Equity Insights
The Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Study (CHEERS) disrupted long-standing inequities by addressing historical land use and industrial activities responsible for degrading Lake Erie’s eastern shorefront and increasing climate vulnerability in an area already burdened by elevated poverty levels. By employing a community-centered approach that emphasized strong community partnerships and accessibility, CHEERS promoted procedural, distributional, structural, and cultural equity in its effort to improve shoreline resilience.
Specific accessibility strategies were employed to ensure genuine and diverse community involvement and input including the production of multilingual engagement materials suitable for all ages, offering diverse opportunities for participation and events appealing to a broad range of age groups, offering in-person and virtual engagement options, and visiting community hubs such as festivals and meetings to meet community members where they were.
Employing specific accessibility strategies such as the production of multilingual engagement materials and visiting community hubs to meet community members where they were, ensured genuine and diverse community involvement and input. Additionally, maintaining robust accessibility throughout project activities augmented the project's cultural equity, demonstrating an appreciation for the cultural diversity of the community and a commitment to considering the perspectives of each culturally distinct group in the restoration effort. Beyond fostering diverse community involvement and input, CHEERS collaborated with community development corporations to ensure that the project addressed a variety of community needs beyond lakefront restoration such as maintaining affordable housing and preventing resident displacement, instituting distributionally equitable development moving forward.
