Arts Disaster & Crisis Preparedness Conference

Place-Making and Social Infrastructure: The Hazard Story
Moderator: Jeff Fugate
Panelists: Melissa Bond, Baylen Campbell, Tim Deaton, Stacie Fugate, Rebekah Radtke

Hazard, Kentucky has seen a downtown renaissance in recent years, anchored in place-making strategies that prioritize local businesses, livability, and cultural identity. These efforts are both a consequence of and reinforcing of social and human capital in the community. The 2022 floods floods brought into focus the importance of a viable community as a means of resilience and recovery.

This panel invites key participants in Hazard’s story along with UK Design faculty to discuss the time leading up to
the flood, the immediate aftermath, and plans for a more resilient future. Hazard’s trajectory began a decade ago with a small group of young people coming together as InVision Hazard, a volunteer organization committed to amplifying the best of the community. Through programming such as Thursdays on the Triangle, a summer live music event, the group demonstrated the viability of downtown. Capital soon followed with creation of the ArtStation, a home for the Appalachian Arts Alliance in a derelict former bus station. The City created a Downtown Coordinator position to drive investment. New businesses now populate Main Street and the surrounds, including a coffee shop, cafes, bars, a bookstore, and a toyshop.

The strength of the community’s social, human, and built capital is vital to Hazard’s ongoing revitalization. The same networks also supported Hazard’s role as a center for response and recovery in August of 2022. They were able to quickly set up a receiving and distribution center in a vacant store, assign responsibilities, and establish communication channels well before FEMA arrived. Meanwhile, other communities with less robust social networks have struggled to find their footing. Social infrastructure is too often ignored in disaster mitigation in favor of technical solutions like relocation or flood-control. Taking a different tact towards climate futures, Studio Appalachia—a project of the UK College of Design—has supported Hazard over the past three years to develop a strategy for climate resilience through community resilience. In lieu of the typical plan document, developed through discreet input sessions and largely driven by “best-practices,” Studio Appalachia has been intentional about relationship-building, iterative ideation, and co-design efforts to support locally-derived community improvements.