New Bedford’s North End boasted blue skies and 70-degree weather on Tuesday, August 20, as a group of 50 people gathered at the beloved North End Stereo Building in the late afternoon. A freshly painted mural on the Sawyer Street-side brick wall of the building, located at 1200 Acushnet Avenue, showed a young person raising binoculars and looking out over tumultuous waves with a smile. 

A young man holding a pair of binoculars to his face looks out into the future with waves reflecting off the lenses. His hair, representing dynamic ocean waves, spills over slightly into his face and splashes upwards, where New Bedford’s iconic North End buildings rise. The young man’s face has a soft smile and his demeanor seems to suggest a sense of ease as the words, “Envision Resilience” float overhead. This image will soon adorn the north-facing side of New Bedford’s North End Stereo Building at 1200 Acushnet Ave.

The Envision Resilience Challenge, a multi-university design studio and community engagement initiative developed by Remain, announced today it is headed to Maine with eight universities set to participate. Portland, South Portland and the Casco Bay Islands have been selected as study sites for the 2024 fall design studio, which will convene community stakeholders and teams of graduate and undergraduate students studying architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and environmental science.

After falling in love with Maine during college, Stephanie “Steph” Sun decided to make the state home when she took a job at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) as a Climate Engagement Specialist for GMRI’s Climate Center in 2023. Steph’s graduate thesis focused on the cumulative pressures facing the working waterfront in Harpswell, Maine. We recently sat down with her to talk about GMRI and her thoughts on Maine’s resilience efforts ahead of the 2024 Envision Resilience Portland and South Portland Challenge.

On a bright, sunny and freezing cold day late last month, members of the Envision Resilience team attended the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport, Maine. Started in 1976, the Maine Fishermen’s Forum is a gathering of stakeholders from across the state and organizations related to fishing, science and marine industries. From panel discussions on offshore wind developments to the Maine Lobstermen’s Annual meeting, the forum offered invaluable opportunities to delve into pressing issues facing Maine’s coastal communities.

Is the EPA doing their best to protect the environment? These Californian youth don’t think so. Eighteen children, aged eight to seventeen years old, are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for violating their constitutional rights by allowing the burning of fossil fuels and the pollution created from such actions to continue despite the hazard it poses to kids. The lawsuit was filed on December 10, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for Central District of California by Our Children’s Trust.

Davon Fuentes first picked up a trumpet in fifth-grade band class and has been playing ever since. Born and raised in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, Davon is now in his fourth semester at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth studying music education. For the Envision Resilience assignment, Davon composed his piece based on the video montage created by Professor Mark Millstein, and pretty quickly had picked out his bandmates in his head.

The People’s Gallery in the New Bedford Art Museum hummed with conversation on Friday night as more than 230 attendees showed up to celebrate the Designs for Living with Rising Seas exhibition opening. Among the crowds were representatives from the 2021 Nantucket Challenge, 2022 Narragansett Bay Challenge and the upcoming 2024 Portland and South Portland Challenge.

Designs and renderings developed by university students for how the communities of New Bedford and Fairhaven could adapt to climate change will be on display in a free exhibition at the New Bedford Art Museum Jan. 26 through March 23. The designs reimagine infrastructure, housing, neighborhoods and shorelines and were developed as part of the 2023 Envision Resilience New Bedford and Fairhaven Challenge.

Those who found themselves on the campus of UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) on Thursday, December 7, were treated to a climate-inspired creative feast for the senses. Original music scores evoking sounds of the ocean washed over the standing-room only audience while sculpted-foam whale marionettes undulated in front of a 12-foot tall projection of New Bedford’s iconic working waterfront illustrated by hand-cut silhouettes of ships, waves and buildings.

“The Envision Resilience Challenge has let me explore climate change and all of these environmental systems that are impacting architecture on a larger scale. Interacting with community members is part of that because they’re the ones living with this change.”

Howard University and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth are taking part in the Fall 2023 Envision Resilience New Bedford and Fairhaven Challenge as part of two pilot programs this year, joining teams Rhode Island School of Design, Northeastern University, the University of Florida, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Virginia in the 2023 cohort.

After Covid-19 shocked the world a few years ago, efforts on the island of Nantucket to keep the island sustainable and more self-reliant kicked into high gear. Envision Resilience’s staff writer, Anna Popnikolova, interviewed several key players in the island’s agriculture and local food businesses on the importance of locally-grown produce, community-based solutions and teaching lessons of sustainability early.

Skylah and Raquel are the eldest of four very impressive, young environmental scientists. The four sisters each follow their own paths within the discipline and are either graduates or current students of New Bedford High School. Skylah and Raquel shared with the Envision Resilience team their reflections on growing up in the famous port city and their goals for the future.

Rodney Avila has been a fisherman out of New Bedford, Massachusetts for five decades. After making his livelihood at sea, Rodney has had a hard time sticking to retired life and now serves as a liaison between families in the fishing industry for Ørsted and New Bedford’s burgeoning offshore wind industry.

One of the pillars of downtown Nantucket, Young’s Bicycle Shop has seen its fair share of flooding over the past 30 years. From the No Name Storm of 1991 to Winter Storm Grayson in 2018, Harvey shares his stories of how rising sea levels have affected this intergenerational family business and his plans for adapting to the future.

Six university partners—including two from the University of Massachusetts system—have been selected for the third iteration of the Envision Resilience Challenge taking place in New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts, this fall as students develop innovative solutions for coastal communities to adapt to sea level rise.

Austin Hsu completed the Envision Resilience Narragansett Bay Challenge in 2022 and changed his career plans to return to Taiwan as a city planner. In January 2023, he and the other students in the Challenge won the Rhode Island APA student awards for their work. In this article, he describes his artistic process to create his unique designs for Warren, RI. From drawing most of his designs by hand to including a unique comic strip, Austin’s creativity is undeniable.

The Envision Resilience Challenge, a semester-long design studio connecting interdisciplinary university teams with coastal communities to inspire adaptive and creative solutions to the challenges of sea level rise and climate change, will take place in New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts in the fall of 2023.

The six university teams that participated in the 2022 Envision Resilience Narragansett Bay Challenge to design creative solutions to sea level rise have won the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA-RI)'s annual student award, ReMain Nantucket announced today.