Sixteen multi-disciplinary teams attended, representing Babylon, N.Y., Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Flagstaff, Louisville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia, Saint Paul, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Team members included city housing and sustainability directors, utility and workforce investment board members, community college presidents and more.
Keynote Address
HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims kicked off the camp as the keynote speaker on Sunday evening and set a perfect tone. He spoke about the recovery money creating a once-in-a lifetime opportunity that could only be realized if everyone in the room took personal responsibility for its success. Secretary Sims also emphasized the importance of building enduring systems that both address climate change and lay the foundation for a more equitable green economy.
Presentations and Workshops
Steve Nicholas, director of Climate and Environmental Programs for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, which led the design and management of the camp with Living Cities.
The panel presentations and workshops focused on peer-to-peer sharing of information and knowledge. After each panel, the teams met individually with facilitators to explore how to apply their learning to their city’s unique circumstances.
The lunch panel on the first day included high-level HUD and Energy Department officials in charge of substantial recovery dollars. The discussion was rich, spirited and conducted in a great problem-solving manner. Day one topics included increasing demand, financing change and creating green jobs pathways.
Day two built on the panel presentations and breakout discussions from day one by addressing implementation issues to create and scale building energy retrofit systems. The morning started out with a wide-ranging discussion among all of the city-state teams on best examples and ideal elements of successful systems. Participants then spent time in small cross-city groups discussing key topics. After lunch, city teams reconvened and discussed their plans for making progress when they got home.
Feedback from Participants
When the teams shared their accounts at the end of the camp, their comments were both encouraging and instructive. A number of teams reported that they had formed strong new relationships that would be the basis for continued collaboration at home. At least four different teams said that they had never worked with their other team members in any substantive way before coming to the camp. Almost every city’s team indicated a desire to create new financing mechanisms for build energy retrofits. A number of cities also reported that they would prioritize workforce development issues as their immediate next steps. It seemed clear that even these leading cities are just starting in this work — and that the jobs dimension will be a huge challenge.
Almost all of the teams said that receiving Living Cities’ support for technical assistance to create comprehensive retrofit systems, especially the financing, would add great value to their camp experience. Several also noted that Living Cities could play a valuable role in fostering communication between the cities and the federal government on real-time challenges and opportunities implementing federal programs on the ground more effectively.