Since the Resilient by Design Challenge ended, graduates from the “Designing Our Own Solutions” course developed as part of the challenge, continued the work together to advance resilience strategies.  They formed a steering committee and launched a new organization called The Marin City’s People’s Plan with seed funding of $250,000. The steering committee practices deep democracy in making all decisions and design steps. This organization will share permaculture and nature-based design trainings for community members, where participants will co-design green infrastructure strategies to mitigate flooding as well as create more food resilience in Marin City.  Steering Committee members are co-designing the curriculum and also co-facilitating the course. Participants will receive stipends for their participation and this in summer 202 will co-install a “resilient watershed landscape design” on church land that suffers annually from flooding. The work that the Urban Permaculture Institute in collaboration with Marin City community members and Shore-Up Marin completed as part of Bay Areas Resilient By Design has inspired a Community Driven Planning Process in Boulder, Colorado. 

Additionally, this past year, University of Berkeley professor Kristina Hill worked with community members from Marin City  to develop a “wet model” to demonstrate groundwater level for Marin City which, combined with local sea level rise projections, is a more accurate predictor of the effects of flooding in Marin County.  They found, for example, that only 2 feet of SLR may cause permanent flooding on Hwy 101, and block vehicular access to Marin City throughout the wet season. You can see students Camille Thoma and Sonia Soanes demonstrate how rising sea levels will cause rising groundwater, even behind a seawall, here.