Combating Climate Change Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The time of climate change is here and while the effects can be seen everywhere, our cities face unique challenges. Both new and old cities face serious impacts from more frequent, more intense weather, wildfires, droughts, flooding and extreme heat. Planners must face this challenge head on in their work to build resilient, healthy cities. However, it’s also recognized that climate change is an issue too big for any one industry to solve alone, while also being too important to delay addressing as a whole. Here’s the good news - we already have the solutions we need, and through interdisciplinary collaboration we can make a positive change.

Thankfully, there are thousands of global initiatives, institutions, and community-based organizations working towards the common goal of reducing the impacts of climate change. Whether that is contributing to the fight towards clean energy, clean waterways, green urban development, and so much more, every industry has a part to play towards ensuring that existing and future cities are a place where people can thrive.

For planners or other professionals working in the climate change space, there are successes and challenges - often both within the same day. While one project or policy can make great strides towards a more resilient city, others can bring what feels like the weight of the world down upon you. Spending 40 hours a week focused upon a crisis can take a toll, requiring practitioners to develop their own resilience to ensure they can continue to make progress towards a better tomorrow.
As the old adage goes, there’s strength in numbers - and that’s true here too. Collaborating with professionals across sectors, cities, and even countries to collectively approach the complex issue of climate change is key. After all, no single individual can be equipped with the entire toolset for addressing a problem on this scale. That’s why the Resilience Working Group within the Council for Canadian Urbanism (CanU) was formed.

As a working group that meets regularly to discuss climate change and its impacts on cities and planning, this collaboration has been critical to our success. Interdisciplinary discussions allow members to view complex problems through multiple lenses, expertise and experiences. Finding this diverse community who share similar concerns about the impacts of climate change has helped our group to find confidence, refuel passions, and build hope for a better future, one meeting at a time.

The Resilience Working Group consists of several diverse climate planning practitioners and other professionals, equally passionate about the critical state of our climate. Working across Canada in the private, public, academic sectors, our members have found true value in collaborating with other professionals to deepen our understanding of specific climate challenges. Founded on collective care for the planet, and largely expanding through word-of-mouth, we have been meeting monthly for the past seven years to discuss timely articles, climate policy progress, and to provide advice on best practices and practical solutions to our members.

On May 7th, 2026 CanU and OPPI will be co-hosting the Sustainability & Resilience By Design Workshop that will bring together new and experienced city building professionals, and students to learn about how we can plan our communities in the age of climate change. Attendees will hear frompractitioners and get hands-on experience designing sustainable and resilient neighbourhoods with case studies from real projects. Find out more here.

We hope that you will come and join our collective effort to plan, design, and implement future ready communities.

Lama Saidoun, BURPl
William Nixon, MES, RPP
​CanU Resiliency Working Group, Council for Canadian Urbanism