Office of Resilience

Norfolk is a historic city on the water. For 400 years, the city has been a key part of America's history, commerce, and innovation. We are known for resilience—surviving wars, a plague, hurricanes, and social upheaval. Time and again, we reinvent and rebuild ourselves. We recognize the challenges before us and are addressing them head-on with a conviction and passion that is unique to the people who make Norfolk home today.

At the core of our resilience strategy is a commitment by each citizen, organization, and municipal system, and by leadership from all sectors, to acknowledge our stresses and vulnerabilities and to work proactively to find solutions. Norfolk's resilience strategy is driven by three key goals:

Goal 1: Design the Coastal Community of the Future

Strategies: 

• Collectively create a vision for the city's future. 
• Identify and implement innovative infrastructure for water management.
• Redesign tools and regulations to achieve our vision for the future.

Goal 2: Create Economic Opportunity by Advancing Efforts to Grow Existing & New Industry Sectors

Strategies: 

• Create a multi-pronged economic development strategy.
• Nurture the city's entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• Strengthen the workforce development pipeline.
• Reinvest in and revitalize neighborhoods.

Goal 3: Advance Initiatives to Connect Communities, Deconcentrate Poverty & Strengthen Neighborhoods

Strategies: 

• Improve citizen access to information and services.
• Use technology to support and enhance community-building efforts.
• Connect people and facilitate dialogue that advances community-building efforts

Actions Supporting the Goals

The actions that support these goals and strategies are diverse. They range from developing the gold standard in resilient land use codes, to collaborating with global partners to innovate the next generation of water management techniques, to exploring new financing models like catastrophe bonds and social impact bonds. 

More details on these and other actions are available in the full strategy document:

• Norfolk Resilience Strategy (PDF)