Developed by working alongside community stakeholders, the Ivy City Climate Resilience Strategy is a community plan to reduce current and future risks of flooding and extreme heat in the Ivy City neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Overseen by the District Department of Energy and the Environment, the Strategy was developed in 2024-2025 through equal partnership between local community advocates, District agencies, and technical experts in landscape architecture, engineering, and planning.

Located in Ward 5 in the northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., Ivy City faces higher levels of current and increased exposure to extreme heat and flooding than the majority of the District, compounded by decades of displacement, gentrification, and environmental concerns. Significant impervious surface coverage and lack of tree canopy exacerbate neighborhood heat waves during the summer, leading to heat-related illnesses, with temperatures soaring up to 20°F higher than surrounding areas, as well as flooding from heavy rainstorms, tropical storms, or hurricanes. As a low-income, predominantly black community, rising housing costs put more families at risk of displacement, which increases the community’s vulnerability to climate hazards. Ultimately, the Ivy City Climate Resilience Strategy is a guide to better prepare the neighborhood for future climate changes and better protection from extreme hazards, creating a safer and more sustainable neighborhood.

The Ivy City Climate Resilience Strategy consists of a network of infrastructure projects to lessen the neighborhood’s vulnerability to severe rain events and extreme heat waves. The projects include proposed re-designs for streets and large parking lots, as well as improvements to Lewis Crowe Park, an existing neighborhood park, to address these climate challenges. The project team evaluated prior community planning efforts; assessed exposure, sensitivity and vulnerability for current and future urban heat and flooding; developed resilient street and resilient parking lot typologies, conceptual site plans and typical sections for the dominant urban conditions in the neighborhood, as well as conceptual design for Lewis Crowe Park, to illustrate how various tools for flood management and urban cooling could be applied in different neighborhood conditions. Each project element was co-created through multiple community engagement design charettes that guided the team’s development of designs to meet community needs and provide flood management and urban cooling for the neighborhood. In addition to reducing these climate risks, the proposed projects offer co-benefits such as improved recreation space, increased shade and biodiversity, lower summer temperatures, enhanced air quality, and safer streets.

An extensive community engagement process throughout the process was developed by community advocates, with support from the team of landscape architects, planners, engineers, and included multilingual workshops, interviews, and co-design sessions so that residents were directly involved in shaping the Strategy to guide future investment for climate resilience solutions in the Ivy City neighborhood.