FLUX: Forward-Looking Urban eXamples
Sarah Febres-Cordero and Daniel Smith
Atlanta is ready to help people who are escaping environmental disasters. By the year 2100, it is expected that over 320,000 people (about half the population of Vermont) might move from the Georgia coast to Atlanta because of rising sea levels. The city is also preparing to welcome people fleeing extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes from the US and worldwide. Atlanta has experience with welcoming those who are escaping disaster, as seen when it took in many people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As climate change forces more people to move, Atlanta is a place of hope. It wants to create a strong, diverse, and welcoming community, and to do this, the city must plan carefully to support everyone fairly and equitably.
This exhibit was made possible thanks to the guidance of Tracey Thompson from The Elizabeth Foundation and Kristi Petrillo from Prevention Point Philadelphia.
Forward-looking Urban eXamples in Georgia
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"Every city will face enormous climate-change-related challenges in the coming decades, and Atlanta has been more proactive than most U.S. cities at confronting climate change. However, the city is drastically unprepared to deal with both a changing climate and a huge increase in population, Lustgarten writes. By the 2040s, the Atlanta metro area could grow by 50%, from 5.8 million people to 9 million — even without the extra influx of people climate change migration might bring." Read More Here
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"Georgia has a large community of immigrants, nearly half of whom are naturalized citizens. About 10.8 percent of the state’s residents are foreign-born, and 6.5 percent of its U.S.-born residents live with at least one immigrant parent. Immigrants make up 14.3 percent of Georgia's labor force and support the state’s economy in many ways. They account for 20.7 percent of entrepreneurs, 21.4 percent of STEM workers, and 14.4 percent of nurses in the state. As neighbors, business owners, taxpayers, and workers, immigrants are an integral part of Georgia’s diverse and thriving communities and make extensive contributions that benefit all." Read More Here
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The Melody Project at 184 Forsyth St. exemplifies this with micro-units built from containers on a city-owned parking lot near Garnett Marta Station. This model is easily replicable, potentially extending to Lindbergh, offering a scalable solution to urban housing needs.
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The Elizabeth Foundation has fostered a longstanding, trusting relationship with unhoused individuals in the Lindbergh area, prioritizing harm reduction by meeting people where they are and treating them with dignity and non-judgmental care. Recognizing the critical link between housing and well-being, they advocate for comprehensive support, integrating social and health services, including mental health care.
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Trees Atlanta protects and improves Atlanta’s urban forest by planting, conserving, and educating. Read More Here
Forward-looking Urban eXamples from around the world
About the Team
Sarah Febres-Cordero, PhD, RN, runs the OEND (overdose education and naloxone distribution) Lab at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing (NHWSON), where she educates people who use drugs, laypeople, Emory students, and service industry workers across Atlanta about safer drug use, opioid-involved overdose identification, and naloxone distribution as part of her research agenda. As a nurse scientist and faculty member at NHWSON, one of her primary goals is to reduce harm caused by structural inequities. Her interest in the intersection of harm reduction and climate change is influenced by working with communities impacted by heat exposure, unsafe air and water, and living conditions that make the evolving climate crisis an immediate threat to their well-being.
Daniel Jackson Smith, PhD, AGPCNP-BC, CNE, runs The ROPEH (research for occupational, public, and environmental health) Lab at the School of Nursing, University at Buffalo. His primary research interest lies at the intersection of climate change and its multiple impacts on human health, focusing on the impacts of high-heat conditions on the kidneys. He works to bridge data science and community-driven research questions to better understand how to protect disenfranchised communities from climate change. Additionally, he maintains a clinical practice as a nurse practitioner providing primary care services to the unhoused of Buffalo, NY.