Dallas, TX

An Integrated Approach to Resilience

The fourth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S., Dallas attracts metro-to-metro domestic migration from across the nation – and international migration from across the globe.

Nearly one in four Dallas residents was born outside the U.S., making the city among the most linguistically and culturally diverse in the nation. As a changing climate intensifies storms, flooding, and temperatures across the southern U.S., Dallas city leaders are ensuring that its growth is also sustainable, with intersectional plans designed to advance climate action, equity, and inclusion in comprehensive ways.

Dallas is hot in terms of its growth and economy – and unfortunately also its temperature. Among communities with a population greater than 1 million, Dallas is heating up faster than every other city in the country except for Phoenix. Yet Dallas can also get cold. In 2021, power grids across Texas failed after winter storms battered the region. Across Dallas and other cities in the state, millions of homes were left without electricity for days, creating hardship and loss of life in sub-freezing temperatures. 

Fortunately, the city has a plan – or rather, multiple plans – to meet both population growth and extreme weather, with a lens towards sustainability, equity, and inclusion. In recent years, Dallas has published a Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan, a Racial Equity Plan, a Resilient Dallas Strategy, and a Welcoming Dallas Strategic Plan under the auspices of the city’s Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) and its Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability (OEQS). 

The two offices work together almost seamlessly as they both report to the same Assistant City Manager, ensuring that the city’s environmental planning, social services, and cultural programming are all built with a lends of equity and inclusion. 

“We’re grateful that we have leadership that supports that connectivity,” says Cristina da Silva, who serves as the Welcoming Communities and Immigrant Affairs Officer for OEI. “All city departments go through a review of understanding how we’re prioritizing [historically underserved] communities and understanding how we’re preparing for future risks. There’s a really systemic approach to how we view equity.” 

“We’re grateful that we have leadership that supports that connectivity. All city departments go through a review of understanding how we’re prioritizing [historically underserved] communities and understanding how we’re preparing for future risks. There’s a really systemic approach to how we view equity.”
— Cristina da Silva, Welcoming Communities and Immigrant Affairs Officer for OEI

Championing Newcomers and Advancing Resilience 

“We’re making sure that as the city increases in population whether climate migration or otherwise – Dallas is a big business hub, lots of headquarters here – we’ll need to make the city more resilient,” says Carlos Evans, who heads the OEQS. “[Warming temps] mean we’re going to lose a lot of our coastal areas; the southern hemisphere won’t be liveable, so we’re talking about millions of people migrating north. We’re not sure how far north – we’re not quite sure if we’re talking about Dallas or Oklahoma or Ohio, but from the City of Dallas’ perspective, that means we’re going to be planning for folks coming here so we need to be planning for our systems to be more resilient.” 

Launched in 2018 as part of the 100 Resilient Cities program, the Resilient Dallas strategy has guided the creation of both physical and social infrastructure that will prepare the city – including its most vulnerable residents – to meet future changes and challenges. The plan aligned work around seven city-wide goals: promoting equity in city government; ensuring Dallas is a welcoming city to immigrants and all residents; increasing economic mobility for Dallas residents; offering reliable, safe, and sustainable transportation to employment and housing; promoting healthy communities; investing in neighborhood infrastructure, particularly in historically underserved communities; and advancing environmental sustainability.

Dallas understands that newcomer communities are often among those disproportionately affected by environmental risks, and is making efforts to prioritize these groups in the Resilient Dallas strategy and beyond. The city has a long history of receiving newcomers, including immigrants that pass through Dallas en route to other U.S. cities, refugees that have been resettled from all over the world, and people that have been displaced from neighboring communities by hurricanes and tornadoes. 

Dallas became a Certified Welcoming city in 2019, completing one of the actions outlined in the Resilient Dallas plan. The process involved a thorough audit process with Welcoming America, in partnership with the Welcoming Communities and Immigrant Affairs Division of the OEI, making Dallas the first city in Texas to receive a welcoming distinction. 

“Dallas has been a safe haven for refugees from all types of situations for multiple decades. We have a community that has already embraced the idea that we’re welcoming for a long time. It’s exciting to have overlap in Dallas not only as a welcoming city, but also an environmentally just city,” says da Silva. 

Building Physical and Social Infrastructure 

In the northeastern part of Dallas, the Vickery Meadow neighborhood – also known as the “Little UN” – is home to many newcomers, including newly resettled refugees. Half of the neighborhood’s residents speak one of an estimated 56 different languages other than English at home. Many residents are also identified as low-income, making the neighborhood a priority for city investments to ensure access to local services and boost economic mobility. 

“We’ve been focused on building infrastructure in our immigrant communities,” sayd Evans. “Vickery Meadows library is one of our shining stars when it comes to a city facility that has solar infrastructure and is energy efficient.”

The library, which sits on a once-vacant lot, has become a hub for community engagement, providing not only traditional library services, but also cultural programming, health fairs, and English classes. The carbon-neutral facility serves as a neighborhood resilience hub, part of a growing trend across U.S. cities to augment community centers and faith-based institutions to support resilience strategies like resource distribution, support emergency management services, reduce carbon pollution, and foster social connections. 

“That library has been identified as high need, so it is open for the longest hours, reiterating the need for sustainable energy,” says da Silva. 

Engaging Newcomer Communities

In Vickery Meadows and other neighborhoods across Dallas, community engagement is critical in both shaping and implementing the various plans crafted by both the OEI and the OEQAS. 

da Silva described a soon-to-be launched effort to create a Community Ambassadors program, administered by the OEI, designed to advance civic engagement in immigrant communities. The city will award grant money to local nonprofits who can nominate local immigrant community ambassadors.

“We’ll be strategic with ensuring those cohorts are language diverse and represent different community areas. We’ll be hosting a focus group to understand what are the key issues that are affecting [immigrant] communities,” da Silva says. “I will not be surprised when environmental issues come up – my hope is that as we identify those issues we’ll be able to tap into the relevant city departments and work towards solutions.” 

For its part, the OEQS sees an opportunity to tap these future Community Ambassadors to serve on an Environmental Commission (EVC), composed of community members who advise the Dallas City Council on the implementation of the CECAP. 

“Typically [EVC members] have a [background] in neighborhood and environmental activism. They’re known entities that are already involved in their communities – and so one of the challenges we have as we build out subcommittees…is making sure that we have appropriate representation from our immigrant communities,” explained Susan Alvarez, who formerly served as assistant director of the OEQS. 

“Identifying those leaders inside and outside of the city is critical. A lot of the work that we do, a lot of our new initiatives, typically come from community leaders saying, ‘hey what are you doing about XYZ issue?’ Having some identified cheerleaders inside and outside the city is critical because you need somebody driving, because otherwise this is in the too-hard pile.” 

“Dallas has been a safe haven for refugees from all types of situations for multiple decades. We have a community that has already embraced the idea that we’re welcoming for a long time. It’s exciting to have overlap in Dallas not only as a welcoming city, but also an environmentally just city.”
— Cristina da Silva, Welcoming Communities and Immigrant Affairs Officer for OEI

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