Designing our own solutions

as water is the foundation of life, so must it be the foundation of design and the built environment.

This is one of the lessons we learned through developing the People’s Plan for Marin City, a grassroots effort that has allowed us to develop a greater understanding of Marin City’s natural features, and of the threats ahead to our homes and way of life from a rising bay.

Marin City is a unique place within the more affluent Marin County. With many lower-income residents and a large number of people of color, our unincorporated community is worlds apart from our neighboring cities.

We have experienced chronic flooding for more than 75 years. Storm runoff regularly inundates the only way in and out of town, Donahue Street, as well as on our only connection to the rest of the county, Highway 101. With San Francisco Bay waters rising, things could get a whole lot worse for our residents, who have experienced generations of marginalization, isolation and exclusion, but who nonetheless stand proud and are eager to take charge of their future.

So when a team of designers, landscape architects and educators proposed a process to address the challenges of rising seas, Marin City residents welcomed them. An intergenerational group of Marin City residents came together to learn and brainstorm. ToJust gether we produced the People’s Plan that we hope to start implementing this summer.

We had heard many times that Marin City is shaped like a bowl, but we never understood the significance of that until now. Rainwater flows from the ridge into the bowl, then down into the town area where the churches, schools, shopping center, homes, apartments and the only entrance into and exit from Marin City lie, causing these areas to flood. When this happens, people cannot get to work or school, or get critical health and other needs met. Emergency responders may be trapped outside the community when needed the most.

A few times, flooding has been so bad

that southbound Highway 101 has been blocked, turning the freeway into a parking lot throughout most of Marin and Sonoma counties.

During an eight-week class that included workshops, guest speakers and field trips, the design team showed us how we can spread the water, sink the water and store the water. We mapped out areas that we know have flooding problems, then came up with solutions. We already are designing an intergenerational community garden. We are extremely excited about using terrace gardening, which would help prevent erosion along hillsides while providing vegetation, preserving open space, and allowing access for disabled residents at lower levels.

Our group desires to continue to learn and develop solutions for Marin City’s flooding issues — to do whatever work we can by and for ourselves. The biggest risk now is that we don’t want to fall into the pattern of getting people’s hopes up and then not being able to complete the projects. Marin City has a history of being placed on the back burner, which demoralizes our community members and makes them reluctant to step forward and trust the good intentions of outsiders.

We call on the leaders and residents of Marin County and beyond to join with us in continuing this investment in our communities. Learn from us, and invest in us.

June Farmer is coordinator of the Marin City CX3 Project. Terrie Green is co-director of Shore Up Marin. Pandora Thomas is the co-founder of Earthseed Consulting, which works to connect people of color with environmental solutions. All three are Marin City residents. Thomas is the leader of the P+SET Team, a multidisciplinary collaborative of designers and educators participating in the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge. The challenge is modeled on a public-private partnership created to design solutions for areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle. com/letters.