Jeanette Origel is a Community Leader Fellow for the Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition (JP NET) and Sarah Byrnes is the Director of the New England New Economy Transition (NET) project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Both leaders write about the importance of thinking about the people in the community when planning concrete ways of improving a place’s resilience – be it through urban farms, renewable energy, or alternative ways of mobility. This is because by improving a community’s resilience, many times the neighborhood improves and then gentrifies, expelling its original inhabitants. Jeanette tells personal stories about her parents fear of prices increases and difficulties in finding products from Latin American countries after local renovations. Food access is only one example of how gentrification can affect a community. This is why Jeannet and Sarah work to bring communities closer together, teaching about climate change and how to adapt, mitigate and be resilient to it. Photo credit: NET
