For the Love of Public Spaces

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

Comparing Disaster Recovery Around the World

There was a time not long ago, in human history, when a faraway nation could experience a wrenching natural disaster that most of the rest of us would not know about for months, or even years, afterwards. The idea that anyone else should or could help the stricken cities or nations recover would have seemed foreign, if not utterly impractical. Help from the U.S. federal government for San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake was minimal and slow to arrive. American involvement in an earthquake at the time in China would have seemed preposterous and quixotic.

2002 planning meeting in Bhuj following the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Photo by B.R. Balachandran, Environmental Planning Collaborative, Ahmedabad, obtained from Robert Olshansky.

Modern transportation and communications have changed all that, and as we became more instantly aware of hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes in Japan, and volcanoes in the Philippines, we began to realize that there were ways to help—and much to learn. Governments became more aware of a responsibility to assist with planning for long-term recovery, and the field of urban planning, which for decades saw natural hazards as outside its purview, by the 1980s began to undertake systematic studies of how to make recovery more effective. As disasters became more expensive in light of widespread urbanization in recent decades, the stakes have risen dramatically. Researchers and practitioners over the past 40 or 50 years have exchanged data and ideas at major international and national conferences, and national and local policies on post-disaster recovery have evolved rapidly. One can now find a substantial literature on the topic.

One recent and noteworthy entry into this literature is After Great Disasters: An In-Depth Analysis of How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2017; 380 pp.). The authors, Laurie A. Johnson and Robert B. Olshansky, are both highly experienced in the international arena and, I will add, good colleagues of mine in this field. Johnson is an independent consultant based in northern California with past ties to various firms engaged in hazards work. She was a major contributor to Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation (2014), a project I led at the American Planning Association. Olshansky is a professor and head of the department of urban planning at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. The two previously co-authored Clear as Mud (Planners Press, 2010), a book that chronicled recovery planning in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

They have worked in the countries whose disasters they describe in the book: India, Japan, China, New Zealand, Indonesia, and the U.S. These are, of course, vastly different nations in wealth, geography, size, and circumstance, and the question that the authors confront is devilishly simple: Are there lessons from these nations’ experiences in managing long-term community recovery that are transferable? What, pray tell, does flood recovery in Iowa have in common with tsunami recovery in Indonesia or earthquake recovery in India?

My own international experiences have largely been different from those they describe: I have been involved in the Dominican Republic (after Hurricane Georges), Sri Lanka (after the 2004 tsunami), Taiwan, and New Zealand, under varying circumstances, and that very question has grown in my own mind over time. Those experiences have also provided background for assessing the lessons that Johnson and Olshansky derive from the countries they study. I think they do a very solid job of assembling data, shaping the narratives, and drawing useful conclusions from their case studies. At the same time, they make clear what is unique in each country, and where nuances and differences in national frameworks for disaster policy shed light on larger issues.

One fact that is clear from this book is that those national policies are anything but static. Every nation they study is learning from each major disaster and implementing changes over time. Except for New Zealand, these six are large nations with events occurring frequently enough that many of the lessons multiply and reinforce each other. It is equally clear that political history has a major influence on how these nations organize disaster recovery and how it evolves. Teasing out the lessons that are generally transferable is thus devilishly simple. They emerge only after researchers immerse themselves in the details and compare them closely.

For instance, India, like the United States, has a federal system of government. Both nations thus tend to push down to state governments a number of responsibilities that more centralized China and Japan might reserve at the national level. Prior to the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, a state in India’s northwest, India had only a very small disaster management division within its Ministry of Agriculture, a location within the national bureaucracy that itself speaks volumes about how India once perceived the nature of most disasters.

It is worth noting, however, that the U.S. did not consolidate its own disaster relief and recovery functions within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) until 1979, when the agency was created under President Jimmy Carter. The U.S. did not have any federal statutory framework for systematic disaster response until 1950, and created the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968. As the authors explain, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, then completely reshaped the administrative landscape of American disaster management as Congress reacted to those events by creating the Department of Homeland Security and placing FEMA under its umbrella.

The fact that India was at most a generation behind in assuming greater responsibility at the national level should not be surprising in light of its development, but rapid urbanization has also forced reassessment of many issues of federal ministerial structure. India is also a nation that, because of its relative poverty, has relied much more on international assistance, even as it has steadily expanded its home-grown expertise on natural hazards and urban planning.

A sewer line is laid in the old city of Bhuj in Gujarat, India, in 2004. Photo by B.R. Balachandran, Environmental Planning Collaborative, Ahmedabad. Reprinted from the book with permission from authors.

Two weeks after the 2001 earthquake, the state established the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority, led by the chief minister. Like state and national agencies in every other country studied, GSDMA experimented at times, made mistakes and enjoyed successes, and helped rebuild homes and infrastructure. There is no perfect way to recover from disaster, and there are always disappointments. For housing reconstruction, Gujarat, the authors report, employed both an owner-driven plan and a public-private partnership plan. The owner-driven approach had no precedent in India on such a large scale; the earthquake had flattened almost 6,500 buildings and killed 7,000 people. This fact alone illustrates one highly transferable lesson from international experience—that disaster recovery provides a compelling laboratory for such innovation, providing that authorities are prepared to accept the prospect of some measure of failure and to learn from it. A more positive way of making that same point is the “silver lining” theory, which sees disaster recovery as a unique opportunity to advance positive change in a “teachable moment.”

Such lessons take shape in very different cauldrons, however. New Zealand, for instance, which suffered the 2010-2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, the major city of the South Island, has a smaller population than any Indian state or most states in the U.S. The nation is also comparatively prosperous. With only 4.7 million people in an area about 70 percent the size of California, New Zealand has no need to decentralize most government functions, except for rural districts and municipalities. The national government thus found it easy to take control of some recovery functions from the city, and there was no intermediary authority. China, with the world’s largest population, tends to concentrate power but nonetheless also finds some decentralization of recovery functions a practical necessity. In the U.S., however, such power sharing is integral to the system and enshrined in the Constitution. These issues of central authority versus state or provincial and local autonomy tend to set the terms within which the experiments in recovery operate. Moreover, as the chapter on Indonesia following the  2004 tsunami through subsequent lesser disasters illustrates, disaster management institutions are evolving rapidly in developing nations as well as in those with more developed economies such as the U.S. and Japan.

So, what can we learn? This book provides a wealth of detail in its case studies, but the authors note that a key leader of Indonesian recovery efforts stated to them his belief that there are no general lessons to learn because “all disasters are unique.” It is certainly true that each event has its own special context and contours, but that simply makes drawing lessons more challenging, not impossible. The authors conclude with seven recommendations.

The first is to “enhance existing structures and systems to promote information flow and collaboration.” Often it makes sense to retain new agencies or programs because they serve more purposes than simply advancing disaster recovery. Second, the authors emphasize the need for data management, transparency, and accountability. The availability of information is crucial for citizens and stakeholders to make good decisions as they rebuild.

A village meeting discusses details of the post-tsunami resettlement in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India, in 2008. Photo by Divya Chandresekhar, obtained from Robert Olshansky.

The third point is to “plan and act simultaneously.” The paradox here is that reconstruction can never happen fast enough, yet it is important at times to slow the process down in order to inject some thoughtful deliberation into the process. In short, planners and public officials must learn to work efficiently with limited time to make things happen. In some settings, that may necessitate at least some decentralized decision making to prevent bottlenecks. It becomes essential to learn on the run because not learning can be extremely detrimental.

It is also critical both to budget for the costs of communicating and planning, because these functions are critical to success, and to increase capacity in local governments to make recovery decisions. Effective communication aids empowerment, but so does the ability to hire adequate staff with adequate training. Pushing some of that power and capacity down to individual citizens also expedites decision making. That requires sharing information.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami dramatically affected shoreline communities in Tamil Nadu, India, but fishing families were often reluctant to relocate. Photo by Robert Olshansky (from the book).

The authors also suggest avoiding “permanent relocation of residents and communities, except in rare instances, and then only with full participation of residents.” The risk of forced relocation is greater in more authoritarian and highly centralized systems like that in China, while the U.S. heavily relies on voluntary relocation, and total community relocation remains a rarity. But the consequences of such relocation can be devastating unless the community has bought into the idea and clearly understands how it will benefit—presuming it actually will.

Finally, the authors, again picking up on the theme of time compression after disasters, say, “Reconstruct quickly, but do not be hasty.” Exactly when undue speed becomes haste is, of course, very much a matter of judgment, and good judgment often relies on experience, all of which strongly suggests the value of pre-planning for disasters in order to create the opportunity to evaluate options beforehand and train staff for the eventuality. It might be added that expanding the literature available to them that will expand their familiarity with the issues before disaster strikes is also valuable. This book, in its own way, helps advance that mission.

Jim Schwab