Our Approach
Next: Our Programs
Our work with cities across the globe has revealed common obstacles to innovation and change in most every context
Whether delivering neighborhood programs or designing multimillion-dollar infrastructure, silos around particular government functions - like transportation, economic development, health - and a lack of cross-sectoral collaboration inhibit the delivery of transformative solutions.
The overlapping jurisdictional structures and boundaries through which governance, resource flow, and regulatory functions operate and problems have traditionally been managed are not sufficient to meet the world’s most pressing 21st-century challenges - from wildfires and extreme heat to housing and food security.
All too often the exclusion of community members as critical stakeholders and participants results in programs, projects, and policies that fail to address the complex, interdependent challenges residents face not only in the wake of disasters but in their daily lives.
We help cities partner across the entire urban ecosystem
Catalytic change in cities requires shared vision and alignment of effort among the wide range of actors required to address urban challenges systemically and to maintain long-term momentum for change. RCC’s work with cities begins with the facilitation of these partnerships, creating common work platforms for the government (at all levels), NGOs and community organizations, the business community, anchor service institutions, the philanthropic community, and universities.
We help cities overcome the innate obstacles within cities that prevent impactful action
We help cities create institutional capacity to work across organizational silos and to manage change across political cycles. We also advise city governments on how to better use their own resources and powers—such as their budgets, procurement powers, and physical assets—to support their change objectives.
City assets—land, buildings, facilities, and infrastructures—are often viewed through an operational and cost lens—rather than as strategic and transformative levers to secure investments, develop new markets, adopt new technologies, and demonstrate new forms of infrastructure and building.
Conventional budget tools and procedures are often short-sighted, rigid, and misaligned with the most pressing, generational city priorities. Municipal governments can better leverage their stable revenue streams and budgets to achieve the long-term impacts they seek.
City procurement procedures and requirements often reinforce continued demand for archaic products, technologies, and approaches, and impede the uptake of innovations that are emerging in the market. Procurements can be better used to drive innovation and engage the private sector as a partner in developing new solutions.
We help cities to innovate
Legacy practices are often a source of fundamental inertia to change. Over decades, many city government practices have evolved in bureaucratic and unhelpful ways that prevent the delivery of more optimal benefits to city residents. Staff and resources are often allocated in strict silos that prevent cross-departmental collaboration. Innovation generally requires breaking down these silos of responsibility and control to obtain greater results from limited resources, together.
We help cities assess and address the risks and chronic stresses that can impede the achievement of each city’s priorities and promise
Cities and urban communities too often avoid their long-term risk exposures and underlying stresses. Doing so often results in fundamental disruption to their work for change. Committing to address chronic stresses and potentially catastrophic exposures can be politically risky because they are so complex. For most actors in the urban ecosystem, issues like seismic risk or chronic exclusion are beyond the scope of their responsibilities. RCC helps cities learn how to integrate risk reduction, mitigation, and transfer into everyday operations. We work with each city’s managers, urbanists, and technicians to design de-risking measures and build greater co-benefits into near-term investments.
We help cities build capacity and institutions to reinforce the continuity of effort
Large-scale and long-term change requires continuity of effort, often over decades. But city leaders generally have short tenures, during which they are consumed with balancing complex sets of priorities with severe capacity and budget constraints.
Creating stable partnerships across sectors and institutions that outlast political cycles, and helping these forge a shared vision for the urban region, supports new leaders to build on the progress of their predecessors. The establishment of an executive team under a Chief Resilience Officer also provides the internal institutional capacity to continue internal work across departments and to support these broad-based partnerships.
Next: Our Programs