case study community development

• Student Memberships
• E-Newsletter (Members Only)
• Support Us!

Planners Network

• Case Studies and Working Papers

Transformative Community Planning: Empowerment Through Community Development

Prepared for the 1996 Planners Network Conference, “Renewing Hope, Restoring Vision: Progressive Planning in Our Communities.”

by Marie Kennedy

INTRODUCTION

What is community development?

I see real community development as combining material development with the development of people. Real development, as I understand it, necessarily involves increasing a community’s capacity for taking control of its own development–building within the community critical thinking and planning abilities, as well as concrete skills, so that development projects and planning processes can be replicated by community members in the future. A good planning project should leave a community not just with more immediate “products”–e.g., housing–but also with an increased capacity to meet future needs.

Effective community development planning takes a comprehensive approach to meeting community needs–an approach that recognizes the interrelationship of economic, physical and social development. Community development is linked to empowerment and to valuing diversity of cultures. This is true whether you are talking about planning in materially underdeveloped communities in the United States or in the so-called developing world.

Manning Marable, an African-American scholar and commentator, in his 1992 book, Crisis of Color and Democracy, offers a concise definition of empowerment, one that I think is particularly apt for planners:

Empowerment is essentially a capacity to define clearly one’s interests, and to develop a strategy to achieve those interests. It’s the ability to create a plan or program to change one’s reality in order to obtain those objectives or interests. Power is not a “thing”, it’s a process. In other words, you shouldn’t say that a group has power, but that, through its conscious activity, a group can empower itself by increasing its ability to achieve its own interests.

And, Kari Polanyi Levitt, an economist working in the Caribbean, in a lecture a couple of years ago to the Association of Caribbean Economists, took on the individualism, selfishness and greed typical of what she calls the “market magic” paradigm, arguing that:

Any meaningful notion of “sustainable development” must begin with the recognition that the diversity of cultures which nourish human creativity is as precious an inheritance as the diversity of plant and animal life.

She goes on to say:

Development cannot be imposed from without. It is a creative social process and its central nervous system, the matrix which nourishes it, is located in the cultural sphere. Development is ultimately not a matter of money or physical capital, or foreign exchange, but of the capacity of a society to tap the root of popular creativity, to free up and empower people to exercise their intelligence and collective wisdom.

Role of the planner

Most of my experience has been on the community level and it’s at this level that you will find most of the practitioners who are trying to work in a transformative way. However, what often blocks success for transformative planners at the community level are decisions taken by planners at the city, state, national or even international level. For transformative planning to work on the community level, planners at all levels, who are framing public problem definitions and policies, writing legislation, designing governmental programs, prioritizing funding targets for private foundations and governmental agencies, or preparing requests for proposals, have to share an understanding of what constitutes community development.

Measuring success

If, on the other hand, we have a different version of what constitutes success:

• a version that does include products of development, but which rests primarily on power and control being increasingly vested in community members;
• success that is measured by the number of people who have, in the planning process, moved from being an object of planning to being a subject;
• success measured in terms of increasing numbers of confident, competent, cooperative and purposeful community members;
• success measured in terms of the ability of people involved in the planning process to replicate their achievements in other situations;
• success measured in terms of movement towards realizing values of equity and inclusion;

then, we’re going to have very different sorts of policies, programs and practices. And, our roles as planners will also be very different. This latter type of practice is what I want to discuss with you today.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Advocacy planning

Advocacy planning developed within the context of the burgeoning popular movements of the ’60’s–foremost of which was the Civil Rights Movement and from which grew other movements. Of particular importance to advocacy planning were those primarily localized movements that focused on the urban crisis, and the student movement which demanded relevance in education to social issues, including those connected to the urban crisis. The ’60’s also saw the real cranking up of urban renewal which concentrated on renewing failing downtowns in order to save our cities (if not our people) and, somewhat later, developing some neighborhoods through gentrification while using other neighborhoods as the dumping grounds for the displaced.

Within this context, planners often came under attack by the community–and by students for that matter–because planners were often amongst the professionals that made the decisions that caused neighborhoods to be uprooted, that caused communities to be destroyed. Progressive planners and students began to look at which groups had access to professional assistance and which did not–it began to occur to us that in working for the interests that could afford to pay us–whether private or governmental–we were in essence advocating the interests of that group–in fact, we came to understand that all planning is advocacy for one set of interests or another. Pushed hard by students and by low-income community groups we had to recognize that even public planners didn’t operate in a neutral way, in spite of the avowed purpose of city, state and federal planning agencies to serve the supposedly neutral public interest. On the contrary, low-income communities in particular couldn’t depend on publicly-paid planners to represent their interests. Communities which were not part of the power bloc that elected and kept various politicians in office, communities which differed in terms of class, race, gender, whatever, from that power bloc, could pretty much depend on being embattled with public planning agencies.

Recognizing these contradictions, progressive planners across the country began to put their skills at the disposal of groups and interests which hadn’t previously had access to their services. Across the country advocacy planning groups sprang up like the San Francisco Design Center, the Architects’ Renewal Committee of Harlem, the Pratt Center and Boston’s Urban Planning Aid (where I worked for a time in the early ’70’s). In response to student demands for experience in grappling with real urban problems, these models were simultaneously extended into schools of planning and architecture.

The advocacy planning movement reached its peak in the late ’60’s, early ’70’s and had largely died out by the late ’70’s, at least in terms of being a movement. There are certainly aspects of the practice that have been institutionalized and people still practice as advocate planners, but without the sense of a movement.

In the movement we made some real contributions, the benefits of which are still felt. I would identify four:

• First, and most importantly, advocacy planning began to successfully challenge the notion of planning as a “neutral science,” as apolitical–removed from the political process. In my view, the break with this technocratic approach was incomplete, but this assessment doesn’t invalidate the importance of these first steps that advocacy planning took in the direction of recognizing planning as political.
• Secondly, advocacy planning made great strides in institutionalizing the notion of community participation in planning, at least planning in the public sphere. Today, nearly everyone in the US takes this for granted and in most publicly supported planning, at least lip service is paid to citizen participation in the planning process. But, this wasn’t always true, and it was something that had to be won. Although participation can be used in a negative way–as a smokescreen to obscure real power relations and agendas, the fact that we have a right to that citizen participation provides an important opening for struggle.
• Third, I would count the human legacy of advocacy planning as very important–many of us still active in community development work had our ideas and careers forged in the advocacy planning movement.
• And, fourth, the contribution to planning education. The approach to education that includes hands-on field projects with underserved groups is a direct legacy of advocacy planning. Advocacy planning is an important thread of today’s transformative community development planning–but, there were significant shortfalls in the vision offered by advocacy planning. Today’s debates on the US left about what planning practice should be are connected to these shortfalls.

Overall, we failed to effectively frame technical assistance in relationship to people’s movements in such a way as to build those movements. In my view, planning should feed organizing–it shouldn’t be planning at the expense of organizing, which was often the case in advocacy planning.

We didn’t sufficiently take into account how communities are situated in a larger societal and historic context. We didn’t often evaluate the direction of evolution of communities with which we worked, questioning, for example, whether a particular community was developing towards or away from realizing values of inclusion and liberation. Consequently, we didn’t effectively target our assistance to particular communities and issues.

We took groups too much at their own self-definition of goals; we didn’t work hard enough perhaps to expand the world view of oppressed people, to explicitly counter the ideological oppression which shapes the way in which people think. This populist/majoritarian approach caused us to choose short term victories over the slower process of building a broader vision of the good community. Particularly in working with white communities around their perceived interests, we ran the risk (and sometimes fell into the trap) of supporting essentially exclusionary and racist organizing. At best, the narrow vision of short term and expedient goals meant that groups with whom we worked frequently fell apart when limited goals were achieved.

We also failed to sufficiently expand our notion of what the field of planning includes–this meant a continuing focus on the product, often a physical product and tactics that related to that like producing alternative site plans or fixing up buildings…basically emphasizing the built product, not the movement. Often we didn’t change our planning methodologies at all from those we had been using in more traditional practice. We didn’t really retool for a new practice–we mostly just changed who got access to our services. The political act was in the choice of client, not in developing a different way of working with people–a new process of planning. This is an important area in which the break with the notion of planning as an objective, neutral science was incomplete.

This led us to have a confused notion of what participation in and control over planning decisions meant–did it mean that everybody was a planner? Or did it mean just a token participation at the fringes? We went in both directions, sometimes simultaneously. We didn’t figure out very well how to work in a way that created frameworks for meaningful decisionmaking while allowing organizers to be organizers, neighborhood residents to get on with their lives, and for us to be planners.

Our practice as advocate planners remained primarily representational, rather than participatory. Communities remained the object of planning and rarely did our practice assist their transformation into becoming simultaneously the subject and object of planning.

TRANSFORMATIVE POPULISM VS REDISTRIBUTIVE POPULISM

A comparison of two progressive approaches to planning and organizing

In important ways, the redistributive approach, as we describe it, is an unevolved advocacy planning. This contrasts to the transformative approach which, while it evolves from advocacy planning, adds many other threads from, for example, national liberation struggles and participatory action research.

Redistributive planning, although concerned with economic justice, with redistributing wealth, doesn’t seek, in the main part, to support organizing focused on the redistribution of power and it doesn’t aim to cede control over planning decisions to oppressed people. The model assumes that the repository of knowledge is in the planners. It’s “we’ll figure out what’s best to do and do it for you” not “we’ll help you do it.”

Furthermore, although redistributive planners frequently have a critical analysis of the structural nature of social and urban problems, they will support organizing that focuses on issues “where the people are at” rather than trying to take up some of the hard questions such as race. In part this is because the “where the people are at” kind of issues translate more readily into products that are recognizable as legitimate results of a planning process.

Redistributive planning rests on the assumption that community development will proceed incrementally through solving one problem after another and eventually this will mean a qualitative social change. Redistributive planners will often verbalize the same long range and overall goals as transformative or community development planners, but they concentrate on products over process and on efficiency in reaching product-oriented goals over mobilization and empowerment.

Both redistributive and transformative planners would acknowledge that there is a political nature to all we do and that all of our work has implications for the distribution of power in society and that there is no such thing as value-free social science. However, while redistributive populism reserves this awareness to the planner/organizer, transformative populism requires that the raising of political consciousness is a necessary corollary to any successful planning process.

Links to participatory action research

How knowledge is produced is a great mystery to most folks. Knowledge has become a product bought and sold. In general, ordinary people aren’t considered knowledgeable, even about their own reality. The research industry has become more and more specialized and hidden behind a technocratic veil of supposed “scientific method,” which effectively excludes laypeople. Conditioned to believe they can’t adequately understand their own lives and cut out of participation in research and analysis which might enhance their understanding, ordinary people often simply stop trying. And, in truth, people do often lack the information, skills and experience to critically understand the roots of their powerlessness. Their lack of information and their preoccupation with daily survival interferes with their understanding of how power structures work and affect their lives. Therefore, the oppressed often share the oppressors’ viewpoint, blaming themselves for their own poverty and powerlessness–essentially what we know as “internalized oppression.”

So, here’s a central dilemma for the transformative planner–finding a balance between assuming that oppressed people fully understand their own oppression and the planner does not, or conversely, that the planner fully understands the truth (or has the research and analytical tools to get at the truth) about people’s oppression and that the people do not.

The process of achieving this balance isn’t mystical, but it does require an ongoing process of evaluation of the actual circumstances in each community planning project undertaken. And, it requires a real commitment to community development as I outlined at the beginning of this paper.

Balancing the roles of the planner and the community

Correcting for biases, preconceptions and confusing preferences for correctness

Historically, planners have cloaked their preferences–typically those of white, middle-class men–in lots of big words and scientific method and called them “right.” That accounts for a lot of the most disastrous planning projects of the past and it continues today. If you’ve studied the early days of urban renewal, you’ve probably read some of the sociological, psychological and planning studies of the West End of Boston–the second massive clearance urban renewal project in Boston–generally conceded to be a disaster–an area seen as a slum by the planners, but seen as a thriving multi-ethnic community by residents. Who gets to say an area is a slum? (I should note that while the planners who did this were liberals, progressives aren’t immune to this type of narrow vision either.)

Several years ago, over a period of a year, I was in a discussion group every week or so with a group of homeless or previously homeless women. I learned a great deal that is critical of well-intentioned shelter policies. Many have a hard time understanding why, even in winter, some homeless people opt to stay on the street rather than going to a shelter. The homeless women are organizing themselves against the shelters–shelters which were developed by the most well-intentioned, even progressive, people, I’m sure. They also had critical things to say about the attitudes towards homeless that were reflected in rehousing policies–policies that implied that homeless people have no community, have no legitimate preferences in housing accommodations, that they should be grateful for whatever they can get. This comes from planners, however, progressive, focusing only on the housing unit and not on the sense of community and self-dignity of the homeless themselves. For example, a now discredited policy of the City of Cambridge was to rehouse Cambridge homeless several cities away in Lynn where there were cheaper and more units available. If a homeless person didn’t accept this relocation (and many didn’t), they were bumped to the bottom of the list–after all, they had been offered housing.

Successful transformative planning means extending our definition of the planning process to include a capacity building and education/outreach phase on the front end and an evaluation period on the back end. And, it means fighting for funding for this extended process.

In short, it means working with communities in a way that’s sensitive, supportive, inquiring and carefully analytical, challenging but not directive or patronizing. Although this may sound like “mom and apple pie,” it’s all too rare in practice.

This paper has been presented in various versions in lectures at Cornell University (September 1993), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (May 1993), and the Grupo Para el Desarollo Integral de la Capital, Havana, Cuba (July 1992). Published versions are forthcoming in  New Solutions  (summer 1996) and  Indigenous Planning Times  (fall 1996).

Marie Kennedy teaches community planning at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Community Development. Case Studies

Community development is a relatively new field of study that has been raising an increasing interest in recent decades. Phenomena arising from the globalization of the economy, especially in areas less prepared to deal with this new paradigm and which absorb the shocks of change more difficult, causes seeking ways of action to ensure sustainability, the sustainable community development. Fields of study related to community development are: Public Policy, Urban Planning and Development, Rural Development, Regional Development, Spatial Planning, Sociology, Community Psychology, NGOs Management, Public Management, Political Economy and Human Geography. A subject of practical relevance, Community Development extracts its essence from the multiple experiences of communities of different types and in different places, thus explaining and providing solutions to a broad range of socio-economic problems. The need to study Community Development in a Public Administration study program is more than obvious. The public sector is one of the most important actors in community development, as it governs and provides the institutional framework for the implementation of normative acts no community can back out from, no matter how high the degree of autonomy. Public authorities’ and institutions’ cooperation with other development actors, communities, the private sector and the non-governmental one, the agents’ understanding of sustainable community development processes, taking responsibility for supporting, assisting communities to produce their own development, represents the solution for a harmonious social development. Much of the development programs with a governmental, nongovernmental financing or financed by structural and cohesion funds, require the involvement of agents from the local administration to take responsibility for roles of animators, facilitators, development agents, or for guidance and control functions. Their knowledge of community development theories, of the concepts community development operates with, of working methods with community groups, of certain community development models, represents the condition to ensure administrative efficiency and to create bridges to reduce the gap between the administration and the citizen. The present paper is divided into six chapters and deals with topics that provide the theoretical community development background, but in the afferent chapters or annexes also presents cases and practical models that complement and ensure full understanding of the studied theoretical models. Chapter 1 is a clarification of the terms of development, community and community development in order to outline a specific language which would lead to less confusion. Chapter 2 presents some relevant historical landmarks of community development in Romania. Thus, the traditional forms of cooperation are described, the specific forms of Transylvania neighborhoods and the groups of community initiative in different historical stages. Chapter 3 deals with the necessary forms of capital for development and mainly describes and analyzes the social capital as a resource for development, both in theory and in practical cases. Community participation and participatory processes are explained in Chapter 4, within which community empowerment is then described, an important process of change from the passive citizenship to the active participation in community life. Chapter 5 presents a series of theoretical guidelines with reference to the intervention in the community, and then it describes the types of community development agents and the relevant practical experiences of our country and other countries. The last chapter of the paper is mainly practical and presents a series of applied community development models, providing case studies, relevant statistics and analyzes. The topics studied in this chapter emphasize the diversity of the ways of action, the possibility of innovation in the field of community development.

Related Papers

It this article the main approaches, theories on the terms "community" and "local community", as well as the role (place) of the term "development" in the context of "local community" are examined.

Professional : Jurnal Komunikasi dan Administrasi Publik

yenni rosana

Roma Population on the Peripheries of the Visegrad Countries- Spacial Trends and Social Challenges

Virág Havasi

The purpose of this essay is to trace the history of two communities and the undertaken community development initiatives in each, with their results and failures, through the example of two neighboring but very different villages in Hungary, both of which are characterized by significant Gypsy population. The sources of the information are in-depth interviews and informal conversations with the inhabitants of Tomor and Lak. We analysed the role of families and the labour market situation of the people in the success of community development and also the challenge in the life of communities regarding how to save the community as a community, while they are creating organizations and trying to get resources.

Cosmina Toader

In order to secure the proper development strategy, local governments in Poland should use appropriate instruments for strategic management of communities. A successful development, however, cannot exist without the proper identification and the strategic analysis of owned assets. However, development of local governments largely depends on development of subordinate communities. This is why adopting an appropriate approach, as well as active support of the very communities are essential. The aim of the article was twofold. First of all, the authors attempted to classify all the instruments, which may be used to facilitate development of local governments. Secondly, the authors tried to determine if local governments in the Kujawsko-pomorskie region are aware that they have such instruments at their disposal.

Lucrari Stiintifice, Universitatea de Stiinte Agricole Si Medicina Veterinara a Banatului, Timisoara, Seria I, Management Agricol

Carmen Dumitrescu

Nicholus Zaw

Elisabetta Di Giovanni

The paper presents the result of the action research project issued in Palermo (Southern Italy), in disadvantaged urban suburbs, methodologically based on the Kurt Lewin's field theory -that is a three-step spiral process of planning which involves reconnaissance; taking actions; and fact-finding about the results of the action – in order to develop the social participation and the social change. The principal aim of the project was the empowerment of participants, obtaining their collaboration through participation, giving them acquisition of knowledge for a real social change. 1 Rebuilding background: an introduction The most recent studies in the field of participatory project show how each action/intervention should be an expression of the target communities, project planning, in fact, implies to know the reality in which we work, where we act, with the ultimate goal of making grow sense of responsibility, power, skills and sense of community in subjects and defined contexts...

Mihai Lisetchi

Asian People Journal (Vol 5 No 1)

Dr. Md. Tuhin Mia , Jubaida Sakin , Jehan Al-Hamadi

The primary purpose of this article is to discuss about the community role in sustainable development and to expand understanding of the prospects for sustainable community development activity. This article explores the idea of sustainable community development and the type of development to improve the quality of life within communities. Authors identified that sustainable community development depends on community engagement and planning. The activities include meeting the social and financial needs of its residents while preserving and sustaining the environment's ability to support it. Based on that perspective, the article focuses on the role of community participation and community based planning for sustainable community development in an unprecedented variety of environments. Various studies have found on sustainable development policies and guidelines, however; there is a lack of mechanism tools to guide sustainable community development. Based on the secondary data sources such as books, journal articles, reports, newspapers, laws, policies and online documents, the study distinguishes between the difficulties of the environmental issues of sustainable community development and the local community contribution, and found that there is a clear gap between the protection of environment and the community engagement for sustainable community development.

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Social Sciences

Lucia Dancisinova

abir goldar

Dmytro Khutkyy

Hasan Al Banna

Koissaba Ole

An Introduction to Community …

Rhonda Phillips

Mahuta Menjor

Hon Abejamu

Developing Just and Inclusive Communities, Regnum Books

Ana Maria Niţu , Costin Adrian Cace

De Wet Schutte

José María Díaz Puente

Mohd Shakil

Edward Reed

Emiliana Mangone

inteligencia-territorial.eu

Mihai Pascaru

Firas Jaber

Dumitru Sandu

Development in Practice

Fana Sihlongonyane

John Devlin

Romanian Journal of Population Studies, XVI, 1

Alcides monteiro

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Skip to Main Content
• Media Center

Resource Library

Strategies for Sustainable Development: Case Studies of Community-Based Population, Health, and Environment Projects

October 18, 2006

Focus Areas

Family Planning, Maternal and Reproductive Health Social and Environmental Dimensions of Health

(October 2006) PRB, in partnership with nongovernmental organizations in the Philippines, has produced five case studies that document approaches to the implementation of integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) projects. Written by the project managers themselves, the case studies provide lessons learned from their experiences, and focus on issues such as partnering with local governments, engaging communities in participatory research, and developing advocacy strategies. See the table below for a synopsis of each case study and the key issues they address.

The interactive nature of the case studies, which include discussion questions, makes them ideal for use in a classroom or workshop setting (see information on the Teaching Guide below). Outside of a workshop setting, development practitioners and others who read the case studies independently may find new inspiration and ideas for their own work.

PHE Case Studies at a Glance

Strategies for Sustainable Development Teaching Guide

Trainers and others who would like to use the case studies to facilitate group discussion of the issues addressed in the case studies may wish to download the Teaching Guide, which provides general suggestions for effective facilitation, proposed agendas for workshops of differing lengths, and specific insights on each of the case studies that will help facilitators highlight key learning points. The Teaching Guide includes the following components:

• Overview: What Are Teaching Case Studies, and Why Use Them? ( PDF: 429KB )
• Tips for Facilitating PHE Case Studies ( PDF: 450KB )
• Sample Workshop Agendas ( PDF: 450KB )
• Teaching Note for “From Roadblock to Champion: PHE Advocacy and Local Government Executives” ( PDF: 470KB )
• Teaching Note for “Identifying Our Own Problems: Working With Communities for Participatory PHE Research” ( PDF: 470KB )
• Teaching Note for “Building Partnerships with Local Government Units: PHE Programming in the Municipality of Concepcion” ( PDF: 468KB )
• Teaching Note for “Enlisting Organizational Support for PHE: Perspectives From a Microfinance Institution” ( PDF: 464KB )
• Teaching Note for “Fhaida’s Journey: Promoting Population, Health, and Environment Interventions in a Muslim Community” ( PDF: 468KB )
• Download entire Teaching Guide ( PDF: 805KB )

These case studies were produced by PRB’s Population, Health, and Environment Program, with support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

• Log in - register

Where you are:

Community development

Community development is not new but it is increasingly being seen as an important element of delivering Putting People First by members of our learning community. In particular the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD ) approach which starts with identifying what communities have rather than what they lack is helping to increase capacity within communities to address their own needs. These case studies show a range of community development initiatives and how they are linking in with social care.

A range of community initiatives and approaches are illustrated here, which make a contribution to the transformation of social care. In some cases there are explicit connections between the initiatives and Putting People First, in others they have been developed for another purpose but make a relevant contribution and can be connected.

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

• You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
• You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
• You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
• A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

Lessons Learned from the Launch and Implementation of the COVID-19 Contact Tracing Program in New York City: a Qualitative Study

• Original Article
• Published: 29 August 2024

Cite this article

• Margaret M. Paul   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3281-6234 1 ,
• Lorraine Kwok 2 ,
• Rachel E. Massar 2 ,
• Michelle Chau 2 ,
• Rita Larson 2 ,
• Stefanie Bendik 2 ,
• Lorna E. Thorpe 2 ,
• Anna Bershteyn 2 ,
• Nadia Islam 2 &
• Carolyn A. Berry 2  

On June 1, 2020, NYC Health + Hospitals, in partnership with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, other city agencies, and a large network of community partners, launched the New York City Test & Trace (T2) COVID-19 response program to identify and isolate cases, reduce transmission through contact tracing, and provide support to residents during isolation or quarantine periods. In this paper, we describe lessons learned with respect to planning and implementation of case notification and contact tracing. Our findings are based on extensive document review and analysis of 74 key informant interviews with T2 leadership and frontline staff, cases, and contacts conducted between January and September 2022. Interviews elicited respondent background, history of program development, program leadership and structure, goals of the program, program evolution, staffing, data systems, elements of community engagement, trust with community, program reach, timeliness, equity, general barriers and challenges, general facilitators and best practices, and recommendations/improvement for the program. Facilitators and barriers revealed in the interviews primarily revolved around hiring and managing staff, data and technology, and quality of interactions with the public. Based on these facilitators and barriers, we identify suggestions to support effective planning and response for future case notification and contact tracing programs, including recommendations for planning during latent periods, case management and data systems, and processes for outreach to cases and contacts.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Explore related subjects

• Artificial Intelligence

Thompson CN, Baumgartner J, Pichardo C, et al. COVID-19 Outbreak - New York City, February 29-June 1, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep . 2020;69(46):1725–9.

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Paul MM, Conderino S, Massar R, et al. Evaluation of New York City’s Test & Trace Program for the SARS0-COV-2 Pandemic: Lessons Learned to Advance Reach, Equity, and Timeliness . A Report from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine Department of Population Health; 2023

Madad S, Cagliuso NV, Chokshi DA, Allen M, Newton-Dame R, Singer J. NYC Health + Hospitals’ Rapid Responses To COVID-19 Were Built On A Foundation Of Emergency Management, Incident Command, And Analytics . Health Affairs Blog.  2020

Thomas Craig KJ, Rizvi R, Willis VC, Kassler WJ, Jackson GP. Effectiveness of contact tracing for viral disease mitigation and suppression: Evidence-based review. JMIR Public Health Surveill . 2021;7(10):e32468.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Blaney K, Foerster S, Baumgartner J, et al. COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing in New York City, June 1, 2020, to October 31, 2021. JAMA Netw Open . 2022;5(11):e2239661.

Conderino S, Thorpe L, Islam N, et al. Evaluation of the New York City COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing program: a cascade of care analysis. BMC Public Health. under review

Harper-Hardy P, Ruebush E, Allen M, Carlin M, Plescia M, Blumenstock JS. COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing programs and practice: snapshots from the field. J Public Health Manag Pract . 2022;28(4):353–7.

Gale RC, Wu J, Erhardt T, et al. Comparison of rapid vs in-depth qualitative analytic methods from a process evaluation of academic detailing in the Veterans Health Administration. Implement Sci . 2019;14(1):1–12.

Article   Google Scholar  

Pratt B, Parker M, Bull S. Equitable design and use of digital surveillance technologies during COVID-19: norms and concerns. J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics . 2022;17(5):573–86.

Ruebush E, Fraser MR, Poulin A, Allen M, Lane JT, Blumenstock JS. COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing: early lessons learned and future opportunities. J Public Health Manag Pract. 2021;27 Suppl 1, COVID-19 and Public Health: Looking Back, Moving Forward:S87-S97

Woodward A, Rivers C. Building case investigation and contact tracing programs in US state and local health departments: a conceptual framework. Disaster Med Public Health Prep . 2023;17:e540.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Eliaz A, Blair AH, Chen YH, et al. Evaluating the impact of language concordance on Coronavirus Disease 2019 contact tracing outcomes among Spanish-speaking adults in San Francisco between June and November 2020. Open Forum Infect Dis . 2022;9(1):ofab612

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NYC Health + Hospitals (1007645); L.T). The funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Mayo Clinic, 5777 E Mayo Blvd, Phoenix, AZ, 85054, USA

Margaret M. Paul

Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, 180 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, USA

Lorraine Kwok, Rachel E. Massar, Michelle Chau, Rita Larson, Stefanie Bendik, Lorna E. Thorpe, Anna Bershteyn, Nadia Islam & Carolyn A. Berry

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Margaret M. Paul .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

(PDF 10.1 kb)

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Paul, M.M., Kwok, L., Massar, R.E. et al. Lessons Learned from the Launch and Implementation of the COVID-19 Contact Tracing Program in New York City: a Qualitative Study. J Urban Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-024-00898-0

Download citation

Accepted : 09 July 2024

Published : 29 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-024-00898-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Implementation evaluation
• Contact tracing
• COVID-19 prevention and control
• Public health emergency preparedness
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Information

• Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

• Active Journals
• Find a Journal
• Proceedings Series
• For Authors
• For Reviewers
• For Editors
• For Librarians
• For Publishers
• For Societies
• For Conference Organizers
• Open Access Policy
• Institutional Open Access Program
• Special Issues Guidelines
• Editorial Process
• Research and Publication Ethics
• Article Processing Charges
• Testimonials
• Preprints.org
• SciProfiles
• Encyclopedia

Article Menu

• Subscribe SciFeed
• Recommended Articles
• Google Scholar
• on Google Scholar
• Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Community-based resilience analysis (cobra) to hazard disruption: case study of a peri-urban agricultural community in thailand.

1. Introduction

2. study context, 3. materials and methods, 4. results and discussion, 4.1. study participants and their understanding of resilience, 4.2. preliminary identification of disruptions, 4.3. the disruption with the greatest impact, 4.4. community resilience characteristics, 4.5. trend or change in achievement of resilience characteristics, 4.6. pathways to resilience, 5. conclusions, author contributions, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

• Fantini, A. Urban and peri-urban agriculture as a strategy for creating more sustainable and resilient urban food systems and facing socio-environmental emergencies. Agroecol. Sustain. Food Syst. 2023 , 47 , 47–71. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Olsson, E.G.A.; Kerselaers, E.; Søderkvist Kristensen, L.; Primdahl, J.; Rogge, E.; Wästfelt, A. Peri-urban food production and its relation to urban resilience. Sustainability 2016 , 8 , 1340. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Padgham, J.; Jabbour, J.; Dietrich, K. Managing change and building resilience: A multi-stressor analysis of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Africa and Asia. Urban Clim. 2015 , 12 , 183–204. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Brenner, J.C.; Franklin, K.A. Living on the Edge: Emerging Environmental Hazards on the Peri-Urban Fringe. Environ. Sci. Policy Sustain. Dev. 2017 , 59 , 16–29. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Gottero, E.; Larcher, F.; Cassatella, C. Defining and regulating peri-urban areas through a landscape planning approach: The case study of Turin Metropolitan Area (Italy). Land 2023 , 12 , 217. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sahana, M.; Ravetz, J.; Patel, P.P.; Dadashpoor, H.; Follmann, A. Where is the peri-urban? A systematic review of peri-urban research and approaches for its identification and demarcation worldwide. Remote Sens. 2023 , 15 , 1316. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Gonçalves, J.; Gomes, M.C.; Ezequiel, S.; Moreira, F.; Loupa-Ramos, I. Differentiating peri-urban areas: A transdisciplinary approach towards a typology. Land Use Policy 2017 , 63 , 331–341. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mortoja, M.G.; Yigitcanlar, T.; Mayere, S. What is the most suitable methodological approach to demarcate peri-urban areas? A systematic review of the literature. Land Use Policy 2020 , 95 , 104601. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ekane, H.; Etomes, S.E.; Molua, E.L.; Assoua, J.E. Community Livelihood and Agricultural Techniques in Peri-Urban Farming in Cameroon. J. Resour. Dev. Manag. 2018 , 48 , 25–32. [ Google Scholar ]
• Song, B.; Robinson, G.M.; Bardsley, D.K. Multifunctionality and path dependence: Farmer decision-making in the peri-urban fringe. J. Rural Stud. 2022 , 96 , 64–77. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hakimi, F. Development potentials and sustainability challenges of peri-urban farming in the metropolis of Rabat (Morocco). J. Anal. Sci. Appl. Biotechnol. 2021 , 3 , 83. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rajeev, M.; Scherrer, C. Smallholders’ Challenges: Realizing Peri-Urban Opportunities in Bengaluru. Sustainability 2021 , 13 , 10160. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Malano, H.; Maheshwari, B.; Singh, V.P.; Purohit, R.; Amerasinghe, P. Challenges and opportunities for peri-urban futures. In The Security of Water, Food, Energy and Liveability of Cities: Challenges and Opportunities for Peri-Urban Futures ; Springer: Dordrecht, Germany, 2014; pp. 3–10. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gomes, S.L.; Hermans, L.M. Institutional function and urbanization in Bangladesh: How peri-urban communities respond to changing environments. Land Use Policy 2018 , 79 , 932–941. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Marks, D. The urban political ecology of the 2011 floods in Bangkok: The creation of uneven vulnerabilities. Pac. Aff. 2015 , 88 , 623–651. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Holling, C.S. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 1973 , 4 , 1–23. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Douxchamps, S.; Debevec, L.; Giordano, M.; Barron, J. Monitoring and evaluation of climate resilience for agricultural development—A review of currently available tools. World Dev. Perspect. 2017 , 5 , 10–23. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• McGrath, B.; Tachakitkachorn, T.; Thaitakoo, D. Bangkok’s Distributary Waterscape Urbanism. In Water Urbanisms 2–East (Park Books-UFO: Explorations of Urbanism) ; Shannon, K., De Meulder, B., Eds.; Park Books: Severna Park, MD, USA, 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jarupongsakul, T.; Kaida, Y. The Imagescape of the Chao Phraya delta into the year 2020. In Proceedings of the International Conference: The Chao Phraya Delta: Historical Development, Dynamics and Challenges of Thailand’s Rice Bowl, Bangkok, Thailand, 12 December 2000; pp. 461–499. [ Google Scholar ]
• Iamtrakul, P.; Chayphong, S. Challenges of sustainable mobility: Context of car dependency, suburban areas in Thailand. Geogr. Pannonica 2023 , 27 , 145–158. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sintusingha, S. Sustainability and urban sprawl: Alternative scenarios for a Bangkok superblock. Urban Des. Int. 2006 , 11 , 151–172. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Supatn, N. Industrial Estates, Ports, Airports and City Transport in the Greater Bangkok Area for Promoting Connectivity in the Mekong Region ; Bangkok Research Center, IDE-JETRO: Bangkok, Thailand, 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• Iamtrakul, P.; Chayphong, S. Factors affecting the development of a healthy city in Suburban areas, Thailand. J. Urban Manag. 2023 , 12 , 208–220. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Irvine, K.; Likitswat, F.; Sahavacharin, A.; Suwanarit, A.; Lertwarapornpong, T.; Chitwatkulsiri, D. The Agrihood Design: Valuation of ecosystem services for NbS visions in peri-urban housing estate development, Bangkok, Thailand. J. Archit./Plan. Res. Stud. (JARS) 2024 , 21 , 115–140. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Klinmalai, S.; Kanki, K. Neighborhood relationship measurement between newcomer and former inhabitants in sprawl areas of Bangkok Metropolitan Region: The case of Nonthaburi and Pathumthani province, Thailand. In Proceedings of the 49th ISOCARP Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 1–4 October 2013; pp. 1–4. [ Google Scholar ]
• Likitswat, F.; Sahavacharin, A. Landscape change analysis: Ecosystem services in the peri-urban agriculture of Bangkok. J. Archit./Plan. Res. Stud. (JARS) 2023 , 20 , 25–38. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Irvine, K.; Suwanarit, A.; Likitswat, F.; Srilertchaipanij, H.; Ingegno, M.; Kaewlai, P.; Boonkam, P.; Tontisirin, N.; Sahavacharin, A.; Wongwatcharapaiboon, J. Smart City Thailand: Visioning and design to enhance sustainability, resiliency, and community wellbeing. Urban Sci. 2022 , 6 , 7. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Irvine, K.N.; Suwanarit, A.; Likitswat, F.; Srilertchaipanij, H.; Sahavacharin, A.; Wongwatcharapaiboon, J.; Boonkam, P.; Ingegno, M.; Janpathompong, S. Nature-based solutions to enhance urban flood resiliency: Case study of a Thailand Smart District. Sustain. Water Resour. Manag. 2023 , 9 , 43. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Supharatid, S.; Aribarg, T.; Supratid, S. Assessing potential flood vulnerability to climate change by CMIP3 and CMIP5 models: Case study of the 2011 Thailand great flood. J. Water Clim. Change 2016 , 7 , 52–67. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Promchote, P.; Wang, S.-Y.S.; Johnson, P.G. The 2011 great flood in Thailand: Climate diagnostics and Implications from climate change. J. Clim. 2016 , 29 , 367–379. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Tariq, H.; Pathirage, C.; Fernando, T. Measuring community disaster resilience at local levels: An adaptable resilience framework. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 2021 , 62 , 102358. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Nara, P.; Mao, G.-G.; Yen, T.-B. Climate change impacts on agricultural products in Thailand: A case study of Thai rice at the Chao Phraya River Basin. APCBEE Procedia 2014 , 8 , 136–140. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Fakkhong, S.; Suwanmaneepong, S.; Mankeb, P. Farmer’s perceptions towards economic sustainability of rice farming in peri-urban area, Bangkok, Thailand. Int. J. Agric. Technol. 2016 , 12 , 1759–1772. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tsuchiya, K.; Hara, Y.; Thaitakoo, D. Linking food and land systems for sustainable peri-urban agriculture in Bangkok Metropolitan Region. Landsc. Urban Plan. 2015 , 143 , 192–204. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Dhian-am, N.-r.; Ubalee, C.; Sarana, W.; Suchairatanachoke, A. Large Agricultural Land Plot Policy Management Mangosteen Orchardists, Na Yai Am District, Chanthaburi Province. J. Soc. Dev. Manag. Strategy 2021 , 23 , 181–195. [ Google Scholar ]
• UNDP. Community Based Resilience Analysis (CoBRA): Conceptual Framework and Methodology ; United Nations: New York, NY, USA, 2014. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sharifi, A. A critical review of selected tools for assessing community resilience. Ecol. Indic. 2016 , 69 , 629–647. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• MacOpiyo, L. Community based resilience analysis (COBRA) assessment report for Zomba, Ntcheu and Nkhata Bay Districts in Malawi. UNDP Viewed 2018 , 7 , 46. [ Google Scholar ]
• Irvine, K.; Mische, N.; Bowles, J.; Koottatep, T.; Pichadul, P. Assessing water vulnerabilities: Successes, failures, and missed opportunities in a Karen Hill Tribe village on the Thailand-Myanmar border. J. Geogr. Environ. Earth Sci. Int. 2016 , 5 , 1–19. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Irvine, K.; Murphy, T.; Teang, L.; Lok, L.; Kok, S.; Chea, E.; Sovann, S. E. coli Levels Associated with Source Waters and Household Handling Practices of Potable Water in Peri-urban Phnom Penh, Cambodia. J. Water Manag. Model. 2024 , 32 , C511. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Likitswat, F.; Sahavacharin, A.; Irvine, K.N.; Teang, L.; Yi, Y.; Murphy, T.; Chitwatkulsiri, D. Enhancing Community Climate Change Resiliency and Environmental Quality through Organic Farming and Design Thinking in Peri-urban Bangkok. 2022. Available online: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fa-Likitswat/publication/367091653_Enhancing_Community_Climate_Change_Resiliency_and_Environmental_Quality_through_Organic_Farming_and_Design_Thinking_in_Peri-urban_Bangkok/links/63c12311a040272471495a9e/Enhancing-Community-Climate-Change-Resiliency-and-Environmental-Quality-through-Organic-Farming-and-Design-Thinking-in-Peri-urban-Bangkok.pdf (accessed on 10 January 2024).
• Saiyut, P.; Bunyasiri, I.; Sirisupluxana, P.; Mahathanaseth, I. The impact of age structure on technical efficiency in Thai agriculture. Kasetsart J. Soc. Sci. 2019 , 40 , 539–545. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Rigg, J.; Salamanca, A.; Phongsiri, M.; Sripun, M. More farmers, less farming? Understanding the truncated agrarian transition in Thailand. World Dev. 2018 , 107 , 327–337. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sheikh, Z.A.; Ashraf, S.; Weesakul, S.; Ali, M.; Hanh, N.C. Impact of climate change on farmers and adaptation s+trategies in Rangsit, Thailand. Environ. Chall. 2024 , 15 , 100902. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Bekoe, C.; Pansombut, T.; Riyapan, P.; Kakchapati, S.; Phon-On, A. Modeling the geographic consequence and pattern of dengue fever transmission in Thailand. J. Res. Health Sci. 2017 , 17 , 378. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rahman, M.S.; Ekalaksananan, T.; Zafar, S.; Poolphol, P.; Shipin, O.; Haque, U.; Paul, R.; Rocklöv, J.; Pientong, C.; Overgaard, H.J. Ecological, social, and other environmental determinants of dengue vector abundance in urban and rural areas of Northeastern Thailand. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021 , 18 , 5971. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Chareonsook, O.; Foy, H.; Teeraratkul, A.; Silarug, N. Changing epidemiology of dengue hemorrhagic fever in Thailand. Epidemiol. Infect. 1999 , 122 , 161–166. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Phanitchat, T.; Zhao, B.; Haque, U.; Pientong, C.; Ekalaksananan, T.; Aromseree, S.; Thaewnongiew, K.; Fustec, B.; Bangs, M.J.; Alexander, N. Spatial and temporal patterns of dengue incidence in northeastern Thailand 2006–2016. BMC Infect. Dis. 2019 , 19 , 743. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Economist. From Strategy to Impact: A Holistic Approach to Dengue Prevention in Thailand; Economist Impact. 2024. Available online: https://impact.economist.com/perspectives/health/strategy-impact-holistic-approach-dengue-prevention-thailand (accessed on 8 May 2024).
• Sapbamrer, R.; Chittrakul, J.; Sirikul, W.; Kitro, A.; Chaiut, W.; Panya, P.; Amput, P.; Chaipin, E.; Sutalangka, C.; Sidthilaw, S.; et al. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Daily Lives, Agricultural Working Lives, and Mental Health of Farmers in Northern Thailand. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 1189. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Andriesse, E.; Pham, Q.T.; Dinh, T.L.; Kongkaew, C.; Markphol, A.; Kittitornkool, J. Rural Livelihoods Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic: Farmers and Fishers in Thailand and Vietnam. In COVID-19 and a World of Ad Hoc Geographies ; Springer: Cham, Switzerland, 2022; pp. 1589–1607. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wannaprasert, P.; Choenkwan, S. Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on ginger production: Supply chains, labor, and food security in Northeast Thailand. For. Soc. 2021 , 5 , 120–135. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sirisupluxana, P.; Bunyasiri, I.N. Risk assessment and risk management decisions: A case study of Thai rice farmers. Bus. Manag. Rev. 2018 , 9 , 200–207. [ Google Scholar ]
• Khadka, D.; Babel, M.S.; Shrestha, S.; Virdis, S.G.; Collins, M. Multivariate and multi-temporal analysis of meteorological drought in the northeast of Thailand. Weather Clim. Extrem. 2021 , 34 , 100399. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Faisal, A.A.; Polthanee, A.; Promkhambut, A. Farmers’ perception of drought and its impact on a community livelihood in rural Northeastern Thailand. Khon Kaen Agric. J. 2014 , 42 , 427–442. [ Google Scholar ]
• Babel, M.S.; Chawrua, L.; Khadka, D.; Tingsanchali, T.; Shanmungam, M.S. Agricultural drought risk and local adaptation measures in the Upper Mun River Basin, Thailand. Agric. Water Manag. 2024 , 292 , 108655. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Otsuka, K.; Liu, Y.; Yamauchi, F. The future of small farms in Asia. Dev. Policy Rev. 2016 , 34 , 441–461. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Rigg, J.; Salamanca, A.; Thompson, E.C. The puzzle of East and Southeast Asia’s persistent smallholder. J. Rural Stud. 2016 , 43 , 118–133. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Thirapong, K. The large agricultural land plot program and the context of Thailand’s agriculture. J. Econ. Ramkhamhaeng Univ. 2017 , 4 , 49–64. [ Google Scholar ]
• Damrongplasit, K.; Melnick, G. Funding, coverage, and access under Thailand’s universal health insurance program: An update after ten years. Appl. Health Econ. Health Policy 2015 , 13 , 157–166. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Paek, S.C.; Meemon, N.; Wan, T.T. Thailand’s universal coverage scheme and its impact on health-seeking behavior. Springerplus 2016 , 5 , 1952. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Somkotra, T.; Lagrada, L.P. Payments for health care and its effect on catastrophe and impoverishment: Experience from the transition to Universal Coverage in Thailand. Soc. Sci. Med. 2008 , 67 , 2027–2035. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Pak-Uthai, S.; Faysse, N. The risk of second-best adaptive measures: Farmers facing drought in Thailand. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 2018 , 28 , 711–719. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Yi, Y.; Kim, N.; Ngoen-Klan, R. Design Thinking to Integrate Community Development and Product Innovation: Case Study of a Pandan Farming Collective, Khlong Sam, Pathum Thani ; Thammasat University: Bangkok, Thailand, 2021. [ Google Scholar ]
• De Wandeler, K.; Lo, A. Exploring Systems Thinking and Systemic Design: Insights from a Summer School Experiment Addressing Urban Health Crises. J. Archit./Plan. Res. Stud. (JARS) 2025 , 22 , 267810-1–267810-24. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ruangpan, L.; Mahgoub, M.; Abebe, Y.A.; Vojinovic, Z.; Boonya-Aroonnet, S.; Torres, A.S.; Weesakul, S. Real time control of nature-based solutions: Towards smart solutions and digital twins in Rangsit Area, Thailand. J. Environ. Manag. 2023 , 344 , 118389. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]

Click here to enlarge figure

Share and Cite

Sahavacharin, A.; Likitswat, F.; Irvine, K.N.; Teang, L. Community-Based Resilience Analysis (CoBRA) to Hazard Disruption: Case Study of a Peri-Urban Agricultural Community in Thailand. Land 2024 , 13 , 1363. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091363

Sahavacharin A, Likitswat F, Irvine KN, Teang L. Community-Based Resilience Analysis (CoBRA) to Hazard Disruption: Case Study of a Peri-Urban Agricultural Community in Thailand. Land . 2024; 13(9):1363. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091363

Sahavacharin, Alisa, Fa Likitswat, Kim N. Irvine, and Lihoun Teang. 2024. "Community-Based Resilience Analysis (CoBRA) to Hazard Disruption: Case Study of a Peri-Urban Agricultural Community in Thailand" Land 13, no. 9: 1363. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091363

Article Metrics

Article access statistics, further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals

• Icon Twitter
• Subscribe to our newsletter

• Agriculture and Food Systems
• Biodiversity Conservation
• Climate Finance
• Conflict and Governance
• Gender and Social Inclusion
• Humanitarian Assistance
• Infrastructure
• Natural Climate Solutions
• Natural Resource Management
• Water and Sanitation
• Where We Work
• All Resources
• Climate Risk Management
• Climate Strategy Implementation
• Monitoring & Evaluation
• Tools & Support
• Engage with Us
• Photo Gallery
• Climate Strategy

July 2024 Newsletter Recap: Climate Resilience

Did you miss the Climatelinks July newsletter? We’ve got you covered. Please find a recap of the July ‘Climate Resilience’ theme below. You won’t want to miss this short list of top resources and blogs from the month. Subscribe to our newsletter today. Do you want to contribute to the Climatelinks community? Send us a resource, blog, or event.

Climate resilience can be generally defined as the capacity of a system to maintain function in the face of stresses imposed by climate change and to adapt the system to be better prepared for future climate impacts. One of the high-level goals in USAID’s 2022-2030 Climate Strategy is to improve the climate resilience of 500 million people.

Fresh Blog Posts

How usaid supports and scales climate resilience.

USAID's 2022-2030 Climate Strategy aims to support and scale the climate resilience of people, places, ecosystems, and livelihoods vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The Agency is expanding access to climate information in decision making, increasing the climate resilience of key development sectors and services, and mainstreaming adaptation in plans and programs. It also employs nature-based solutions and engages the private sector in support of sustainable adaptation, including by mobilizing adaptation finance. 

Grassroots Project Jumpstarts Conservation Efforts in Mexican Countryside

Water scarcity and a hotter, drier climate were degrading the quality of life of residents in the small town of El Carrizal, Queretaro, Mexico . To address this, the town received a Peace Corps Small Project Assistance grant funded by USAID/Mexico to employ eco-techniques and technologies to advance environmentally conscious best practices and build climate resilience. The project constructed three rainwater collection cisterns, installed 10 solar hot water heaters, built two dry composting toilets, and created educational ecotourism signs. 

USAID’s Climate Strategy in Action: Cultivating Climate Resilience through Sustainable Ube Farming

In Palawan, Philippines , smallholder farmers face challenges to their livelihoods from the harsh realities of a changing climate. USAID’s Safe Water Activity is working to improve water security in water-stressed communities and support sustainable livelihood sources like ube farming. These efforts help both communities and the ecosystem become more resilient to climate change.  

Bridging the Gap with Parametric Insurance: A Path to Resilience in Developing Countries

With climate-related shocks and stresses increasing globally, economic losses due to natural hazards could skyrocket without efforts to invest in adaptation and build climate resilience. One potential solution is parametric insurance, which pays policyholders a predetermined amount based on the occurrence of a specific “trigger" event, like flooding or extreme heat. This allows the claims process to move faster and makes it less costly to manage.

Connecting Indonesia's First Large-Scale Floating Solar Plant to the Power Grid

The floating solar plant on the Citarum River in Indonesia is the largest floating solar plant in Southeast Asia and the third largest in the world. The USAID Sustainable Energy for Indonesia’s Advancing Resilience project helped integrate the plant into the country’s grid, allowing it to power 50,000 homes with clean energy. It is expected to reduce 3.1 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent through 2035, which is comparable to preventing 3.4 billion pounds of coal from being burned. 

Empowering Communities: Climate Resilience Through Locally Led Adaptation

In the face of the climate crisis, local people and communities have emerged as frontline responders, both experiencing and addressing climate impacts. Locally Led Adaptation is an approach that supports local people, institutions, and networks to lead decisions on how, when, and where to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The USAID Climate Adaptation Support Activity has developed two new resources to help USAID and its partners further Locally Led Adaptation in practice.

New Resources

2024 gcc standard indicator handbook.

The 2024 Climate Change Standard Indicator Handbook has the latest USAID and Department of State standard indicators for climate change and development. It includes definition sheets that outline each indicator's linkage to a long-term outcome or impact and includes the proper unit of measure.

An Introduction to Assessing Climate Resilience in Smallholder Supply Chains

This resource, designed for medium- to high-level decision makers in food and beverage companies, offers a working definition of climate resilience, an actionable process guide, and sample indicator framework for diagnosing climate resilience in smallholder crop-focused supply chains. Ultimately, this guidance can help companies translate climate risk intelligence into practical, operational strategies to build supply chain resilience.

Climate Adaptation Learning Activity Fiscal Year 2024 Semi-Annual Report

The Climate Adaptation Knowledge and Learning Activity (CALA) works to improve the quality and effectiveness of climate adaptation efforts implemented by partners of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. It does this by supporting the dissemination of learning and evidence related to climate adaptation programming. This Year 2 Semi-Annual Report provides a synopsis of progress made by the CALA Associate Award between October 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, and offers a description of activities planned for the upcoming reporting period (April 1, 2024 – September 30, 2024).

Climate Risk Management Spotlight

Regional, sector, and country risk profiles and greenhouse gas emissions fact sheets.

Climate risk profiles (CRPs) summarize the key climate stressors and risks most relevant to a Mission’s objectives. These profiles can help promote climate resilience, which is imperative in addressing the multifaceted challenges posed by climate change. Check out the recently added Resilience and Food Security CRPs from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. 

Call for Content

Share your events and resources or write a blog related to an upcoming monthly theme! Check out our upcoming themes to see if your climate work aligns:

• September and October: Just Energy Transition
• November: COP29
• 2024 Cross-cutting Themes: Systems Change and Locally Led Development

If your USAID-related climate change work relates to these themes, Climatelinks would love to feature your work and share your resources. Send us a resource or blog.

Strategic Objective

Climatelinks

Climatelinks is a global knowledge portal for USAID staff, implementing partners, and the broader community working at the intersection of climate change and international development. The portal curates and archives technical guidance and knowledge related to USAID’s work to help countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. 

Related Resources

Climate Strategy Webinar Series

Climate Risk Management Portal

Case Study: A Health Early Warning System to Reduce Extreme Heat Impacts in Senegal

Case Study: PEPFAR’s El Nino Response: Lessons Learned from Food Security and HIV/AIDS Crisis Funding

More on the blog, enhancing community resilience: addressing compound and cascading climate shocks.

• Dr. Jennifer Denno Cissé, Dr. Molly Hellmuth, Dr. Zarrar Khan

Building Effective Monitoring Networks: A Locally Led Approach to Fighting Climate Change

• Shannon Vasamsetti

The RISE Grants Challenge: Addressing Gender-based Violence in Climate and Environmental Contexts

• Jason Ocampo

• Shopping Cart

CASE District V Annual Conference 2025

Learning objectives.

• Explore key concepts and review best practices for all sizes and types of institutions through educational content presented by peer institutions in the region.
• Develop practical strategies that will improve and advance your institution’s development, alumni relations, advancement services and/or communications initiatives.
• Build a professional network through intentional engagement opportunities.  

Who Should Attend

• Advancement professionals at all levels of their careers
• Professionals in advancement services, alumni relations, communications and marketing, and fundraising
• Newcomers to the profession
• Executive leaders who would like to connect with their peer leaders across the region

Popular Searches

• Places - European, Western and Northern Russia

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  Google+
•  e-mail

 Page Top

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of country or topic discussed in the article. This constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from factsanddetails.com, please contact me.

Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

At michigan state university, user community focuses on the future of the field and fostering a diverse and equitable workforce.

The 2024 Low Energy Community Meeting (LECM) took place 7-9 August on the campus of the University of Tennessee Knoxville. LECM brings together members of the worldwide low-energy nuclear physics community to interact and discuss future plans, initiatives, and instruments. Over the course of the three days, 250 participants attended the meeting from 65 institutions and eight countries.

The LECM organizing committee includes representatives from FRIB, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), the Association for Research at University Nuclear Accelerators (ARUNA), the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), the Center for Nuclear Astrophysics across Messengers (CeNAM), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the FRIB Theory Alliance (FRIB-TA), and the FRIB Users Organization Executive Committee. FRIB hosted the meeting last year, and ORNL hosted this year. Texas A&M University will host next year.

LECM included plenary sessions, four working group sessions, and four workshops: Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) collaboration, Fission studies with rare isotope beams, early careers, and public engagement. 

The LECM plenary sessions featured presentations from the FRIB Achievement Awards for Early Career Researchers; a presentation on diversity and inclusion; Kairos Power’s Hermes demonstration reactor; and comments from representatives from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The meeting highlighted the status at major user facilities—FRIB, ATLAS, and ARUNA.

The 2024 LECM affirmation and resolutions stated:

Affirmation: Our community affirms in the strongest possible terms its commitment to foster a diverse and equitable workforce and to support and respect diversity in all its forms. Individually and collectively we commit to ensuring an inclusive and accessible environment for all and taking action if these values are not being upheld.

Resolution 1: The highest priority for low-energy nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics research is to maintain U.S. world leadership in nuclear science by capitalizing on recent investments. To this end, we strongly support: 

• Robust theoretical and experimental research programs and the development and retention of a diverse and equitable workforce; 
• The optimal operation of the FRIB and ATLAS national user facilities;
• Investments in the ARUNA facilities, and key national laboratory facilities; 
• The FRIB Theory Alliance and all its initiatives.

All are critical to fully realize the scientific potential of the field and foster future breakthroughs.

Resolution 2: The science case for an energy upgrade of FRIB to 400 MeV/u is compelling. FRIB400 greatly expands the opportunities in the field. We strongly endorse starting the upgrade during the upcoming Long Range Plan period to harness its significant discovery potential. We support instrument developments, including the FDS and ISLA, now that GRETA and HRS are underway. These community devices are important to realize the full scope of scientific opportunities

Resolution 3: Computing is essential to advance all fields of nuclear science. We strongly support enhancing opportunities in computational nuclear science to accelerate discoveries and maintain U.S. leadership by: 

• Strengthening programs and partnerships to ensure the efficient utilization of new high-performance computing (HPC) hardware and new capabilities and approaches offered by artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and quantum computing (QC); 
• Establishing programs that support the education, training of, and professional pathways for a diverse and multidisciplinary workforce with cross-disciplinary collaborations in HPC, AI/ML, and QC; 
• Expanding access to dedicated hardware and resources for HPC and new emerging computational technologies, as well as capacity computing essential for many research efforts.

Resolution 4: Research centers are important for low-energy nuclear science. They facilitate strong national and international communications and collaborations across disciplines and across theory and experiment. Interdisciplinary centers are particularly essential for nuclear astrophysics to seize new scientific opportunities in this area. We strongly endorse a nuclear astrophysics center that builds on the success of JINA, fulfills this vital role, and propels innovation in the multi-messenger era.

Resolution 5: Nuclear data play an essential role in all facets of nuclear science. Access to reliable, complete and up-to-date nuclear structure and reaction data is crucial for the fundamental nuclear physics research enterprise, as well as for the successes of applied missions in the areas of defense and security, nuclear energy, space exploration, isotope production, and medical applications. It is thus imperative to maintain an effective US role in the stewardship of nuclear data. 

• We endorse support for the compilation, evaluation, dissemination and preservation of nuclear data and efforts to build a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce that maintains reliable and up-to-date nuclear databases through national and international partnerships. 
• We recommend prioritizing opportunities that enhance the prompt availability and quality of nuclear data and its utility for propelling scientific progress in nuclear structure, reactions and astrophysics and other fundamental physics research programs.
• We endorse identifying interagency-supported crosscutting opportunities for nuclear data with other programs, that enrich the utility of nuclear data in both science and society.

The community also presented a statement on isotopes and applications:

Applied Nuclear Science offers many tangible benefits to the United States and to the world. The Low Energy Nuclear Physics Community recognizes the societal importance of applied research, and strongly encourages support for this exciting and growing field with funding and beam time allocations that enable critical discovery science that will improve our lives and make us all safer.

Rare isotopes are necessary for research and innovation and must be available.