“Researchers from the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery (GOSR) and the Rockefeller Institute of Government of the State University of New York (SUNY) have released a study evaluating New York State’s planning efforts to reduce the state’s vulnerability to future disasters. Such efforts form part of the state’s adaptations to climate change. The study analyzed New York State’s “NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program” (NYRCRP), an initiative that uses a “Managed-Participatory” approach to community resiliency. The approach is notable for integrating bottom-up, community-based planning with a more traditional top-down, government-based method.In the wake of a series of major storms, including Superstorm Sandy, policymakers used the Managed-Participatory approach to assist 124 disaster-assisted communities to “develop and implement comprehensive reconstruction and resiliency plans through a unique combination of bottom-up community participation and state-provided facilitation, technical expertise, and significant financial support.” More than 1,100 storm recovery projects were developed through 650 committee meetings and 250 public engagement events. The study found that the state’s approach is unique in “facilitating the development of plans by harnessing local knowledge, resources, and capacities; supplementing it by providing technical assistance, data analysis, and consultation; and managing the scale and scope both of the process and the funds allocated for disaster recovery.” These findings came in part from a comparison of New York’s approach to community reconstruction to those used by Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The researchers characterize the state’s approach as “Managed -Participatory” because it combines the most important components of both horizontal and vertical integration planning. The approach facilitates the production of strong long-term recovery and resiliency plans by encouraging robust local participation and strengthening links between communities and policymakers. The Managed-Participatory approach also emphasizes the process as much as the final product, and the importance of working with the communities to propose the most realistic and implementable projects.”