What does it mean to be a Chief Resilience Officer for one America's largest cities? Doggerel spoke to Patrick Otellini, Chief Resilient Officer for San Francisco, to find out what it takes to make a truly resilient city.
What are the most important lessons you’ve learned since taking on this role?
Well, being the first city to launch our strategy through the 100RC process, we were very much a pilot. Everyone acknowledged that this was a new experiment.
In my previous role as San Francisco’s director of earthquake safety — as in a lot of work that we do in the city government — our work was very focused and very intentional. And we were very successful in a lot of our efforts. But when we started with 100RC we were able to take a pause, step back into a research phase, which allowed us to understand things in a more dynamic way. That’s been a treat that we don’t often get in the public sector. In going through that process, we’ve been able to strengthen a lot of our existing programs, identifying cobenefits and beginning to tie these together in a really great way.
FULL STORY: Beyond the big one: Real recovery in San Francisco
More Detail on What Happened to 100 Resilient Cities
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