This week another round of worrying, working, and hopeful. This time we’ll explore the implications for 2036 of the late September floods in New York City, disinformation and radical collaboration around renewable energy projects, and a blossoming “Yes in God’s Backyard” movement.

What’s Worrying

At the end of September, New York City experienced rain so intense that subways flooded, and residents were advised to avoid travel unless absolutely necessary, seek higher ground, and refrain from driving.

This event is more evidence that the city's new normal is shifting towards a tropical-rainfall pattern, much like those experienced in Miami or Singapore, as over the last two years there have been at least half a dozen instances in which neighborhoods have received two inches or more of rainfall an hour. The city's infrastructure, designed for different weather patterns, is struggling to cope. Rohit Aggarwala, the city’s environmental-protection commissioner, captured the essence of the issue when he said that “the sad reality is that our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond.” 

So What

Unfortunately, this isn't just a New York problem. A new analysis by the First Street Foundation estimates that one in nine residents in the contiguous United States is at significant risk of storms that will bring at least 50% more water than their local infrastructure can handle.

In the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, we can imagine communities coming together in solidarity, a phenomenon Rebeca Solnit documents in her book, A Paradise Built in Hell. In this future, shared experiences and collective action foster empathy and understanding among community members, transforming our neighborhoods into more inclusive and supportive spaces. We can also envision innovative architectural, planning, and policy solutions that not only make our buildings and infrastructure more resilient, but also more sustainable and conducive to our well-being. However, continuous disruptions could increase frustration and stress, as communities and individuals bear the increasing burden of reconstruction and recovery.If this happens, it could exacerbate current divisions and undermine public support for collective action.

In this future, as communities are repeatedly hammered by extreme weather events, existing infrastructure fails more and more often. Every storm brings a wave of problems: flooded basements, leaking roofs, power outages. Trust in public institutions erodes. Communities are riven by stark inequalities. Wealthier families, with the means to afford private support or relocate to areas less impacted by climate change, continue to provide their children with quality experiences and opportunities. But for families with fewer resources, things are less stable. Their children are most affected by these disruptions. They grapple with anxiety, fear, and a sense of loss that's hard for them to articulate and for adults to comfort.

Food For Thought

A few days after the flooding we visited Long Island to work with ta group of educators about how to helps schools become better equipped for the future. As a part of our day with these educators, we used the “Futures Wheel,” an exercise designed to explore ripple effects of a specific change or trend in the world, to delve into the potential implications of extreme weather for schools and communities. This exercise surfaced a rich variety of possibilities, which we frame below as a few provocative questions.

• While we might think that we can rely on and quickly pivot to remote learning if weather events force school closures, such events frequently lead to power outages and housing instability. In a world where traditional and remote learning can both be disrupted by extreme weather events, what innovative, resilient solutions might ensure continuous learning?

• If schools are closed due to extreme weather, what systems could we put in place to ensure students and families who rely on schools for meals do not go hungry?

• How might students’ stories about their different experiences of these events help build empathy and a more nuanced understanding of differences in the community?

• How might we proactively plan and advocate for the necessary funding and policy changes to improve the resilience of our schools before the urgency and costs of reactive responses escalate?

• How might we work with our students and their families to develop community resilience and coping strategies for disruptive events caused by extreme weather?

• How might we prepare to support students and families dealing with the physical and mental health impacts of extreme weather events?"

What’s Working

Some activists and groups, including one called Citizens for Responsible Solar, are spreading misinformation and stoking local opposition to obstruct large renewable energy projects across rural America. This misinformation includes false claims about the health and environmental risks of solar panels.  

While there are valid concerns related to large scale solar installations, campaigns like Citizens for Responsible Solar appear designed to “sow seeds of alarm and distrust,” according to Ronald Meyers, who studies siting issues around renewable energy at Virginia Tech.However, one possible path toward navigating competing interests and concerns has borne fruit in California. There Stanford’s Wood Institute for the Environment facilitated a two-year dialogue between solar companies, conservationists, and other groups. This dialogue resulted in an unprecedented “set of principles — and plans for further collaboration — that could speed up the construction of badly needed renewable energy projects while also protecting wildlife habitat, preserving treasured landscapes and benefiting nearby communities.”

In Michigan, where local opposition and restrictive zoning ordinances are slowing the development of some large-scale solar projects, experts are promoting similar dialogues to proactively address concerns. As Charles Gould of Michigan State University Extension explained, "Really, if we want to be successful at this, we need to back up and think ahead of time before that solar project is on board, bring all the partners together, have them all sit down and figure out what that's going to look like."

So What

These signals highlight tensions around solar power and other renewable energy projects, stemming from the interplay of decentralized governance, polarized politics, and the weaponization of disinformation. Simultaneously, they point to the rise of collaborative, multi-stakeholder planning methods. Processes akin to participatory budgeting, citizens' assemblies, and Taiwan's digital democracy experiments lean into inclusion, compromise, and systems thinking to reconcile competing interests.

In twelve years, if disinformation and division are ascendant, we can easily imagine a landscape marked by fear, polarization, and stagnation. People view new technologies as threats rather than solutions. Polarization is rampant, with communities divided along ideological lines and around economic opportunity.Perhaps not so easy to imagine, given the current state of civic discourse and trust, is a future where collaboration has gained traction and the atmosphere is one of optimism, innovation, and progress. In this world, communities, governments, and businesses work together to address fears and concerns, countering misinformation with clear, credible communication. Dialogue between stakeholders is commonplace, fostering mutual understanding and compromise.

It might be that we are teetering between two starkly contrasting possibilities. On one hand, a world where disinformation and division reign.  On the other, a world where collaborative, inclusive decision-making flourishes. Three big questions will likely shape how our future evolves: Can we control the spread of false information? Can we improve the quality of our public debates? And can we collaborate effectively on big decisions?

Food for Thought

• How might we equip students with the necessary skills to critically evaluate information, especially in a digital context, to combat the spread of false information?

• What strategies might we use to foster respectful and productive discussions within the classroom, mirroring the desired quality of public debates?

• In what ways might we introduce collaborative decision-making in student projects or school governance to provide real-world experience and understanding of such processes?

• How might we effectively involve students, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders in the decision-making processes related to school policies, curriculum development, and infrastructure planning?

What’s hopeful

Across the United States, an innovative collaboration is unfolding between religious institutions and communities to address the escalating housing crisis. In the face of rising homelessness and unaffordable housing, churches are using their surplus land for the development of affordable housing projects. This trend is enabled by new legislation, such as California's 'Yes in God's Backyard' (YIGBY) law, which allows religious institutions and nonprofit colleges to bypass local zoning restrictions and transform their properties into low-income housing. This movement is gaining traction in various locations, including Portland, Oregon, Palm Springs, California, and Arlington, Virginia. In Arlington, the Central United Methodist Church has collaborated with the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing to build an 8-story complex that will include 144 affordable units, a daycare, and a revamped church space with a dedicated commercial kitchen to support the church’s food distribution ministry.

So what

These signals reflect a growing awareness of the housing crisis, its implications for the health of families and communities, and a shift towards more equitable and inclusive housing policies.

However, as we saw in the opposition to large-scale solar projects, persistent NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) sentiment resists affordable housing, often due to fears of potential impacts on property values, community character, and public safety. Many NIMBY’s are older people who have homes, families and stable jobs, while many advocates for affordable housing and more urban density are younger  - “college students, young professionals, artists, newly-arrived immigrants - who are renting, and don't yet have stable careers, reflecting generational differences that are increasingly salient in politics and policy.

Should the YIGBY movement grow over the next twelve years, neighborhoods might transform as new affordable housing projects spring up on under-used church land. Families who once struggled to make rent now have homes they can afford, bringing a sense of stability and security that ripples into other aspects of their lives. Parents are less stressed, children do better in school, and the overall health of the community improves.

With housing costs brought down, more income is available for families to spend in local economies. Small businesses flourish, creating a vibrant and dynamic local economic landscape. And the efficient use of land acts as a bulwark against urban sprawl. Cities and towns become denser, but also greener, with concerted efforts to integrate green spaces and sustainable practices into these new housing projects.

Politically, these changes are embraced as the success stories they are. Local governments across the nation follow California's lead, enacting legislation to empower religious institutions and nonprofits to develop affordable housing. The bitterness of generational and NIMBY conflicts begins to fade as communities see the benefits of these projects firsthand.

Food for Thought

• How can our schools actively participate in community discussions about housing and other local issues, ensuring the voices and needs of our students and their families are represented?

• How can we integrate lessons about community participation, civic responsibilities, and the role of institutions in social issues into our curriculum?

• How can we encourage students to think critically about complex social issues like housing affordability, and foster empathy and understanding for diverse experiences and perspectives?

• In what ways can we connect classroom learning to real-world issues and local community challenges, possibly even partnering with local initiatives for service-learning opportunities?

Generative AI Disclosure and Reflections

For this issue we continued working with our bot MySignalAnalyzer to explore how each signal reflects current trends, identify possible countertrends, and explore the possible implications of for the world in 2036. This dialogue sharpened our thinking and expanded the possible future for us, especially when we asked the bot to explore non-obvious implications and to be deliberately provocative. We then asked Claude AI - also accessed through Poe - to act as an editor and provide feedback so that we could revise. Finally, we worked with Poe’s new StableDiffusionXL to help us create images.