Designing for Resilience

Climate resilience is often narrowly framed around avoiding the worst harms of climate change. In this talk, Shalini will offer a broader perspective on how designing for resilience can help expand our ambitions for our public infrastructure systems — creating beautiful spaces that generate multiple social, economic, and ecosystem benefits and protect against that ‘once in a thousand years’ event. She will highlight examples of projects from across the US and show how public infrastructure design, planning, and funding processes can be adapted to serve communities’ deepest needs. She will also share how her early architecture training has shaped and carried through her career in public policy, project finance, and community engagement.

About Shalini Vajjhala

Shalini Vajjhala, PhD is the Executive Director of PRE Collective and a nationally recognized infrastructure and climate resilience expert with 20 years of experience designing, funding, and financing community-centered resilient infrastructure solutions. Over the last decade, she founded and led the design firm re:focus partners and co-founded The Atlas, an online platform for local government collaboration and innovation.

More information at https://arch.usc.edu/events/shalini-vajjhala