Charlottesville PC gets first look at draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan

There has been a lot of planning activity in Charlottesville since the City Council established both a climate action program and an energy management program in 2008. Two years before, the city became a signatory to the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement.

In recent years, work has turned toward getting the community prepared for hotter temperatures and more powerful storms. On October 13, the city planning Commission got the first look at the Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan, also known as Resilient Together.

“Charlottesville’s been acting on climate for 20 years now, which is really wonderful,” said Emily Irvine, the city’s climate program manager. “But the direct line to our draft resilience plan really started in 2017 with the city’s commitment to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.”

Resources for this story

• Staff Report – Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan
• Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan Hyperlink
• Draft Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan PC Presentation 10.13.2026

The adaptation and resilience plan is separate from the Climate Action Plan adopted in 2023 but has been developed as a companion piece in conjunction with work being done by Albemarle County and the University of Virginia.

Irvine said resilience is about changing the way things are done in order to adapt to new conditions.

“Take extreme heat, for example,” Irvine said. “We may be experiencing an acute heat wave event where it’s maybe over 100 degrees for a few days in a row. And then we also experience that as a more chronic stressor. You know, it’s almost mid-October. It’s supposed to be 88 degrees tomorrow. It was 90 degrees one day last week. So our ecosystems don’t really know what to do with that. That’s having an impact on our local systems as well.”

Irvine said that means a need for more shady places and to make sure there is enough water. The regional work was to have been coordinated using a federal grant but that was a casualty of a Presidential administration who canceled many projects approved under the previous one.

“Negotiating the federal grant with the government and then getting all that underway took some time,” Irvine said. “So, the work was really just getting underway when then in March of 2025, the grant was canceled. So, that has presented a challenge and a setback, and it has slowed down the timeline of the project. And I just— I’m really grateful to the organizations that were able to stick with us.”

The final draft has sixteen strategy areas ranging from Biodiversity to Wildlife & Smoke Preparedness. Each has an “implementation roadmap” and the one for “Urban Heat” has seven specific projects.

The first is to support other plans such as the forthcoming Urban Forest Management Plan and the seventh is to find resources for the Urban Forest Management Plan.

“We’re going to have to undertake

City Council will have a work session on the draft plan on November 16. In the meantime, the city has launched a new section of the Connect Charlottesville page and is taking public comment on the plan.

There’s even a video:

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