About Us

This website was prepared by students enrolled in the Allegheny College Junior Seminar in Sustainable Development (Environmental Science 585) in the spring semester, 2018.

The question we have been trying to answer is whether Meadville is a resilient community? Like most great questions, it is short and pointed and inevitably raises additional questions. First and foremost is - what does resiliency even mean when speaking about a community? Does resilience depend only on the ability to withstand shocks and perturbations?

Originally, community resilience was a measure of a town's (or state or country or maybe even the globe's) ability to withstand changes in climate. Analysis of a community's strengths and weaknesses for dealing with climate change, however, quickly required investigations beyond physical barriers to rising sea levels and decent storm water management schemes. Other factors mattered like the economic fortitude of the region, the kinds of jobs people held, measures of poverty, personal health, and gender equality. In short, an analysis of community resilience, even for a community as small as Meadville, meant a full-on investigation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2016 Allegheny College was a charter signatory of the Community Resilience Commitment organized by Second Nature. Second Nature is the same group with whom Allegheny signed its commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2020. The Resilience Commitment directs Allegheny to partner with its surrounding community to enhance its ability to move into an uncertain future with ingenuity and vigor.

The good news is that there are many Meadville organizations already dedicated to working on aspects of community resilience. The bad news is that there are many Meadville organizations already dedicated to working on aspects of community resilience. Which is to say no one is certain if the myriad government and non-governmental groups are working together, duplicating efforts, or perhaps working at cross-purposes. And do all our efforts add up to advancement towards a common but multi-faceted vision for our community's future?

We have done our best to paint the picture of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, overlaps, gaps, and inefficiencies. And then we searched for examples of cities that are already doing it well. Our goal in the end is to help plan for making Meadville a stronger community.