CRDS Milton Community Resilience Project

• Jackson Whitcomb, Landscape Architecture, University of Delaware

• Zachery Hammaker, Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Delaware

I have been working with the Coastal Resilience Design Studio this summer on a project in Milton, Delaware. CRDS is primarily focused on equipping coastal/coastally influenced communities with the tools they need to stay resilient for years to come. My group this summer consisted of six students including myself and two regular studio advisors. We started background research on the town of Milton back in the winter, and this summer began with continued research and analysis of the town. Our first week comprised a series of in-person engagements with the town itself, where we got to experience the town ourselves. From there, we engaged in both community outreach to better understand the town’s wants/needs and detailed internal analysis of Milton’s geographic, ecologic, and socioeconomic situation. The former of these two types of research I played a particularly substantial role in by actively participating in community events and putting together a community survey.  After presenting the results of our studies to the mayor of the town, we started initial design work. This consisted of brainstorming sessions followed by the designation of key focus areas to different members of our team. My share of the work was focused on connectivity interventions, which ultimately turned into an interconnected system of bike trails where Milton stands as the hub in the middle of them. Since then, my work has largely focused on the details of the trail network and how it intersects with the other areas of focus, that being stormwater resilience and downtown flooding/ecological intervention. The final few weeks of the project will be innovative in nature as we come up with unique and definitive interventions that address the many interconnected opportunities and constraints present in Milton, Delaware.