Community-led climate resilience at the neighborhood scale: examining multi-level impacts of a participatory planning process

Urban climate vulnerability is shaped by enduring legacies of racialized disinvestment and exclusion from decision-making. Advancing equitable resilience therefore requires approaches that are justice-oriented and participatory. Using a convergent mixed-methods design integrating surveys, interviews, participant observation, and document review, this study examines the multi-level impacts of the Climate Safe Neighborhoods (CSN) Partnership in Cincinnati, Ohio—a collaboration among city officials, non-profits, and residents of two historically underserved neighborhoods to advance equitable climate resilience at the neighborhood scale. Grounded in climate justice and participatory planning frameworks, CSN sought to build local adaptive capacity by fostering awareness of systemic inequities, civic agency, and cross-sector collaboration. Findings show that participants’ climate change knowledge shifted from primarily environmental to structural and justice-oriented framings—representing growing critical climate consciousness. Residents reported greater collective agency, expanded networks, and deeper involvement in civic and climate action, which supported resilience-building neighborhood initiatives and informed citywide climate action planning.