Gratitude on Parade #9

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
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Kristin Hoskin had been on my list for these tributes, but I thought it wise to let the dust settle after the Christchurch terrorist attack before saluting her in Gratitude on Parade. Most certainly, however, her gracious reaction to my blog post about the incident two weeks ago confirmed the very reason for including her here. She reaffirmed the New Zealand commitment to human decency.

I met Kristin in late 2007 after speaking on a panel in Reno, Nevada, at a conference of the International Association of Emergency Managers. Her question was whether I might entertain an invitation to New Zealand as a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ) at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Over subsequent months, arrangements were worked out between CAENZ and the American Planning Association, and my three-week absence in July and August 2008 was approved by Paul Farmer, APA’s CEO at the time. The reason for choosing me for this annual honor was my expertise in land use related to natural hazards. CAENZ wanted to inject that element into the national debate in New Zealand on natural hazards policy making.

Kristin was assigned to escort me around the country as I conducted seven workshops and seminars in both North and South Island cities, ending with a few days in Christchurch crafting a white paper before I returned home. She was a gracious host, and from her I learned a great deal about her country even as I shared detailed knowledge with New Zealand planners, emergency managers, and others about how we address those issues in the considerably more complex U.S.

For me, it was a wonderfully educational exchange of insights and information that I will never forget. It was what mutual learning should be. I would happily return to New Zealand, but life has included more than a few other adventures in the meantime. And I was at least able to include what I learned–and more–in the long article I published in January in the hOxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science, on “Planning Systems for Natural Hazard Risk Reduction.”

Kristin Hoskin, this tribute is for you. Bask and enjoy.


Photo taken during our fun visit to the Stansborough wool factory north of Wellington, which manufactured costumes for the Lord of the Rings movies.

Posted to Facebook 3/29/2019

Gratitude on Parade #3

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
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[Partners of] the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Digital Coast program are hosting a meeting in Washington, D.C., today of the Digital Coast Partnership, an assortment of eight national nonprofit organizations willing to support geotechnical services to coastal communities across the U.S. The Digital Coast staff have been leading this effort for more than a decade, and the result is better decision making on coastal land use and resource management among the communities using Digital Coast tools and resources.

I attended these meetings and participated in Digital Coast projects until I left the American Planning Association, one of those partners, in 2017. But as of 2010, when APA joined the partnership, I found the entire enterprise a magnificent example of positive federal engagement with local governments and user communities in need of better data and easier ways to access data. And I made some fast friends because of the quality of the staff.

Leading that effort was one remarkable human being, Miki Schmidt, who has been with NOAA that entire time. Miki has a positive, can-do attitude, and helped me learn a great deal about what positive federal outreach could look like. We had numerous valuable conversations about how to move forward, and Miki repeatedly expressed his gratitude to APA for becoming part of the entire effort. But he deserves recognition for doing a top-notch job year after year, and empowering a staff that couldn’t be better. Near the end of my era, also, as depicted in the photo below, he organized a retirement “roast” at a restaurant during a NOAA Coastal GeoTools Conference. I could not have asked for a nicer tribute.

James Schwab CORRECTION: I did not realize that NOAA was caught up in the federal government shutdown and NOAA staff are not present at the meeting mentioned in the first sentence. it is a tribute to the success of the partnership, however, that the National Association of Counties, one of the partners, is hosting and the partners are proceeding with the meeting on their own. I just did not realize that was the case. Let us all hope that, one day, these shutdowns will be a thing of the past that is no longer an acceptable practice.

Miki, at right, prior to dinner that included a retirement roast.

Posted on Facebook 1/15/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
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I am not done singing the praises of Digital Coast nor of expressing my gratitude to outstanding staff of that program. If I had an opportunity to nominate someone for Liaison of the Year, someone with an outstanding sense of customer relations, it would surely be Susan Fox, who actually works with the Baldwin Group on behalf of NOAA, and has served for several years as a Digital Coast liaison with the American Planning Association. I had the honor to work with her while managing APA’s Hazards Planning Center into 2017. She is enthusiastic, positive, very well-organized, and incredibly supportive. Just like Miki Schmidt, about whom I wrote yesterday, she is a pillar of the Digital Coast program. Thank you, Susan, for all you do.

Susan in Manhattan for dinner during APA National Planning Conference, 2017.

Posted on Facebook 1/16/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE

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Continuing with my tributes to Digital Coast staff, I must now know mention the invaluable Josh Murphy, who works from NOAA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Josh was the creative soul who helped negotiate a HUD-funded, NOAA-sponsored project led by AECOM but involving Digital Coast partners (APA, NACo, ASFPM) to work with two pilot communities (Brevard County, FL, and San Luis Obispo County, CA) to help operationalize concepts for integrating resilience and hazard mitigation priorities into the local planning process. This is rather advanced stuff and requires some real skill to manage, but we all did it together, advancing the frontiers of planning. And we had Josh to thank for making it all possible. He is one of NOAA’s truly valuable assets.

Courtesy of Shannon Burke

Posted on Facebook 1/17/2019

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As I complete this round of gratitude to Digital Coast staff, I wish to make clear that there are many others at NOAA for whom we should all be grateful beyond those I have highlighted. But I do want to close by mentioning the remarkable Lori Cary-Kothera, whose consistent demonstrations of enthusiasm, high intelligence, and dedication have also helped the partners to succeed in their efforts both to support the Digital Coast program and to advance their own respective projects and services to coastal communities. Lori is one of those rare people you can count on for positive advice and support. She is also a welcome beacon of warmth and humanity.

Courtesy of Shannon Burke

Posted on Facebook 1/18/2019

Jim Schwab

Knock Me Over

From left: Larry Larson; Maria Cox-Lamm, ASFPM Chair; myself; Ingrid Wadsworth, ASFPM Deputy Director

I confess: I was taken totally by surprise. Most of us, if we have a level head on our shoulders, do not do our work with the thought that we will some day be presented with a major award because of it. Especially those of us in the world of public service and nonprofits, where dedication to the greater good is a primary motive, even though we are not immune to thinking about raises and promotions, which, after all, may enable us to be more effective in what we do.

Consequently, when the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) asked me to attend the annual ASFPM conference in Phoenix last week (June 17-21), I naively accepted the rationale that, since they had recently contracted with me as an independent consultant to lead the production of a Planning Advisory Service Report on climate resilience and capital improvements planning, under a Regional Coastal Resilience grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), they needed me there to discuss the project. I had helped write the grant three years ago while still leading the Hazards Planning Center at the American Planning Association (APA), which became the major partner to ASFPM in conducting the three-year project. Although I retired from that position a little more than a year ago, there was a great deal of logic in bringing me back to see at least that part of the project to a successful conclusion.

There was only one problem in Phoenix. No one seemed all that concerned about spending time talking to me about the NOAA project. I was certainly learning a great deal by listening to presentations, and I certainly enjoyed networking with colleagues at receptions and in hallways at the Phoenix Convention Center, but the question was bugging me: Why did they really want me out here?

On Thursday morning, June 21, before the morning plenary began in the Ballroom, I approached David Conrad and Larry Larson at a front table after initially parking my belongings at another table further back. David Conrad was once with the National Wildlife Federation and wrote a path-breaking report following the 1993 Midwest floods. Larry is the former executive director of ASFPM and now a policy advisor working with current executive director Chad Berginnis. Both are prominent in the field of floodplain management.

I patted David on the shoulder and with self-effacing humor said, “I used to sit at the front table before I retired from APA, but now I’m nobody anymore.” They chuckled, and ASFPM’s public information officer, Michele Mihalovich, said from across the table, “Jim, you’ll never be nobody.” We all laughed, David invited me to join them, and I moved to the front table for the plenary. All good for a laugh. Afterwards, Larry made a point of asking me to find him at a front table, off to the side, for the awards luncheon at noon. Still clueless, I assumed he was simply being friendly but honored his request when the time came.

Lunch was served, and Doug Plasencia, president of the ASFPM Foundation, and Diane Brown, retiring from her post as outreach and events manager at ASFPM after 35 years of excellent service, introduced award recipients and their achievements one at a time, with images on the screen, and each winner stood with presenters for a photo. Interesting, I thought, in considering the various prizes, but routine. I was happy for the winners, some of whom I knew. Almost every national professional organization does such things. Meanwhile, I ate my salad, the roast beef entrée, and the dessert. In a little while, it would all be over, and we would move on to an afternoon of presentations and discussions in a variety of concurrent sessions. I flipped through the program to see what looked interesting.

Finally, Diane Brown began to describe the winner of the highest honor ASFPM bestows, the Goddard-White Award, described thus on the website:

“The Goddard-White Award is named in honor of the contributions made to floodplain management by Gilbert White (1911- 2006) and Jim Goddard (1906-1994). This award is given by ASFPM to individuals who have had a national impact carrying forward the goals and objectives of floodplain management. It is an indication of the level of esteem the association holds for the two namesakes as well as the recipients and is ASFPM’s highest award. It is not necessarily presented every year.”

I’m not sure because one does not time such things. I believe it took about 30 seconds of Diane’s narration of the story behind this year’s award before it suddenly dawned on me that I was the person they were talking about. I had never spent one minute before that contemplating this specific award or how I might have anything to do with it. The revelation that I was a recipient struck me like a lightning bolt. Larry was looking toward me, and I pointed to myself silently as if so say, “Moi?” He kept his Cheshire cat smile and waited for the emcees to invite me forward. Larry, by the way, was in 1985 the very first recipient of this honor. He had known all along precisely what was coming. Diane invited me to the podium to say a few words. A few tears started to run down my cheeks, so I struggled to get them under control. At the podium, Diane asked, “Are you okay to talk?” I nodded yes.

I cannot repeat verbatim what I said because it was all spontaneous, but I know that I began by saying that we in the hazards world are “supposed to be prepared. I am not. You caught me off guard.” I took the crowd on a two-minute tour of what we had achieved together in the partnership of recent years that I helped construct between ASFPM and APA, and said, “Eventually, you look back and ask, ‘Did we do all that?’” I then explained that it was not just me. I had learned a great deal over the years from many other people, that big achievements require collective effort. And I thanked everyone for this high honor before stepping over to the curtain for a photograph that you see above.

I checked later and found that only 24 people have received this award, including former NOAA Coastal Services Center administrator Margaret Davidson, a truly memorable individual, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, a perennial warrior for better disaster legislation, and French Wetmore, who helped create the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Rating System for the National Flood Insurance Program. All I can say is, Wow. What a band of high achievers and visionaries I have apparently joined.

It is hard to top such an honor, except in one way: It is important not to rest on these laurels, but to continue to contribute, to encourage others to find their passion, and to remain an effective voice for positive change. I hope I am doing that and can remain part of the action for many years to come. Thanks, ASFPM. I hope I can prove you right.

Jim Schwab

Natural Solutions for Natural Hazards

Boulder Creek, Boulder, Colorado

Boulder Creek, Boulder, Colorado

It has taken a long while in our modern society for the notion to take hold that some of the best solutions to reduce the impact of natural hazards can be found in nature itself. Perhaps it is the high cost of continuing to use highly engineered solutions to protect development that has often been sited unwisely in the first place that has finally gotten our attention. Particularly after Hurricane Sandy, however, the notion of using green infrastructure as part of the hazard mitigation strategy for post-disaster recovery began to gain traction; green infrastructure was highlighted in the federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Strategy. These approaches are also known as natural or nature-based designs. They involve understanding the role natural systems play in reducing damages and in using that knowledge to deploy such solutions as part of an intelligent game plan for improving community resilience.

But where should community planners and local officials get reliable information on the best and most proven strategies for implementing green infrastructure solutions?

About a year and a half ago, researchers from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) approached me about involving the American Planning Association (APA) Hazards Planning Center in a project they were undertaking with support from the Kresge Foundation to prepare such information in the form of a green infrastructure siting guide. In the end, they also involved the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), the National Association of Counties (NACo), the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Boston-based design firm Sasaki Associates to assist with this effort. Over the past year or more, we have all met regularly to discuss what needed to be done and our progress in making it happen. We produced case studies, strategy briefs, and other material to populate the project’s web-based resources.

Bioswale in a subdivision development in Boulder County, Colorado.

Bioswale in a subdivision development in Boulder County, Colorado.

Last month, after all that teamwork, TNC unveiled its new website for the project, called Naturally Resilient Communities. For those interested in knowing how trees, living shorelines, dunes, coastal marshes, and oyster reefs, among other types of natural infrastructure, can help mitigate natural hazards like coastal storms and urban flooding, the website provides a serious and interactive introduction to the subject matter, backed up by numerous resources.

What is especially valuable about the website design is that it allows users multiple avenues into the specific types of information they need. Not all natural infrastructure solutions are born equal. Some are more appropriate in certain settings than others. Some work best in inland river valleys, some along coastlines, and others in mountains or high plains. Some coastal solutions work well in the rocky coastlines of California or Oregon, while others work better along Atlantic or Gulf Coast shorelines. Applying such solutions is largely a matter of learning what works best in a specific natural environment in the face of specific hazards—riverine flooding, hurricanes, thunderstorms, or other threats that communities face. It is critical to adapt the solution to the problem.

Accordingly, the website, largely the work of Sasaki Associates with vetting from the other project partners, allows users to approach the information by deciding which strategies they wish to investigate or which part of the United States is relevant. They can also look at considerations such as cost, the geographic scale of the solution (neighborhood, municipal, regional), and the type of community in question. These are precisely the frames of reference familiar to most urban planners and civil engineers who are most likely to be involved in implementing natural infrastructure projects. The emphasis throughout is on the practical, not the ideal or the ideological. A particular approach either works or does not work, but it does so in very specific settings, such as a neighborhood in a city along one of the Great Lakes or in the Southwestern desert. Context is the central question.

This memorial to Gilbert White, the pioneer of modern floodplain management, marks the high point of flooding along Boulder Creek.

This memorial to Gilbert White, the pioneer of modern floodplain management, marks the high point of flooding along Boulder Creek.

Establishing context is why the project put considerable emphasis on case studies, which cover a variety of communities around the nation. Specify, for example, Rocky Mountain West as a region and riverine flooding as a problem, and the site gives you a case study from Boulder, Colorado, that examines the alternatives considered and solutions adopted for flooding along Boulder Creek and discusses the involvement of the city and the Denver-based Urban Drainage and Flood Control District to implement a stream restoration master plan. One can also find case studies from Florida, Ohio, and numerous other locations. One can also, however, explore sections of the website devoted to additional resources and funding

sources to support green infrastructure projects. These allow the user to connect to other websites and some PDFs for additional information.

Go explore. I admit to taking pride in our involvement in this effort. It is, I think, a welcome resource and great learning tool for planners, engineers, local officials, and the interested public.

 

Jim Schwab

The Fine Art of Stepping Down

“The cemeteries are full of indispensable people,” or variations thereof, is a quotation that has been attributed to many, including the late French President Charles de Gaulle, but according to Quote Investigator, actually belongs to an American writer Elbert Hubbard in 1907, using the phrase, “people the world cannot do without” and the word “graveyards.” But QI notes numerous sources over the years, many of which may well have borrowed from or built upon the other. The point is clear: None of us lives forever, and the world finds a way to move on without us. We can make an impact, but so can others. And we can come to terms with those facts long before we arrive at the cemetery.

Although it was not made public until January 9, I decided a few months ago that it was time to leave my post at the American Planning Association as manager of the Hazards Planning Center. There are two other such centers at APA—Green Communities, and Planning and Community Health—each of which has had at least three different managers since the National Centers for Planning were established in 2008 as a means of making clear APA’s commitment to certain leading-edge topics in planning. I have so far been the only manager for Hazards.  More importantly, I built that center’s portfolio atop an existing legacy of work in the field of planning for hazards dating back to 1993, when I agreed to manage a project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that led to publication of the landmark report, Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction. I did not at first foresee the ways in which that effort would forever alter the arc of my career in urban planning. Looking back, there was nothing inevitable about it. While I was http://www.statenislandusa.com/heavily involved until then in environmental planning, almost none of it involved disasters. Once I sank my teeth deeply into the subject matter, however, there was no letting go. The Blues Brothers would have said that I was on a mission from God. Increasingly, I became aware of the high stakes for our society in properly planning our communities to cope with natural hazards.

One of the special pleasures of my position was the opportunity every summer to attend the Natural Hazards Conference in Colorado. Here, along with my wife, Jean, and daughter, Anna, in 2007, are some visitors from Taiwan whom I had met during a conference there the year before.

One of the special pleasures of my position was the opportunity every summer to attend the Natural Hazards Conference in Colorado. Here, along with my wife, Jean, and daughter, Anna, in 2007, are some visitors from Taiwan whom I had met during a conference there the year before.

That quarter-century tenure in the driver’s seat of APA’s initiatives regarding disaster policy and practice made me, in some people’s minds at least, almost inseparable from the position I now hold. Perhaps in part because I was comfortable in working with the news media, I became the public face of APA in the realm of hazards planning. That may have been amplified to some extent by the fact that, until last year, the only APA employees working directly under me on a regular basis were interns, most of whom were graduate planning students. It’s not that I was a one-man show. I enlisted staff within the research department for specific projects with assigned hours. Given the expertise needed in this area, and my own willingness to listen to and learn from the best, most experienced people available, it was generally productive to contract with those people on a consulting basis or through partnerships with other organizations. Because APA is a professional organization with a membership of almost 40,000, those resources were readily available. I could marshal expertise far greater than any we could have hired for most of those years. Last year, however, we came to terms with growth and added research associate Joseph DeAngelis, who joined us after leaving the New York City Planning Department, where he had worked on Hurricane Sandy recovery on Staten Island. He has become a great asset to the organization.

His ability to span the transition to a new manager was one of several preconditions I had in mind over the last two or three years in contemplating my retirement from APA. More important, but a factor in adding him to our staff, was that I wanted to leave my successor with a center that was in good shape. This meant having projects underway, and funded by agreements with sponsors beyond the immediate few months after my departure. By late last year, we had won project grants from FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will all end between July and December in 2018. That gives my successor, whoever he or she may be, more than adequate opportunity to complete those ongoing projects, maintain APA’s credibility in the realm of hazards, and explore new options and opportunities that will sustain the legacy that is already in place. I understand that people like me sometimes move quickly to another organization, firm, or government agency because a huge opportunity opens on short notice. With retirement, however, there is no need for such haste. We can take time to plan well.

That leads to another precondition in which I can say that I am greatly aided by the management philosophy of APA’s current executive director, James Drinan. He believes that, when possible, we should seek a managerial replacement who can join APA in the last two or three weeks of the tenure of their predecessor. This allows the opportunity for the outgoing person to share how things are done or even answer questions about how they might be done better or differently. I recognize, for one thing, that my own package of skills is unique and unlikely to be replicated. That is fine because someone new may well be much stronger in some other areas than I ever was. And if so, I am happy for them. It is a fool’s errand to seek replacement by a clone. Ultimately, the hiring choice will belong to APA’s research director, David Rouse, but my input on what credentials and experience are most useful is likely to have an impact. We hope to see resumes from some high-quality candidates in coming weeks.

So what is next for me as of June 1? I look forward to an opportunity to explore some new options that simply have not been feasible until now. Elsewhere on this website, I describe my intended work on some future book projects, most immediately focusing on the 1993 and 2008 Midwest floods, but there are other ideas waiting in the wings. APA would like to use my consulting services as needed to aid the transition beyond my retirement, and I have agreed, but there are and may be some other offers. I will certainly continue teaching at the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning, at least as long as they wish to continue that relationship, which has been very fruitful. And it should surprise no one if people find me on the speaking circuit from time to time. In fact, I may be much freer to accept such invitations if I am not managing a research program for APA. Finally, I shall have considerably greater free time to devote to this blog. In less than four years, its following has grown from virtually nothing to more than 14,000 subscribers as of this week. It has been a great pleasure to share what I learn through that forum.

The opportunity to spend part of an afternoon just reading a book on a 606 Trail bench beckons.

The opportunity to spend part of an afternoon just reading a book on a 606 Trail bench beckons.

But those are all activities that somehow involve work. I may well involve myself in some volunteer activities with APA divisions and its Illinois chapter, the Society of Midland Authors, and other outlets that I may discover. That too sometimes sounds like work, so let me try harder. I have written about the wonderful 606 Trail near my home; I expect to walk and bicycle there and in nearby Humboldt Park. I may well take a great novel to one of the trail’s benches (or to my front patio) and read in the middle of the day. My wife and I may travel, both as we choose and as we are invited. Anyone reading this blog must already know that I love to get around. Despite all its flaws, the world remains a fascinating place, and I want to explore it while I can. I may never get a gig (or want one) like that of Anthony Bourdain, but I will see enough. And, yes, like him, I love to explore different cuisines—in part so that, as an amateur gourmet chef with new time on his hands, I can try them out for guests at home or elsewhere. Like I said, the world is a fascinating place. Explore it while you can.

Jim Schwab