NAF DC: Book Presentation Luncheon, "Too Big - Rebuild by Design" by Henk Ovink, November 19, 2018

The Washington DC Chapter of The Netherland-America Foundation
invites you to

Too Big. Rebuild by Design:
A Transformative Approach to Climate Change

Luncheon with Presentation by
Henk Ovink



Monday, November 19, 2018
12:00 - 1:30 pm

How will society confront climate change? Faced with rising sea levels and more powerful storms, we all know that what worked in the past will not work in the future. The climate challenge is too urgent to ignore and too big to confront with our existing methods.

Too Big tells the inside story of the American federal response in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The late 2012 storm that ravaged the New York-New Jersey region revealed the true physical and social vulnerabilities that all coastal cities face from sea level rise and extreme weather events. It underscored the need for fundamentally different approaches to create more resilient cities and coastlines. President Obama took on this challenge through an innovative, inclusive design process called Rebuild by Design: confronting established federal, state and local practices, championed by Henk Ovink, the Dutch Special Envoy for International Water Affairs who joined the American recovery effort.

In this book, Ovink and Boeijenga, together with Rebuild by Design’s key partners, give a firsthand account of this process: building coalitions and creating innovative solutions by running an intense international design effort in the aftermath of a devastating storm. Analyzing the competition’s groundbreaking formula for bringing all stakeholders to the heart of resilience planning, Too Big presents governments and communities an approach to become more responsive, more effective and more prepared in the face of climate change.

Too Big addresses the urgency of a battle we cannot afford to lose, but also shows a way forward, informing and inspiring everyone who has the ambition to change the world.

Hosted by
VH Strategies
Potomac Conference Room
500 New Jersey Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20001

Entry
NAF members - FREE
Non-members - $15

Join the NAF, or renew your membership now!

Limited Capacity, Registration Required

About the Author
Henk Ovink is the first special envoy for international water affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He is also sherpa to the UN / World Bank High Level Panel on Water. He served on President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and was principal for Rebuild by Design. Before joining the task force Henk Ovink was acting director general for Spatial Planning and Water Affairs and director National Spatial Planning for the Netherlands. He was curator for the 5th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 ‘Making City’ and chief editor for the publication series ‘Design and Politics’. Henk Ovink teaches and lectures all over the world on water, climate change, design and politics and the urgency and opportunity to act, now.