Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge
“Hats off to ReMain Nantucket, because I think you’ve created a model which is replicable. You didn’t strictly define the parameters of the pedagogy, you’ve got the cross-fertilization that you wouldn’t get if you said: here’s the problem, fix it. This is consistent with the challenge that Nantucket faces, and by implication, every coastal community in America faces… I think forums like this are really needed, across institutions, if we’re going to act sooner rather than later. So thanks to you all for figuring out a model that is going to lead the way.”
Envision Resilience
Nantucket Challenge
In 2020, Remain launched the inaugural Envision Resilience Challenge on Nantucket as a response to the increase in rising sea levels, downtown flooding and storm frequency and intensity. The Envision Resilience Challenge was developed with the belief that visions of a more resilient future could inspire the Nantucket community to think differently—perhaps more optimistically—about living with more water. When the Envision Resilience Challenge launched on Nantucket in the winter of 2021, with myriad Covid-19 constraints, it was intended to be a one-year program. But across 14 time zones—guided by the wisdom of the leading faculty of practice and inspired by the Town of Nantucket and its ambitious island-wide coastal resilience plan—students were grabbing onto the opportunity to connect deeply with a community in the midst of tackling climate change head on.
Five years, 20 university partners and more than 500 students later, the program has grown into its own organization, powered by an expanding network of resilient designers, planners, local leaders, residents and practitioners across the Northeast.
