Services
Services
planning + policy
We have years of experience working with public sector and non-profit clients on creating planning and policy documents that connect the dots between the many complicated parts of how a resilient and thriving community functions. We love developing everything from technical policy documents and strategic plans to city-wide and neighborhood-scale plans that address the future resilience of our communities.
design
We believe good design is powerful and can help us overcome some of the biggest climate, environmental, and social challenges we face. We have experience creating everything from science- based design standards and toolkits to community-driven concept designs for valuable community spaces like parks, recognizing that good design should be multi-functional and honor the unique cultural and environmental heritage of a place.
Facilitation
We know from experience that the way a process is facilitated can greatly impact the success of any collaborative work. We design processes that aim to facilitate relationship-building, trauma healing, and restoration of trust as core components of our practice. Our work is often at the intersection of science and community-driven process, resulting in impactful opportunities to facilitate bridging the gap, democratizing access to data, and putting power back into the hands of those most impacted by decision-making.
areas of expertise
Resilience
We can help you understand your community’s greatest vulnerabilities across social, economic, and environmental systems, and help you facilitate equity-driven resilience planning processes. Our experience includes facilitation of large-scale, equity-driven resilience coalition-building processes, vision, goal and action development for planning documents, and on-the-ground implementation of new policies, programs, and built projects. With a resilience plan in place and implementation in action, your community can not only survive, but can adapt and thrive in the face of chronic stressors like flooding and economic instability, or with major disruptive events like hurricanes and epidemics.
Image: North Houston/Greenspoint Livable Centers Study, Huitt-Zollars (prime) 
climate action + Sustainable design
Reducing community-scale carbon emissions is a critical commitment many municipalities are making in curbing the effects of a changing climate. At a systems-scale, compact and connected development, efficient transportation systems, pro-climate behavior changes, environmental conservation, regenerative farming, and reducing and changing patterns of consumption, are all critical considerations of a climate action planning process. At a site-scale, energy efficient design, integrated solar, electric vehicle charging, dark skies compliance, ecological design of the landscape, water conservation techniques, and potential LEED or Sustainable SITES certification are all potential discussion points for creating more sustainable and beautiful places. Resilient Future Studio can help develop a cohesive and cross-cutting emissions reduction strategy, and can help facilitate conversations at a site scale on how to design world class buildings and landscapes, sustainably.
Image: City of Austin Climate Equity Plan, City of Austin
green infrastructure + Ecological Design
We believe a well-designed landscape should improve ecosystem function and know great design can make our communities more beautiful, clean the water running off our streets, provide habitat for wildlife and pollinators, cool our neighborhoods, parks, and bus stops, and improve our physical and mental health, just to name a few. We have a history of designing green and nature-based infrastructure from policy development and ecological design of entire park sites and green networks in neighborhoods, to working with our partners in engineering to design technical specifications and design toolkits for green infrastructure systems.
Image: City of Austin
parks + open space
We believe parks and open spaces are the heart of our communities and some of the best opportunities to create more livable, resilient, and thriving places. Our parks work is focused on ensuring every person has equitable access to high quality parks in their community. We look to understand existing access to community resources and what socioeconomic and health disparities exist, and carefully listen to the community voice their needs when it comes to parkland. We have designed parks that speak to the culture and history of a place but respond to growing climate threats; developed design toolkits to create standards for park design that serve community needs but also respond to specific health and environmental challenges; and, have created award-winning system-scale plans for parks and open space at municipal and even multi-county scales.
Image: Healthy Parks Plan for Travis, Bastrop, and Caldwell Counties, Asakura Robinson (prime)
equity and justice
We believe everyone deserves a resilient future, which is why equity and justice are core themes of every project we work on. We have established equity-grounding trainings alongside equity and diversity professional trainers as part of creating a foundation of equity in a larger planning process. We have integrated equity and justice principals in resilience and climate action plans, parks plans and designs, engagement processes including the development of city-wide paid ambassador programs, and into strategic planning for non-profit organizations.
Image: City of Austin Climate Equity Plan, City of Austin
public health
Public health outcomes exist at the intersection of systems-scale issues like climate and the environment with people-scale issues like equity and justice. While we started as an ecology, climate, and environment focused practice, we increasingly focus on public health as a critical area of focus in all of our work. We recognize that talking about climate issues like urban heat is important. But, what is most compelling in getting stakeholders to take action, is being able to communicate the effect of our community’s built environment on the health of our residents. We have developed park plans and resilience strategies that center public health disparities and strategies that track health outcomes, and have developed award-winning science-based toolkits for health practitioners interested in getting more involved in improving the built environment in the communities where they work.
Image: Episcopal Health Foundation Healthy Places Toolkit, Asakura Robinson (prime)