2025

Envision Resilience

Midcoast Maine Challenge

“Partnering with Envision Resilience offers an extraordinary opportunity to elevate Bath’s Resilient Bath plan by bringing in fresh academic perspectives and design innovation. Their multidisciplinary student teams will help us reimagine coastal resilience, green infrastructure and community-led solutions that are tailored to our city’s unique maritime heritage and climate challenges. Our community leaders are very excited to be engaged in this program and we look forward to working together to translate cutting‑edge ideas into practical, community-driven action.”  

— Rod Melanson, director of sustainability and environment, City of Bath

Envision Resilience
Midcoast Maine Challenge

Maine’s Midcoast region, stretching from Brunswick to Camden and encompassing coastal communities such as Brunswick, Bath and Harpswell is a landscape shaped by its rugged shorelines, working waterfronts and rich maritime heritage. This iconic region reflects Maine’s historic past and serves as a canvas for its resilient future. Defined by its natural beauty—salt marshes, tidal rivers, rocky peninsulas and expansive forests—the Midcoast is home to industries that have shaped its identity for generations, including fishing, lobstering and boatbuilding. At the same time, the area is experiencing growth in arts, tourism and sustainable development, pointing toward a future that balances preservation and progress.

However, the Midcoast faces significant challenges posed by a changing climate. Flooding threatens critical coastal infrastructure and habitats. Increasing storm intensities erode shorelines and imperil working waterfronts that sustain Maine’s local economies. Shifts in ocean temperatures disrupt marine ecosystems and traditional fisheries, while housing scarcity and economic disparities add complexity to community resilience. How can Midcoast Maine retain its identity while addressing these mounting environmental and social pressures? The 2025 Envision Resilience Midcoast Maine Challenge calls on multidisciplinary student teams—made up of architects, landscape architects, urban and regional planners, engineers, environmental scientists and artists—to collaborate and propose innovative, community-centered solutions for the Midcoast towns of  Bath, Brunswick and Harpswell