Humphrey School students work to help cities become more sustainable through Resilient Communities Project

The City of Minnetonka needs answers to important sustainability challenges, like trying to compete with neighboring suburbs that offer higher-density, lower-priced housing; identifying best practices for building green roofs and rooftop gardens; and fostering a stronger sense of identity among its neighborhoods. The answers lie, in part, with students from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs through the Resilient Communities Project (RCP).

“RCP is giving students experience working in communities on practical projects,” says Carissa Schively Slotterback, director of the RCP and associate professor at the Humphrey School. With seed funding from the Institute on the Environment and the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, RCP brings together students and faculty members from eight University of Minnesota schools and colleges to partner with a Minnesota community for a whole academic year. “It’s been exciting to see students do presentations in communities and interact with stakeholders, including elected officials, community staff, and residents.”

Each academic year, RCP chooses a city partner through a competitive request-for-proposal process and helps identify potential projects based on community-identified sustainability issues and needs, and then matches the city’s project needs with University of Minnesota courses. The 2012–13 partnership with Minnetonka is RCP’s pilot program. Through a number of courses, Humphrey School students have contributed to many of the projects during RCP’s first year.
• Neighborhood Revitalization students prepared a report that describes how neighborhoods in Seattle, Philadelphia, and Twin Cities communities use blogs and social media, as well as other tools, to engage neighborhoods and enhance identity.
• Students in a Networks and Places class are working on a parking and land use project that explores innovative strategies for managing Minnetonka’s parking issues.
• Six students in Environmental Planning, Policy, and Decision Making are working to identify best practices for building green roofs in a suburban and northern climate.

“The key focus of RCP is establishing a sustained relationship with a community that helps that community move the ball down the field a lot quicker than it would be able to do on its own,” says Schively Slotterback about the importance of completing several project throughout the year.

Next year’s RCP partner community is the City of North St. Paul. Smaller than Minnetonka, North St. Paul also is an older city with a strong focus on redevelopment and community engagement, making for a new set of challenges for students to address next year.