000 homeless people on the island at any one time. It does cost about half as much to do vouchers to keep people in stable housing versus incarceration or frequent hospitalization. So it really pays from an economic point of view to put people in houses. And we've got a team that's working on that. They're making progress as you see the point in time count sort of level off and begin to come down. But I'd love to get back to your point about the cities. You know, in 1800, 10% of the world's population lived in cities. Today 50% of the world's population lives in cities. In 2050, 75% of the world's population is going to live in cities. And so if we get sort of cities right, and we consider the whole island of a law, who obviously this is our jurisdiction, not everywhere is a city per se, but there's infrastructure that goes along with the way that we've constructed our society. And if we get that infrastructure right, it makes for a whole different level of success for the planet essentially because you've got this concentration of people living in these areas. I'll also point out, I mean, when we did our agenda setting workshop and we had 180 almost leaders come together to sort of do a very quick assessment of what they saw thought vulnerabilities were to inform our office and moving forward. One of the big sources of pride was when the federal administration pulled out of the Paris Agreement, within four days, five days, the governor of the state and all four county mayors have proclaimed that we were still in the Paris Agreement. And that response from cities and local governments is really what's driving the next generation of leadership out of the United States at this point. So agreed, I think cities are a focus for the work that we are doing, but I think the lessons of the resilience work are far beyond just cities. I think when we look at what's the green infrastructure that we can deploy, how do we lessen our footprint while still remaining the same quality of life? That's a kind of lesson that can go city, countryside, rural in a lot of different areas. And so that's the sort of stuff that we're gonna be looking at. Where are the places where we're missing? Where are the gaps in our current resilience? It could be around homelessness, it could be around sort of this climate vulnerability that we're showing increasingly. We saw the king tides last month and where a postcard from the future, what it's gonna look like in terms of our infrastructure. So that's what we're hoping to look at, but we're also hoping that we don't just focus on weaknesses. What makes Hawaii so amazing and special and probably the reason that we live here is that social fabric that we experience here, the Aloha spirit, people looking out for each other and the social networks that we seem to have a really strong, these strong relationships that carry us through, when we have the earthquake or we have these other things that challenge us, we come together. And that's really the number one tool of resilience for any community. Well, that's right where I wanna be about this. You said bringing them together. I'm absolutely in love with the trees of Honolulu and that was over 100 years ago when the outdoor circle of women got these two things past, planting trees up and down the avenues and outlawing outdoor advertising, which is phenomenal. I can look at the night cityscape with nothing blinking at me in bright colors and no advertising being thrown at me. That's amazing for a leading tourist capital. So I'm all for planting more trees. When I first got here, I was doing some furniture shopping and stuff in Kakaako. And it was horrible that there were so many areas that were barren with no trees. And I'm frankly devastated by the building rate in Kakaako. And I think even if we have no sea level rise, those buildings are gonna start falling in on each other. No one has done a combined weight impact study of all the proposed high rises on that fragile coast land, which is landfill on top of a crumbling coral reef. So if we wanna be resilient, that's not the way to go. And huge problems we have here. But you're here to bring the people together to solve these problems. And that's exciting. You know, if I would love to see, say tap the students at Shamanad where I teach and design new courses in the MBA program, they give credit for community service. Those students, if you train them to really understand the program, could be sent out to teach it in the schools, to the teachers. Then the teachers could have all the kids designing ways of solving these problems. And then you give them a lay and put them on a lay low and none of this costs a cent. So I think involving communities is not so hard to do. And that's, have you got any plans for, there are also all these nonprofits here, already probably six agencies and nonprofits working on fragile coast land. And NOAA and all these things. And then Sierra Club and homelessness projects and stuff. How weave those together? Well, so I come from the nonprofit community. Many, many years ago, I worked for the trust for public land. We worked directly with communities to help protect land, cultural sites, recreational sites that were really important to the community. And then my last position was working at the Hawaii Community Foundation, where we provided grants to those nonprofits that are doing this great work out in the community. So I see our ultimate success at the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency in a partnership and looking outward from the city to the network of nonprofits and community groups that are already doing great work on the ground. How do we learn from them? How do we make sure that we incorporate the lessons that they're learning into whatever planning that we do, whatever partnerships we do within the city with our different departments and divisions. As we think about how do we design a more, not only a more resilient infrastructure and a more resilient city and more resilient community, but how we design that more connected social fabric that you're talking about. And coming from the nonprofit community, it's not an easy job, right? I mean, organizing people is always some of the hardest work out there, but it's the most essential for the work we're doing. I think children will be your best ambassadors because if they're talking about it over the supper table, then the parents will get involved and everybody will know. Well, I talk to my two kids every night about it, so. Right, no, that's exactly where we wanna go. I'm really sorry that this brings us to the end of this half-hour show, so we really enjoyed bringing it to you. I'm your host, Elizabeth Saturas, and our guest has been Joshua Stambrough, Chief Resilience Officer at Honolulu Halle. I hope we'll talk more about this as the project gets further underway. Thanks so much, Joshua. Thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you.