Resilient Ready Tampa Bay

Award of Merit

2023 APA Florida Project Awards - Best Practices

About this project

The Resilient Ready Tampa Bay planning project was created to enhance the technical capacity of community leaders in the Tampa Bay Region to assess, plan for, and adapt to flood impacts through the expanded use of multi-functional green infrastructure and

resilient landscape designs. The project is an example of a multi-jurisdictional and multi-disciplinary collaboration to create replicable flood solutions for local governments and resilience practitioners. The project was funded by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection through the Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection’s Resilient Florida Grants Program (FY 2021-22).

In April 2022, the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and its local, national, and international partners convened a team of multidisciplinary professionals in three participatory design charrettes. The selected study areas for the project, the North Tampa Closed Basin (inland landscape), R.E. Olds Park in Oldsmar (estuary/bayfront landscape), and Pass-a-Grille in St. Pete Beach (barrier island landscape) exemplify the flood challenges and adaptation needs faced by local governments regionally, and the resulting case studies provide innovative design concepts, strategies, and resources to address them.

In June 2022, a symposium was held to showcase the project’s resources and support the replication of a charrette-style design process for resilience planning in communities throughout the region and beyond.