Disaster Mitigation Act at Twenty

Posted on October 21, 2020 by admin

When a law makes a powerful impact over time, it is sometimes hard to remember what life was like before it was enacted. In U.S. history, for example, both Social Security and, later, Medicare, created a new reality for the elderly that makes it almost impossible for most people to imagine what old age meant before they took effect. They are so much a part of the fabric of American life that some people even forget (or never learn) the social and political debates that produced them. That sort of obtuse amnesia was in evidence as Tea Party protests materialized in response to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in which some carried signs that read, “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare.” Ponder that conundrum for a while.

Few laws match the scale of impact of those two examples, but many have significant impacts that receive less attention, at least among the general public. One that is reaching its twentieth anniversary is the Disaster Mitigation Act (DMA), signed into law by President Clinton on October 30, 2000. After a decade of expensive disasters in the 1990s—Hurricane Andrew (1992), the Midwest floods (1993), the Northridge earthquake (1994), and Hurricanes Fran (1996) and Floyd (1997)—Congress realized that the nation needed greater accountability from states and local governments in addressing hazard mitigation challenges before disasters occurred. The carrot and the stick were combined in this instance in a requirement that states (including territories and the District of Columbia) and local and tribal governments prepare and adopt hazard mitigation plans that won the approval of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as meeting the standards of the act and its accompanying regulations as a condition of eligibility for FEMA hazard mitigation grants. Put simply, no plan, no money. Few state and local officials wish to find themselves in that position after a major disaster.

Congress went one step further. Previously, most such grants came through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), created under the Stafford Act in 1988, the basic law structuring the federal disaster response system, under which every state has some sort of parallel emergency management agency. The problem with HMGP has always been that the money is made available as part of a presidential disaster declaration, using a percentage of overall disaster assistance to determine the amount available. That money goes to the affected states, which are responsible for local allocations. But that means that a state must experience a natural disaster to be eligible for such money. Admittedly, it then becomes useful for mitigating future disasters, but it did nothing to avert the most recent event. In fact, communities that had become adept at mitigating hazards with their own resources often complained that they got no federal assistance because they were doing too good a job of preventing losses. Davenport, Iowa, for example, long ago refused Army Corps offers to build levees along the Mississippi River and opted for a riverfront park that allowed the water to flow without damaging buildings in its downtown. Davenport has not always avoided flood impacts, but it has certainly minimized them.

In DMA, Congress added a new Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) grant program. Instead of being triggered by disaster declarations, it was an annual grant competition, in which state and local governments submitted proposals for projects that would reduce losses of life and property in future events. Its major flaw was that PDM relied on annual congressional appropriations, which predictably ebbed and flowed and often was grossly underfunded. In 2018, in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, Congress finally opted to stabilize funding by creating a formula by which six percent of total annual disaster relief outlays would be swept into a single pot by FEMA for grants under a new program that FEMA has labeled Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC), which I discussed in a post here in early August. The resulting 2020 grant funds total roughly $500 million, a far cry from years past when the total congressional allocation was often as little as $25 million, which barely put a dent in the mitigation needs of a nation as vast as the U.S.

But the real question after two decades is, How has DMA changed the landscape of American planning and disaster management? Clearly, we have not solved all problems. For one thing, climate change has accelerated and complicated matters significantly. While Congress unquestionably has dithered a great deal on climate issues, DMA was never aimed directly at climate change. Instead, it aimed to create a climate of state, tribal and local responsibility and accountability for planning for hazard mitigation while making federal funding available to support such planning. In fact, federal assistance for such planning is built into the law. Have governments responded?

DMA timeline produced by FEMA, reused from FEMA website. To expand, click here.

The unequivocal answer is yes. By 2002, once FEMA had finalized its guidance for the mitigation planning process, Clackamas County, Oregon, became the first local jurisdiction to win approval for its plan. Within a few years, every state and territory had an approved plan in place. Winning compliance from most local jurisdictions understandably took longer, but today FEMA can claim that more than 23,000 local units of government have approved plans, as do 239 tribal governments, which together cover more than 84 percent of the U.S. population. The gaps in coverage are primarily in rural areas, many of which suffer from low governmental capacity—a subject that can still be addressed in future outreach by FEMA—and some of which simply choose not to plan, presumably not seeing the consequences as outweighing the burden of the work involved.

In the meantime, many professional and intergovernmental associations have done considerable outreach to their own members to explain the benefits of hazard mitigation planning beyond simple eligibility for grants. For example, during my tenure at the American Planning Association, we used a FEMA contract to produce a Planning Advisory Service Report on the benefits of integrating such planning throughout the local planning process, including comprehensive plans, capital improvements programming, and the land-use regulations that implement mitigation intentions, such as zoning, floodplain management, and subdivision ordinances. We published Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning in 2010. The concept of integrated planning has enjoyed significant increased attention throughout the second decade of DMA and has become a staple of FEMA guidance for local hazard mitigation planning.

There are many ways to review this history, which may even be worth an entire book. As for what we have achieved, the Natural Hazards Center, based at the University of Colorado, asked me to moderate a webinar on October 13. “The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000: Twenty Years of Promise, Pitfalls, and Progress from a Planning Perspective,” in which I was joined by three experienced and insightful panelists from state, county, and federal government, provides a fast-paced, one-hour summary of the successes, shortcomings, and future challenges of DMA as part of the Center’s Making Mitigation Work webinar series, and the recorded version is available at the link above. I thank NHC Director Lori Peek for having invited me to lead this discussion.

Make it your DMA anniversary experience. Trust me, it will be worth your time.

Jim Schwab

One BRIC at a Time

Posted on August 20, 2020 by admin

One of the long-standing questions concerning national disaster policy is why a state or community needs to suffer a presidentially declared disaster in order to be eligible for federal hazard mitigation grants to help improve its resilience against storms, floods, earthquakes, and wildfires, or other possible calamities. Ever since passage of the Stafford Act in 1988, most or all federal support for hazard mitigation projects has depended on a disaster happening first, which then triggered a spigot of grants for risk-reduction projects under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It was almost a perverse twist on the famous alleged Willie Sutton justification for robbing banks. Why suffer a major natural disaster? Because that’s where the money is.

But not necessarily any longer. FEMA’s new Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program is a major new source of money available on a competitive basis through applications from local governments seeking to reduce risk through hazard mitigation projects. Over the last two years, FEMA has shaped BRIC, responded to public and stakeholder feedback on its plans, and finally, released those plans earlier this summer, followed in early August by release of its Notice of Funding Opportunity for states and communities. Those jurisdictions can apply between late September and January 29, 2021, the deadline for submitting proposals. Importantly, the program continues FEMA’s decade-long march toward encouraging the integration of hazard mitigation planning throughout a community’s entire range of plans to ensure a more holistic approach with a better prospect of effective implementation. This policy dates back to a seminal 2010 report by the American Planning Association and beyond, but it is good to see it reinforced.

Breaking New Ground

BRIC began with provisions in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA), passed by Congress in 2018 as part of a larger bill that primarily reauthorized the Federal Aviation Authority but included miscellaneous additional measures dealing with disaster policy and sports medicine. Of such bargaining are sausages made in the Capitol, but the specific provisions authorizing what FEMA chose to label BRIC were born of years of complaints and frustration among disaster professionals about sporadic and inconsistent federal funding for hazard mitigation projects before instead of after disasters. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 authorized a Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) program, but for the past two decades its funding has relied on the whims of Congress. In some years, that provided as little as $25 million for a national competition. Sometimes the threat of termination hung over the program. Such minuscule funding produced both inconsistent results and great uncertainty from year to year among potential grant recipients. Almost no one was happy with the program. BRIC now replaces PDM.

Under Section 1234 of DRRA, Congress authorized a new pre-disaster hazard mitigation grant program that would no longer rely on annual congressional allocations but instead will use an annual calculation of 6 percent of annual post-disaster funding for relief from presidentially declared disasters. FEMA will determine that number from estimates six months afterwards, and annually transfer those dollars into the BRIC fund. For Fiscal Year 2020, that will amount to $500 million, of which $33.6 million will be directly allocated to the 50 states, District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. A separate $20 million set-aside will fund tribal governments for BRIC grants. The remaining $446.4 million are available through the new national grant competition. That amount far exceeds any annual allocations from Congress for PDM. While DRRA states that this money is available to states with presidential disaster declarations in the previous seven years before a specific grant opportunity, in fact, all states and territories currently qualify under that criterion.

Antelope Valley flood reduction project, Lincoln, Nebraska

A FEMA fact sheet makes clear that BRIC also establishes new priorities for this assistance by providing incentives for:

public infrastructure projects;
projects that mitigate risk to one of more lifelines;
projects that incorporate nature-based solutions; and
adoption and enforcement of modern building codes.

I will return to these goals later in this post because all are important and some deserve further explanation. It is worth noting, however, that much of the new focus grew out of extensive stakeholder feedback as FEMA solicited input, and that feedback is documented in a separate FEMA report.

FEMA has also undertaken an extensive education effort to ensure that potential applicants are well informed on their options for grant proposals. The agency produced a series of five weekly one-hour webinars in July, some of which, in my opinion, are distinctly more informative than others. But their utility may vary with the existing knowledge and experience of those watching, so what is clear to me may be new to others. The best, again in my opinion, detail issues connected with the last three goals in the bullet list above. All were recorded and are available online.

Using BRIC Funds

The very first BRIC webinar spelled out the guiding principles for the new program, which are designed to support community capability and capacity building:

encourage and enable innovation
promote partnerships
enable large infrastructure and projects
maintain flexibility
provide consistency

The clarity of priorities, focus on building local capacity for hazard mitigation, and streamlining of grant processes, among other factors, outline major differences from the previous PDM program, which suffered from inconsistencies that stemmed in large part from the erratic nature of its funding. The emphasis in selecting projects for support will turn toward their potential for risk reduction, innovation in planning and implementation, focus on addressing future climate, development, and demographic conditions, and support of community lifelines, among other factors as well as considering the types of populations affected by the projects and the partnerships and outreach outlined in the proposals.

Also important is that DRRA provided BRIC with a broad mandate for supporting the local adoption and enforcement of modernized building codes to better address protection against natural hazards. The new law also empowers FEMA to use BRIC to support technical assistance to communities, as well as reimbursing pre-award costs, that is, money expended for project development costs prior to grant approval, so long as the project is ultimately funded. Previously, communities could only use grant money for expenses incurred once the project had begun.

DRRA also expressed specific support for wildfire and wind hazard mitigation initiatives in Section 1205 and earthquake early warning systems in Section 1233. Projects addressing these types of mitigation will have clear support for BRIC funding approval as a result.

Building Codes

Section 1206 of DRRA addresses the need to provide stronger mitigation grant support for projects advancing the adoption of building codes that mitigate natural hazards. Codes adopted by local governments using BRIC grant support must conform to the latest published codes promulgated by organizations like the International Codes Council, which maintains a library of digital codes at the linked site. Permissible activities in this area under the BRIC guidelines include evaluation of the adoption or implementation of new codes in reducing risk; the enhancement of existing adopted codes; and the improvement of work force skills among the enforcement staff.

Building codes have assumed an increasing importance with the realization over many years of their cost-effectiveness in reducing losses. Despite residual resistance in some quarters to increased regulation through such codes, they are a clear asset in the hazard mitigation toolbox. The earthquake that struck Anchorage, Alaska, in November 2018 provided abundant illustration of the merits of mandatory building codes with dramatically shrunken damages compared to the 1964 earthquake that shattered much of the city. Likewise, experience in Florida has shown that stronger codes with adequate enforcement has driven down losses. Following the stark realities exposed by Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana adopted mandatory statewide building codes in 2006. Many other examples of improved building codes are readily available, pertaining not only to earthquake and hurricane wind damage but to wildfires and other hazards that can be mitigated through better building standards. Building and landscaping codes can be enhanced with design manuals and other outreach to builders and the public, such as the ignition-resistant design manual produced by the city of Colorado Springs, which has faced and learned from repeated wildfire events.

Grant applicants have other resources to which they can turn for information and support on building practices, including the BuildStrong Coalition, the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research entity supported by the insurance industry that includes test laboratories for determining the efficacy of various building materials and approaches. FEMA also has web-based resources on building codes.

Community and Infrastructure Lifelines

The concept of lifelines in a hazard mitigation context may be new to some, though the name itself is intuitively simple. Simply put, lifelines are important community services that exist to alleviate threats to life and property. Emergency managers have long used the term “critical facilities” to refer to those buildings and structures that must survive disaster impacts in order to provide continuous essential services such as transportation, public safety, shelter, and power to a community. But lifelines are more than physical assets; they are also systems that must be able to continue to function in an emergency or disaster. In BRIC, these are now the targets of focused mitigation projects, which can include efforts to strengthen and build the resilience of any systems and institutions within seven categories:

safety and security;
food, water, and shelter;
health and medical;
energy;
communications;
transportation;
hazardous materials

FEMA introduced the concept of community lifelines in the fourth edition of the National Response Framework. The FEMA website includes a free download of its Community Lifelines Toolkit. Basically, the idea is to allow BRIC grants to support projects that reduce risk to these lifelines and help stabilize them quickly after a disaster occurs. These can include stormwater management projects, tsunami safety measures, infrastructure safety upgrades, and retrofits to essential buildings such as hospitals and shelters.

Nature-based Solutions

I will admit that, to me, some of the most intriguing initiatives within BRIC may focus on supporting green infrastructure, which is essentially what FEMA is labeling nature-based solutions. The central idea is to use the natural ecosystem services within a community or region to ameliorate the impacts of natural hazards by letting nature do what nature has always done best. FEMA has shown similar fascination with the concept by issuing a 30-page guide for local communities that outlines what these solutions can look like and how they function. These approaches have gained popularity in part as a response to climate change, but they are larger than that because they often address at least part of the problems associated with flooding and sea-level rise at less cost, often significantly less cost, than “gray” infrastructure or engineered structural solutions. In the final BRIC webinar, Sarah Murdock, Director of Climate Resilience Policy for The Nature Conservancy, noted that coastal wetlands had prevented an estimated $625 million in property damage during Hurricane Sandy. In various states

River restoration along St. Vrain River after 2013 Colorado floods

and cities, nature-based solutions have included green roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavements, living shorelines, and a growing array of other innovative design solutions to long-standing problems like stormwater management, urban heat islands, building energy demand, and urban flooding.

A great deal of research, case study documentation, and tool development has occurred in recent years with respect to nature-based solutions. For instance, Digital Coast, a program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, features tools such as the State of High Tide Flooding and Annual Outlook, the Climate Resilience Toolkit, and the Climate Explorer. NOAA also provides a variety of other technical assistance, for instance, through Regional Climate Centers and Sea Grant College Programs. Many states provide their own research and technical assistance, for example, through state climatologists, represented collectively the American Association of State Climatologists. Urban planners can access additional design ideas through the American Planning Association publication Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has provided its own online atlas called Engineering with Nature that discusses the multiple benefits of these approaches. Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the stellar contribution of The Nature Conservancy with its web-based resource, Naturally Resilient Communities, an effort to which I can proudly claim to have contributed during my tenure at APA.

Outlook

The most promising feature of BRIC is that, because it was authorized by Congress in DRRA with a secure source of ongoing annual funding, it is not dependent on the shifting whims of presidential administrations. It has a solid chance of building an effective constituency among grant recipients pursuing projects that are highly likely over time to demonstrate their own worth so long as the program is administered with an eye to its goals and fundamental objectives. I am not trying here to be encyclopedic but to provide an entry point to the range of resources and possibilities that community applicants and advocates can use to ensure the success of BRIC. Given the steady rise in the costs of natural disasters, driven in part by climate change but also by demographic shifts and public policy decisions, making a difference by helping to drive down such costs is a national necessity. BRIC opens a new door toward wise investments to help achieve this goal. This nation needs some creative disaster problem solving backed by new resources.

Jim Schwab

Plotting Post-Pandemic Recovery

Posted on July 20, 2020 by admin

Photo by Carolyn Torma

In recent years, the development of local or regional recovery plans following major natural disasters has become increasingly common. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has long encouraged such planning, and I led the production of two major FEMA-funded reports from the American Planning Association on the topic—Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction (PAS 483/484, 1998) and Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation (PAS 576, 2014). I’ve spoken repeatedly on the topic, trained planners, and valued the collective knowledge of the two teams we assembled to make those projects happen. The underlying idea is to help a community assess its losses, reassess its goals, and find the silver lining in the dark cloud of the disaster that will allow it to rebuild better and stronger than before. This is the central concept of community resilience: the capacity to learn from such events, adapt to the changes they require, and move forward.

The idea of natural disasters has generally encompassed those caused primarily by meteorological and geological disturbances, such as storms and earthquakes, though it includes impacts exacerbated by human mistakes in building and planning. Disasters necessarily involve the collision of natural forces with the human and built environment, which has caused some people to question the very use of the word “natural” in connection with disasters. Personally, I am comfortable with the term “natural disaster” so long as we understand that no disaster exists without this interaction.

But there are those disasters where damage to the built environment is a secondary consideration, and the loss of lives is primary. Drought is somewhere in the middle. Damage to structures can occur, but only as the result of the slow, nagging loss of moisture in the air and soil. Heat waves can take hundreds of lives without affecting a single structure, though they can put enormous stress on energy and transportation infrastructure.

Pandemics, however, fall into another category entirely as biological disasters. They occur when bacteria or viruses emerge in the environment and attack humans before we have developed any effective immunity or vaccines. The current COVID-19 crisis fits this mold precisely. It can be far more devastating than a natural disaster simply because it can roam far more freely across the planet, as did the 1918 influenza pandemic, striking down hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Before the era of modern medicine, pandemics like the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages could kill half of the affected population. Even without vaccines, we at least have the huge advantage of understanding how such microbial threats spread. Our disadvantage in the U.S. has been national leadership, starting with the President, that has been psychologically allergic to scientific advice. The result has been needless loss of life on a colossal scale.

It was a matter of time before some community, even without such federal leadership, applied many of the principles of recovery planning to the coronavirus pandemic. One critical question related to recovery is identifying the point at which the crisis is over, or at least waning. In natural disasters, drought being again the exception, this point becomes clear within a matter of days, or even hours in the case of tornadoes, as the storm passes. However, weather systems such as that which produced the 1993 Midwest floods, can last for weeks or even an entire summer. But at some point, it becomes clear that the emergency is over, and planning for long-term recovery can begin. In the absence of a vaccine, however, it is less clear when we can use the “all clear” signal for a pandemic. Right now, in the U.S., it is painfully clear that the rush to reopen is producing unconscionable and shocking consequences across the South and Southwest, and in a few other locations as well. It is incredibly hard, perhaps even impossible, to plan meaningfully for recovery when you are still stoking the fire by facilitating the spread of the virus.

Nonetheless, some states, notably including New York, much of New England, and Illinois, have fought hard against the odds to bring down infection rates, which are now a fraction of what they were in April or May. Their victory remains tenuous, considering the larger national crisis that remains a growing threat to public health, but Chicago under Mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced a list of states whose residents must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, notably including Florida, Arizona, and Texas. Later, Iowa was added. By July 17, the Cook County Department of Public Health expanded that quarantine area to include all of suburban Cook County except a handful of suburbs that maintain their own health departments, and 17 states are on the list with new case rates exceeding 15 per 100,000 people per day. While it is nearly impossible to monitor all arrivals, the message is clear: We don’t want to re-create the problems we so recently overcame.

That is the context in which a large Recovery Task Force the city assembled released a recent report, Forward Together: Building a Stronger Chicago, which examines how Chicago could build a vibrant recovery from the coronavirus experience. Because such reports, especially those involving dozens of contributors and participants, are never crafted overnight, it is worth noting that the effort was launched on April 23, at a time when the outcome was far from clear. Neither the city nor the state could be certain then how long the problem would last or whether the stay-at-home orders and other measures would succeed at all in the near term. As of July 18, Illinois had dramatically increased its testing rate and brought its positivity rate for coronavirus tests down to 2.9 percent, well below most rates elsewhere, although it remains higher in Chicago at 5.4 percent.

So far, the strict measures announced in March have produced measured success, and the task force used that time to look farther down the road to the kind of city that might emerge from this ordeal. Forward Together is, to be clear, not a true recovery plan; it is billed as an “advisory report.” But it is the closest thing to a recovery plan that I have seen so far, and merits scrutiny and consideration for what it offers. (New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised his own “road map to recovery” on April 26.)

The task force itself was broadly based. Lightfoot co-chaired it with Samuel Skinner, a businessman, lawyer, and political operative who served as both Secretary of Transportation and White House Chief of Staff under President George H.W. Bush. He has a long track record in public affairs. Committee chairs and members included elected officials, among them Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who was Lightfoot’s run-off opponent in the 2019 mayor election, labor and community representatives, business leaders, academicians, and civic leaders, including some prominent activists. The task force was broadly inclusive, which bodes well for public buy-in on the resulting recommendations. Moreover, the report shows significant evidence of wide community outreach, including a youth forum that tapped the ideas of teens and young adults.

Like all big cities, Chicago has witnessed significant disparities in impacts of the pandemic on specific disadvantaged groups, including the elderly, but also Blacks and Latinx residents. While these two groups each comprise 28 percent of Chicago’s population, they respectively comprise 30 and 48 percent of the cases of coronavirus and 44 and 32 percent of the resulting deaths. This is an important backdrop to the discussion of goals in the report.

The report discusses four specific initiatives to move the city forward and address many of the inequities and vulnerabilities exposed by the coronavirus. Invest South/West aims to bring public and private investment to those neighborhoods in the city that have suffered historic disinvestment, and where COVID-19 rates have generally been highest. Racial and ethnic inequities in coronavirus impact have been notably more severe among both Blacks and Latinx residents, in large part because of lower levels of insurance coverage but also because of differences in job exposures, poverty levels, and living conditions. Solutions Toward Ending Poverty (STEP) is a new program, announced in February by Lightfoot, that is attempting to identify evidence-based metrics that can plot a road map toward reducing urban poverty in Chicago. We Will Chicago—Citywide Plan aims over three years to develop what amounts to a comprehensive plan, something lacking in Chicago until now. The report says We Will Chicago “will encompass all elements of citywide planning.” Finally, Chicago Connected will aim to shrink the digital gap between more affluent and poorer neighborhoods by making broadband more readily available, a need whose urgency has clearly been exposed by the closing of schools and the challenges of assisting children from poorer households with remote learning.

A significant part of the report focuses on the economic development opportunities that Chicago can pursue to restore prosperity as the pandemic recedes. It is clear that certain categories of jobs—food service, retail, administrative, and manufacturing, but also arts and entertainment and personal services—have suffered the brunt of economic displacement from the pandemic. The report notes the opportunity for Chicago, as a result of some economic changes wrought by the pandemic, including shifts to online retail, to focus on transportation, distribution, and logistics (TDL) segments of the economy. These would take advantage of a longstanding Chicago advantage as a transportation hub.

TDL, however, faces its own challenges of inequitable opportunity. Food insecurity represents a serious challenge in “food desert” neighborhoods. Resolving those inequities is the intended purpose of the four initiatives, but it is hardly a challenge that will be resolved overnight. It has taken years of unequal opportunity, to say nothing of deliberate discrimination, to create the current dilemma. Failure to address these problems will slow down or even stagnate Chicago’s recovery from the current crisis.

The report makes what strikes me as an honest effort to address social services gaps that, if anything, grew under the previous administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who closed some mental health centers in a bid to reduce budget deficits. The problem is that such reduced access to services only exacerbates problems among those needing such help and may increase other costs as a result. For example, a significant proportion of the inmates at the Cook County Jail (and many others around the nation) suffers from mental illness.

There is an urgent need to restore those services, but more importantly, the report shows that mental health services are far more prevalent on a per-person basis in more affluent, whiter neighborhoods than in poorer areas. For instance, 48 percent of whites with mental illness were receiving services in 2015, but just 31 percent of both Blacks and Latinx with mental illness were doing so. A map toward the end of the report shows differences shows a variation in presence of mental health providers ranging from zero or well below 0.25 per thousand residents in certain poorer areas of the city to well over 2 in predominantly white, middle-class areas and hundreds per thousand in downtown Chicago, a district well-nigh inaccessible to many South Side residents.

This may reflect, among other things, a disproportionate presence of white professionals in mental health and a need to bring more minority psychiatrists and psychologists to those neighborhoods. Reopening clinics in the neediest areas of the city would be a major step forward. As for the connection to coronavirus, the stress induced by greatly increased unemployment, to say nothing of job pressures within health care, can contribute to mental health challenges. Perhaps the most noteworthy proposal in this section of the plan is the recommendation to create a dedicated 211 line whereby residents can access a wide range of social services. It strikes me as essential, also, to reduce pressure on police to respond to personal mental health crises by instead responding to such incidents, to the extent possible, with mental health professionals and social workers.

As I noted, this is framed as an “advisory report.” I strongly suspect, however, given the tenor of the moment, that its recommendations will find widespread support among Chicagoans. What remains to be seen is how well voters and aldermen hold the administration’s feet to the fire to make it all happen. It is not enough to have confidence in a mayor who seems determined to make it happen. Implementation will require broad-based commitment to achieving the goals the report lays out. That includes embedding those goals in the comprehensive planning process that We Will Chicago envisions, and enacting measures to move them forward.

What is important about this effort for the rest of the country is the very idea of mounting such a broad-based effort to produce a forward-looking analysis of how our cities can recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Many may first have to learn how mayors and governors can exert the leadership, and evince the humility to consider the science, necessary to get the virus under control, as many other countries in Europe and Asia have done. These leaders must also be open to hearing from a widely representative cross-section of their citizens in preparing similar reports. Pandemic recovery planning is for all of us an experiment that can build on the foundations of other kinds of recovery plans while recognizing and thoroughly exploring the unique features of this monumental public health challenge. It is no small matter, and should not be treated as such, politics notwithstanding.

Jim Schwab

Community Planning and Pandemics Podcast

Posted on July 16, 2020 by admin

Periodically, I have linked blog readers directly to a new podcast in the Resilience Roundtable series, produced by the American Planning Association and hosted by the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. Last fall, I became the moderator of this series, and the last, pre-pandemic podcast interviewed Florida planning consultant Julie Dennis about her experiences in recovery planning for Hurricanes Irma and Michael.

Earlier this month, however, we shifted gears, and I interviewed Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. Our topic was community planning and pandemics, and she shared numerous insights into the public health and community planning aspects of dealing with a pandemic like COVID-19. Most readers already know that I have written repeatedly about some aspects of the pandemic since March, but Monica in this interview sheds light on several other features of our current situation that I had not yet illuminated, in part because I lack her specific technical background.

Therefore, I am happy to provide this link to the new 40-minute podcast.

Jim Schwab

The Need for Resilient Infrastructure

Posted on June 28, 2020 by admin

This summer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is at last rolling out its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, and its first Notice of Funding Opportunity will likely be issued in September. In July, FEMA is airing a series of five weekly webinars to introduce BRIC to communities and state officials around the nation. BRIC is the practical result of provisions in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2018, to create a secure funding stream for what was formerly the Pre-Disaster Mitigation program. I plan to discuss all that in coming weeks on this blog.

But the personal impact on me was to remind me to attend to an egregious oversight on my part that began earlier this year with the release by the American Planning Association (APA) of a new Planning Advisory Service Report, Planning for Resilient Infrastructure. I read it, attended to some other business in Texas and Nebraska in late February and early March, and along came the coronavirus, upending most of my existing personal and professional plans and refocusing my attention. But it is time for me to give this report the attention it deserves.

First, there is the question of why it deserves attention. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which funded the project led by the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), which partnered with APA, chose their joint proposal in funding the first round of projects under its Coastal Resilience Grants Program in 2016. As Jeffrey Payne, director of NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, states in his preface, “Tomorrow isn’t what it used to be. Increasingly, coastal conditions include all the risks of the past, but risks that are amplified by a changing climate, rising seas, and more rapidly fluctuating Great Lakes.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I was involved with ASFPM executive director Chad Berginnis in co-authoring the proposal for this project in the summer of 2015. (After I left APA, ASFPM hired me back as a consultant in later stages of the effort to help refine and focus the PAS Report.) Our intent was both simple and bold. Local governments spend tens of billions of dollars annually on the construction and maintenance of various kinds of infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure, related to essential services including water, wastewater, and transportation, is subject to the impacts of climate change. While, as Payne goes on to state, this is true away from the coast as well, some of those impacts are particularly significant and noticeable in coastal states and communities. In short, a great deal of taxpayer money is at stake regarding the ability of that infrastructure to withstand future climate conditions and natural disasters. Planning for greatly increased resilience is a recipe for improved fiscal stability. This holds true even if, as planned by statute, a greater share of that funding for hazard mitigation projects comes from FEMA through BRIC. Taxpayers are taxpayers, whether the money used is federal, state, or local.

All that said, the serious work of completing the work fell to Joseph DeAngelis at APA, now the manager of the APA Hazards Planning Center, and Haley Briel, a research specialist for the Flood Science Center at ASFPM, along with Michael Lauer, a planning consultant with deep experience in growth management programs in southeastern coastal states.

Global average sea level rise from 1880 to the present, based on tide gauges and satellite measurements (US EPA). Reuse courtesy of APA.

Their collaborative report addresses the most significant issues of infrastructure resilience. Particularly in areas subject to coastal storms, these involve not just the impacts of major disasters but the everyday nuisance impacts of flooding because of high tides atop sea level rise that already are yielding closed streets and parks and flooded basements. Urban flooding has become a “thing” where the term never used to be heard. They include a small table with projections by the U.S. Global Change Research Program showing ranges of sea level rise between 0.5 and 1.2 feet by 2050, and 1 to 4 feet by 2100. Of course, these are rough ranges in part because various geological conditions, such as erosion or glacial rebound, cause different results from one region to another, although most of the East Coast faces serious problems over the coming century. A major part of the problem is that sea level rise amplifies the impact of high tides in storms, leading to increased flooding and erosion that is already evident in low-lying cities like Norfolk, Virginia, or Miami. The authors note that, “Over the last half-century alone, with just one to three inches of average sea level rise, daily high-tide flooding has become up to 10 times more frequent” in American coastal communities. Even in Midwestern communities, including those along the Great Lakes, problems result from climate-driven increases in high-precipitation storms that frequently overwhelm stormwater drainage systems built in an earlier era based on other, less challenging, assumptions.

Storm surge heights are cumulatively based on the mean sea level, the height of the tide, and the high volume of water pushed toward the shore by coastal storms (National Hurricane Center). Reuse courtesy of APA.

It is natural that a planning document is going to assert a role for planners in addressing these problems. The role the report asserts is entirely logical, starting with “assessing long-term infrastructure needs and understanding future risks to infrastructure assets.” Equally logical, however, is that the report builds upon prior APA literature to outline the need for coordinated action through the plan-making process to integrate climate risk into local plans as a means of “capturing the future conditions to which existing infrastructure and any planned infrastructure projects will be subjected.” Put simply, if the local planning process does not identify those risks and provide clear recommendations for creating resilient infrastructure, it is not likely to materialize in any coherent and consistent fashion. The third chapter outlines a step-by-step approach (see illustrations below) for developing an inventory of local infrastructure, identifying risks, and moving toward an effective plan for adaptation.

The process for conducting an infrastructure vulnerability assessment (Joseph DeAngelis). Reuse courtesy of APA for both diagrams.

A project or asset’s vulnerability to flood impacts is a product of its exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (Joseph DeAngelis).

Later, the report provides some examples of what such consistent planning for resilient infrastructure may look like. Its case study of San Francisco’s approach to assessing sea-level-rise impacts outlines how the Sea Level Rise Committee of the city’s Capital Planning Committee (CPC), a body responsible for overseeing capital investments for infrastructure, recommended using the upper end of estimates from a National Research Council report for the West Coast. These were fed into a CPC guidance document for assessing vulnerability and supporting adaptation to sea level rise, a primary outcome of climate change. Without engaging the full details here, the bottom line is that the City and County of San Francisco was working from a single play book for climate adaptation of project life cycles for future infrastructure. Capital planning could thus proceed in a more standardized manner based on common assumptions. The report also uses an extensive example from Toledo, Ohio, the site of one of two pilot projects supported by the ASFPM/APA project. Toledo, sitting on the shores of Lake Erie, has suffered from stormwater flooding and is approaching the problem with a mixture of green infrastructure and analysis of social vulnerability in affected neighborhoods. The report elsewhere delves into questions and methods of documenting and addressing environmental justice and social and racial inequities in environmental protection through appropriate local capital planning projects.

Both cases highlight the value for local planners of establishing credible data sources, which often rest within federal agencies such as NOAA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But, as one chapter illustrates, these can include experienced national nonprofits as well, such as Climate Central. Unquestionably, however, the best single assemblage of data and tools is NOAA’s own Digital Coast website. Planners can access additional high-quality resources on climate through other NOAA programs such as the Regional Climate Centers, located at a series of universities across the nation, and the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments, where RISA staff work directly with climate scientists to communicate the science to the public and local officials.

Just as important as understanding where to find the proper data and tools, however, is a knowledge of best practices in local capital improvements planning, the development of effective standards, guidelines, and regulations for creating resilient infrastructure, and, finally, the best means for financing such long-term investments in infrastructure, especially with an eye to climate resilience. Each of these three topics is covered in separate chapters in the second half of the report.

View of part of the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy, February 2013.

Ultimately, the real challenge for local planners is overcoming a natural discomfort with the inherent uncertainties in planning for infrastructure that must withstand the impacts of climate change within a range of assumptions that, in part, depend on federal and even international action to mitigate rising global temperatures as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. Planners, and the communities they serve, must adjust to those uncertainties and the inherent complexities they embody. Planning, however, has always been a speculative enterprise riddled by uncertainties, yet cities have embraced assumptions about population growth, demographic change, and economic scenarios that have often been equally uncertain, for none of us has a crystal ball. What we do know, however, is the direction of existing and accelerating trends, and climate change is no myth. We are ultimately better off, and will better invest public resources, by anticipating climate change with the best projections available, so that our communities are not overwhelmed by future storms, sea level rise, and storm surge. We cannot say we did not see it coming. We can only hope to say we used a wise approach based on the best data available to avoid catastrophe for ourselves and future generations in the communities we serve.

Jim Schwab

Make America Mature Again

Posted on April 20, 2020 by admin

What follows is an adapted, re-edited version of a Facebook post from today that seems to have struck a nerve, attracting dozens of likes, comments, and shares. As a result, I concluded that perhaps I should add it to this blog.

No pictures here, just observations:

We as a nation come from ancestors who nearly starved to death at Valley Forge but stuck it out to ensure the success of a revolution that created a new nation built on liberty, imperfectly at first, but expanding its range over centuries.

Some of the toughest Americans come from ancestors who endured slavery over centuries to help build upon that legacy of liberty when they finally won their freedom.

We come from ancestors who endured four grueling years of civil war to ensure that liberty and equality retained a fighting chance to become this nation’s hallmark.

We come from ancestors who endured long passages across sometimes rough seas to reach a land that promised them a better life, and when they arrived, many endured hard work and, often, discrimination to assert their role in building our democracy.

We come from ancestors who, toward the end of World War I, endured endless months of influenza pandemic, with shutdowns and deaths and illness comparable to those we are experiencing now, until the danger passed and lives could be rebuilt.

We come from ancestors who, just a decade later, underwent the grueling agony of the Great Depression. We elected a president who, riddled with polio, understood the virtues of patience and perseverance in solving problems that seemed daunting by any measure, then entered World War II to help save the world from some of its most vicious tyrannies in modern times.

I could go on. But . . . .

Someone forgot to teach these lessons to a narcissistic president with the attention span of a fruit fly, a spoiled upper-class brat who has never faced serious challenges in life until now, a man who never learned much history, judging from the evidence of his comments.

Someone forgot to teach those lessons to protesters who, after a single month of one of the greatest public health challenges in anyone’s lifetime, refuse to learn that life never promised them that everything would turn up roses at the flick of a finger, and who never learned to analyze and understand a problem to find out whether the reopening they say they want might produce more harm than good, that a temper tantrum never solved anything.

Millions of Americans, probably most, of course, despite everything, understand that sacrifice will be part of the solution. But others have never, apparently, been steeled by a personal Valley Forge and just want what they want. Isn’t it time for a little maturity to settle in? Thank God for some governors and mayors out there with common sense and fortitude.

This is America. We’re supposed to be tougher than just throwing temper tantrums. Let’s prove it, people.

Jim Schwab

Unequal Exposure

Posted on April 11, 2020 by admin

On April 29, I will be moderating “Demanding Equity: Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” a 45-minute session in a special three-day virtual conference of the American Planning Association, NPC20 @HOME. The online conference is an attempt to replace the experience of the canceled National Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston, April 25-28. For the first time in APA history, the annual event will not go forward as planned. Like numerous other conferences, it was untenable to assemble thousands of participants in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is possible to provide a decent educational opportunity in its place by broadcasting and recording distance learning and letting participants ask questions remotely.

But why do I mention this one session, when APA is offering two dozen? Because it touches on some issues so central to the social and economic impacts of coronavirus, and speaks so directly to what planners and planning can do as we recover from this experience, that I wanted to highlight the subject in this post. It has been said often that the coronavirus does not discriminate. That may be true, but our society has done so and still does, often in ways people are reluctant to consider or admit. The result is that, as happens with most disasters, minorities and low-income people, those with fewer opportunities in life or greater exposure to danger, are disproportionately affected. And so it will be when the histories of this pandemic are written. The evidence is already stark enough for passionate discussion.

To give credit where it is due, the session was the brainchild of Adrian Freund, a veteran, semi-retired planner in Oregon. Before the NPC was canceled, however, Adrian was hospitalized (not because of coronavirus) and realized he would be unable to go to Houston. He reached out through a former president of APA, David Siegel, also of Oregon, to ask me to take over, and I agreed. We are on the same page on this issue. When APA decided to replace NPC with NPC20 @HOME, this was one of the sessions they felt must be included, and I reassembled the speakers to modify our plans for the new format.

All of them have a ton of wisdom to contribute on the subject. Shannon van Zandt is a professor of urban planning and department head at Texas A&M, and has authored numerous articles and led many projects on subjects related to equity in disaster recovery, particularly in the Texas context in which she works. Marccus Hendricks, an assistant professor of planning at the University of Maryland, is a Texas A&M graduate who has focused on infrastructure issues and environmental justice, writing his doctoral thesis on stormwater management in Houston. Chrishelle Palay is director at the HOME Coalition in Houston. Obviously, the panel has strong Texas roots, but there are few states where one can get better insights into the impacts of environmental inequities.

But it is the screaming headlines of the past week that have brought renewed attention to the issue in the context of coronavirus. In Chicago, we have learned that African Americans are dying from the virus at six times the rate of whites. Gary, a predominantly African American city, is the new coronavirus hot spot in Indiana. It is also where it gets personal for me. A 12-year-old granddaughter lives there and, as of yesterday (April 10), appears to have COVID-19 symptoms. Her mother called and was asked not to bring her to a hospital, but to isolate her at home. She will not be tested because, as everywhere else, this nation has not gotten its act together on testing. Will she even be included in the statistics, then, as a known case? Good question. I have no idea how Indiana is tallying such numbers. But she is in for a rough ride in the immediate future, and Gary and surrounding Lake County are certainly not fully prepared.

But what is happening in Chicago, as numerous commentators and public health officials have noted in the past week, is not only not unique, but to be expected. Detroit is emerging as a hotspot with major disparities in racial impact. State health data reveal that, while blacks make up 14 percent of Michigan’s population, they account for one-third of the cases and 40 percent of the deaths so far. In Louisiana, with one-third of the population, blacks account for 70 percent of the deaths. New Orleans has clearly emerged as a southern hot spot for coronavirus infections. Across the nation, one can find similar racial disparities.

Beneath those figures, however, are other disparities that weave in and out of racial and ethnic numbers. Age is perhaps the best-known factor, but so are many others. People in low-income service jobs, for instance, to the extent that they are still working, are more dependent on public transit and much less likely to be able to work from home like white-collar professionals. Public transit contributes greatly to mobility in urban centers, but does little for social distancing. It is still unclear just how transit will be affected for the long term, although it remains a vital link to jobs for many of the working poor. But coronavirus is clearly challenging the economic viability of many transit systems, one reason they were the target of assistance in the CARES Act.

It goes without saying that health care workers are significantly more exposed, but they are not just doctors. Their ranks include nurses, nursing assistants, and many others, some with much lower incomes, who nonetheless are risking their lives every day. Some of them work in nursing homes, which have not been the focus of any noticeable attention at the federal level. There are many ways to slice and dice the data to identify patterns of exposure, including those for access to health care, quite possibly the single most important factor driving disparities in this particular disaster. Lack of insurance coverage and inability to afford adequate health care leave many people untouched by the system and untested until it is too late. Poor or nonexistent health insurance coverage, especially for undocumented immigrants, accompanied by food deserts in many inner-city neighborhoods, endemic poverty in many rural areas and small towns, and exposure to job-related ailments, can produce numerous chronic conditions that make exposure to a new virus fatal or disastrous instead of merely survivable.

It remains remarkable, in view of these factors, that the Trump administration can maintain its drumbeat of opposition to the Affordable Care Act, including the recent refusal to allow newly jobless Americans to sign up for coverage. But this is one of many ways in which this nation, through both federal and state policy, continues to resist expanded, let alone universal, health care coverage to shore up health care deficiencies for the most vulnerable among us. There is both a meanness and short-sightedness that underlies much of this resistance. As I noted just two weeks ago, these health care vulnerabilities, with all the racial and socioeconomic inequities they embody, form the weak links in the chain of overall vulnerability for our communities when pandemic strikes.

And that brings me back to the point of the session I will moderate. One essential element of the planner’s skill set should be demographic analysis. The coronavirus pandemic highlights the critical value of addressing public health in comprehensive plans and other efforts to chart the future of cities, counties, and regions. Issues of national health care policy may be well beyond the reach of planners and their communities, but exposing the glaring disparities that have been made evident as the data on coronavirus cases grows is critical to knowing how resilient our communities are or how resilient we can make them. Access to health care is not merely a matter of insurance, as important as that is. It is also affected by the practices of local hospitals, the access to open spaces for densely populated areas, environmental regulations controlling industrial pollutants, public education around personal health, access to healthy food, the quality of our food distribution systems, and a myriad of other considerations that can be addressed to one degree or another through local or regional planning and through policy commitments to social equity.

That is precisely why, as the White House dithers, and federal management of the coronavirus crisis continues to fall short, dozens if not hundreds of mayors and governors and other local and state officials have stepped up to fill the gap. It is sad that there is not better national leadership in this crisis, but we are learning who our real leaders are. Enabling planners and other policy makers to support those officials with essential and meaningful data is an ongoing task, but if we are going to emerge from this disaster in a better place, identifying the inequities that weaken our communities and finding ways to build resilience across those weak links is going to be essential. There is no good alternative.

Jim Schwab

Test of Moral Imagination

Posted on April 1, 2020 by admin

Okay, now I’m angry. I had not intended to produce another blog article quite so soon, but false prophets are rampaging through the vineyards of the Lord. Fortunately, there are only a few of them reported so far, two of whom have been cited for certain misdemeanor offenses. But with the coronavirus, it takes only two megachurch pastors calling hundreds of people to live church services to let loose the plague on not only their own followers but everyone around them. They need to get some common sense and knock it off.

In addition, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia, has called students back to the campus after spring break, ignoring the actions of almost every other college in the nation to forsake such close contact and take lessons online for the duration of the semester. With several documented cases on campus already, the question is how many more students and staff will be infected.

In Central, Louisiana, Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church was arrested after holding services on Sunday in violation of the emergency order by Gov. John Bel Edwards for Louisiana residents to stay at home for the coming month. Released after his booking, he proceeded to defy the order again by holding services on Tuesday evening. As on Sunday, curious onlookers wondered what he was doing. On Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune, people in the neighborhood were questioning what made the people of the church think they were so special as to disregard Gov. John Bel Edwards’s stay-at-home order. No one is discriminating against anyone’s religious rights because the order does not prohibit online gatherings and similar modes of worship. It aims to limit large crowds to inhibit the spread of a deadly virus for which there is, as yet, no known vaccine or effective cure. That is a matter of public safety. Thousands upon thousands of other congregations nationwide are live-streaming church services as a substitute for assembling masses of people in a Sunday morning petri dish for coronavirus.

I write from personal experience. My own congregation, Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago, suspended services more than two weeks ago, but provides recordings, readings, and other online and private opportunities for worship and meditation as we can. I serve as the coordinator for the Adult Forum, the Sunday school session for adults, which predictably draws its fair share of devoted seniors, who are at greatest danger of exposure, and about whom we are most concerned. We are not meeting until further notice. We may miss the interaction and the discussions, but we do not wish to put anyone’s life in danger. Our priority is safety. We want everyone to emerge from this in good health.

In Tampa, meanwhile, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River at Tampa Bay Church violated a stay-at-home order by holding services this past Sunday. He later turned himself in to authorities, but the law firm representing him maintains that the church practiced social distancing. Given the human interactions inevitably occurring in large crowds, that may be beside the point. However, USA Today reports that, in a Facebook post, Howard-Browne described coronavirus as “blown totally way out of proportion.” It is worth noting that Florida is nearing 7,000 confirmed cases with 87 deaths so far, and the trend is moving rapidly upward. One wonders if the families of victims share his perspective.

Mark my words: In the face of the pervasive concerns of neighbors and fellow citizens and fellow Christians, such defiance soon turns to arrogance. And arrogance demonstrates egotism, not faith.

New U.S. coronavirus cases per day, as of April 1, 2020, courtesy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_States
(same for both graphs)

New U.S. deaths from coronavirus per day, as of April 1, 2020, courtesy of Wikipedia

Given several thousand deaths to date in the U.S., out of hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases, with untold suffering likely still to come, I have a simple question for these three ignorant gentlemen:

Who the hell do you think you are?

Pastor Tony Spell insists he will do it again because “God told us to.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. All those other pastors and rabbis and imams and nuns and priests, including Pope Francis, who is not asking anyone to come to the Vatican for Easter because he cares about the lives of fellow human beings, seem to be getting a very different message, which I suggest might sound something more like this:

Take care of my people. Save lives, especially those of my elderly servants, by taking precautions. This is your chance to show how you love each other, protect each other, and lead each other through the valley of the Shadow of Death. Use this opportunity to make your communities stronger. And, for my sake, think about the lives and health of my thousands of servants on the front lines–the doctors, the nurses, the EMTs, the social workers, the police—they are parts of your flock to whom I have assigned great responsibilities. Please do not think me so vain nor so cruel as to insist on the continuation of live worship services during this crisis. This is your opportunity to show that I have gifted you with moral imagination. Use it.

Jim Schwab

For the Love of Public Spaces

Posted on March 20, 2020 by admin

If the doctor’s office had not called, I would not even have been here writing. I would perhaps have been on the CTA Blue Line on the way to my appointment, or more likely walking from the train station to his office. But they called less than an hour before the appointment. The urologist merely needs to follow up on a February 26 procedure, so could we just do a telephone consultation? Frankly, I had wondered why they had not offered that option already, so I accepted. The only difference it would make, I noted, was that I had planned to use the opportunity to shoot photos of the empty “el” cars, the empty streets as I moved up Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River, and perhaps the empty Millennium Park downtown, if it was in fact empty. Deprived of the need to go there, I simply walked the neighborhood, shot photos of restaurants open for takeout only, and took two shots of the empty el platform. Then the drizzling rain began, and it was time to come home and await the call, which came late as the doctor scrambled to maintain his schedule.

The Western Avenue Blue Line station platform, early afternoon, March 19. If you are not from Chicago, trust me: You have no idea how unusual it is for this platform to be so empty. This is the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Ridership is down by more than half.

But at least I got that first paragraph written, before the nurse called, as I thought about a potent issue for urban planners amid the coronavirus pandemic. Under normal circumstances, there are few subjects most planners like to discuss more than the design and use of public spaces. These come in a variety of forms, such as trails, parks, and plazas, which are generally publicly owned, but they also include a wide variety of privately owned spaces that are nonetheless generally accessible to the public, such as restaurants, outdoor cafes, malls, stores, and recreational facilities like the YMCA. The latter category is more frequently available on a paying basis, but those lines can be blurred under specific circumstances, such as the rental of public spaces for private events. The one overriding factor is that planners are very much aware that the public life of cities is very much defined by the activity levels and density of use of these spaces. An urban park visited by almost no one is not a positive sign of urban vitality. A public concert in the park attracting hundreds or thousands of happy people dancing and swaying to the music is a sign of a city in love with life and alive with culture.

Margie’s Candies, a nearly century-old family and teen hangout and source of sandwiches, ice cream, and candy for residents of Chicago’s Humboldt Park, can only offer takeout sweets at this time.

In the midst of pandemic, however, especially in dealing with a disease for which no one has yet developed an effective vaccine, not to mention a disease that disproportionately slays the elderly and those with respiratory vulnerabilities such as asthma, crowded public spaces are an indicator not of prosperity and vibrancy, but of danger. Social distancing to protect ourselves from unidentified carriers of COVID-19 is now an essential element of survival and personal protection. Yes, it’s nice to greet a friend in the park, but only if they keep their distance, and no, I don’t wish to shake your hand. There is a certain weary loneliness about this that is undeniable. Most of us are highly social beings, even the introverts among us. We like to talk, to exchange news, to share ideas. Thank God for the invention of the telephone and the Internet.

Why order online? Because, for the time being, restaurants in Illinois are not permitted to offer dine-in service. Takeout, drive-through, delivery are your only options. Blow up the photo to see the sign on the door more clearly.

But it’s more than that. Public spaces often provide us, to one degree or another, with the opportunity to move, to exercise, to stay physically fit. I got word just two days ago that the X Sport Fitness gym at which I maintain a membership would be closed until further notice. The trainers, I learned, are left scrambling to determine how they could continue to earn a living. They are joining millions of others whose livelihoods are in jeopardy until this scourge passes. If you know someone in Chicago who can benefit from in-home fitness training, let me know. I can hook them up with capable trainers.

Coffee shops and restaurants are no longer public meeting spaces. Just get it and take it home.

I will be looking to find other ways to stay physically active. As noted in posts of years past, I am fortunate to live near the 606 Trail. I need to get my bicycle tuned up for another season, and I can ride for miles. On my stroll yesterday, I could see that joggers were making generous use of the trail, as were walkers and others. Interestingly, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has posted information quoting medical experts suggesting that people should seek to maintain their exercise routines and use our public parks and trails for just these purposes. There is nothing worse for physical health than being cooped up in one’s house or binge-watching past seasons of whatever. Get out and move around. Just keep your distance.

The joggers, bicyclists, and strollers are still using the 606 Trail. This is near the Western el station shown above and the photo taken less than 20 minutes earlier.

That goes for the kids, too. Playgrounds, for the most part, are still open. If you’re worried about touching the equipment, make the kids wear gloves or use disinfectant wipes on metal and plastic surfaces before letting them ride or play. But, above all, let them run around.

What we are all, I hope, trying to do for the near future is to slow or halt the transmission of this dangerous new coronavirus. That does not mean we become couch potatoes obsessed with watching our favorite 24-hour news source feed us endless details about the latest announcements, as important as they may be. There is still plenty of opportunity for most of us to stay healthy and drink in copious doses of fresh air. But we can also follow the guidance about social distancing and sanitation practices. In short, most of us should be very capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. Just don’t spit that gum out on the sidewalk, thank you very much. Think about the safety of those around you. Use the trash can.

If we can all learn anything from this disturbing experience, it is perhaps an increased attention to sanitation and cleanliness in public spaces and the need to respect others by maintaining the quality of those spaces. Too many of us have seen public restrooms that are poorly maintained or not cleaned with adequate frequency. Those are obvious examples, but we can discern many others, including coughing and sneezing away from others, using facial tissue or handkerchieves, and simply cleaning up after ourselves, and understanding why some people find it necessary, even critical, to wear face masks or take other precautions. Think about the safety of those who must clean up after us, who often earn low wages and have less access to medical care. Don’t put them in greater jeopardy than necessary. Those of us involved in planning for post-disaster recovery often talk about finding the “silver lining” in each disaster experience. With any luck, that silver lining in the COVID-19 experience is a greater attention to public health, starting with the White House and extending all the way down to our own house or apartment.

The other big lesson for planning is the value of readiness and preparation for disaster. The old saw that “they also serve who only stand and wait” may be far more applicable and relevant than we realize. When President Trump eliminated a White House office that President Obama had created to focus on global pandemics, following the gruesome lessons of the Ebola virus, the assumption seemed to be that those studying and preparing for the next big public health crisis were simply wasting time and money. If that is true, why do we have an army of emergency managers spread across the country, preparing for natural and man-made disasters that, according to that line of logic, “may never happen”? The answer is that we should know all too well that reconstructing such capabilities after a new public health crisis or disaster is already underway wastes weeks and months of valuable time that can never be regained, and in this case, may be costing thousands of lives before it is over. Let us be wise enough as a nation never to repeat that mistake again.

Jim Schwab

Costly Coastal Arrogance

Posted on February 13, 2020 by admin

In the days shortly after World War II, writes Gilbert M. Gaul in The Geography of Risk, Morris Shapiro and his family were busy building their own version of Levittown, the famed suburban tract housing development of Long Island, on a barrier island in southern New Jersey known as Long Beach Island. The place had largely been the preserve of fishing villages in earlier years, but Shapiro had a vision, one he passed along to his son, Herbert, in due time.

Shapiro drained and built on what we now call wetlands, but in the 1940s, environmental values were a weak reed for resisting the onslaught of developers who believed in the next big real estate trend and the willingness of small villages to grow with them. And so, Morris persuaded Herbert to buy land around Barnegat Bay, and the few hunters and watermen who understood the value of salt marsh in preserving wildlife habitat were pushed aside. The suburbanization of the Jersey Shore soon took hold.

Nature heals its own wounds when the landscape is healthy, but damage to the built environment can be another matter altogether. Gaul details the impacts of the Ash Wednesday storm that struck the New Jersey coast in the spring of 1962, providing the nation with its first television-era glimpse of disasters yet to come and the high costs of having compromised the protective dunes and wetlands and installed thousands of bungalows on a narrow, highly vulnerable strip of land along the sea. “Nearly all the 5,361 homes on Long Beach Island . . . were damaged,” Gaul tells us, “including 1,000 that were severely impaired and 600 that were destroyed.”

As always, the immediate focus was on rebuilding, with urgent reminders from legislators and others of the economic value of shoreline development (but not its costs). In the face of that Category 5 juggernaut, Gov. Richard Hughes bravely proposed a six-month moratorium on new development, supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and a ban on rebuilding along a 100-foot buffer along the beach. Looking back, it seems visionary for its time in anticipating the problems that would otherwise follow, and it attracted precisely the blowback we have come to expect. Federal support for rebuilding came from the Kennedy administration, and the long drift toward increased federal responsibility for recovery was underway.

Gaul goes on to detail the long tale of Jim Mancini, both developer and mayor of Long Beach Island, and cheerleader in chief for the coastal towns and what they saw as their inevitable growth. Still, governors and environmental officials in New Jersey were periodically game for a new try at restraining a situation where local officials controlled building and zoning while state taxpayers provided millions of dollars to repair storm damage and infrastructure. Gov. Brendan Byrne was next in 1979, starting with a conference on the future of the New Jersey shore, followed by initiatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the introduction of the Dune and Shorefront Protection Act in the legislature.

Predictably, the mayors rebelled, led by Mancini, who organized 1,500 protesters to attend a July 1980 hearing at the St. Francis Community Center in Brant Beach. Robert Hollenbeck, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, essentially presided over an ambush in which he was repeatedly shouted down by angry homeowners. Once again, the opportunity to take a creative regulatory approach to controlling shoreline damage was driven into wholesale political retreat. By the time Superstorm Sandy delivered its legendary hit in October 2012, it was all over but the shouting. The administration of Gov. Chris Christie was not about to seriously challenge the home rule prerogatives that dominate the politically fragmented landscape of New Jersey township government. The tough questions would have to wait.

What Gaul outlines in New Jersey, of course, has occurred in other forms in other places from the Carolinas to Florida to Texas over the subsequent decades. Gaul takes us to all these locations as the book progresses. What we have seen, time and again, are the costly consequences of a pattern of coastal development that has placed increasing quantities of homes and properties in harm’s way, then begged or even demanded that states and the federal government rescue the storm-damaged communities even as they fight bitterly against regulatory measures aimed at reducing future costs by restricting unwise development.

Of course, by now there are many residents caught in the middle. But surely, it is not impossible to sympathize with their plight and be willing to assist those who seek alternatives, while refusing to continue subsidizing unwise new development or bailing out those who refuse to accept the reality of the risks they have assumed. What is clear is that tough decisions await, and the public does not have endless resources. Wiser development and rebuilding decisions are imperative.

Not surprisingly, Gaul, a veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning author and reporter, is a New Jersey native. But he is also an astute historian and researcher who writes with a well-informed passion that brings us, in the end, to the fateful season of 2017—the year of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria—and then 2018, when all looked calm on the meteorological front until Florence took its toll in North Carolina, followed by Category 5 Michael in the Florida Panhandle. Climate change, inducing hurricanes that become slow-moving rain bombs that flood cities like Houston, is still “not a thing” in the Trump White House. Neither, for the most part, are buyouts of repetitively flooded homes, even as the nation desperately needs to find ways to live more resiliently in the face of the risks it has embedded on its coastal landscapes.

But the costs keep climbing, and it is not impossible to imagine a serious political reckoning under a different administration with a more realistic handle on the stakes involved, which run into the trillions of dollars. It is not impossible, for instance, to imagine a $250 billion disaster if a catastrophic hurricane took direct aim at one of Florida’s major cities. For that reason alone, Gaul’s book may be worth a read. We need to improve the quality and depth of the conversation around issues with such drastic fiscal impact.

Jim Schwab

Home of the Brave

Book Reviews and Discussion with Jim Schwab

Category Archives: Public policy

Disaster Mitigation Act at Twenty

Make it your DMA anniversary experience. Trust me, it will be worth your time.

Jim Schwab

One BRIC at a Time

The Need for Resilient Infrastructure

Make America Mature Again

Unequal Exposure

Test of Moral Imagination

Costly Coastal Arrogance