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One of my long-term goals in the last two years has been to research and write a history of the 1993 and 2008 Midwest floods. My initial intent was a history of the 1993 floods, but I had not gotten very far before disaster struck again, this time primarily and most ferociously in Iowa, rendering the original idea painfully incomplete. As difficult as it was to contemplate pasting together the events of two major regional floods 15 years apart, it was apparent to me that there was no alternative.  What we learned from the first event had a great bearing on what we were willing to learn from the second. The impacts of the two disasters were inextricably linked. Old lessons led to new lessons. One could not publish a history of one without somehow discussing the other.

Many of those lessons have become an integral part of my speaking, teaching, and writing over the last 15 years. In Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction, a substantial guidebook resulting from a project I managed for the American Planning Association under a cooperative agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, I contributed a case study of Arnold, Missouri. This southern suburb of St. Louis garnered substantial FEMA funds to acquire flood-prone properties along the Meramec and Mississippi Rivers in order to reduce its future flood exposure. It was able to do this because of a previously prepared (1991) plan for this purpose. Their success intrigued me with the whole notion of preplanning for potential future disasters, a research interest I have pursued ever since. It was also the focus of the entire 356-page report.

But there were other things I learned from the many affected communities. In the midst of the 1993 floods, I toured Iowa City and Des Moines to learn of the flood recovery efforts underway there. I toured Valmeyer, Illinois, to see the results of a pioneering relocation effort following the 1993 flood. Officials in Cedar Falls, Iowa, contributed plans and studies from their experience with the 2008 flood that allowed me to use their town as an exercise case for a workshop, “Planning for a Disaster-Resistant Community,” originally developed under a contract with FEMA. Local officials in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hosted my University of Iowa graduate planning students for an all-day field trip to see their flood recovery efforts. The many initiatives of the Rebuild Iowa Office have shed new light on state-led efforts for flood recovery that I find intriguing. In any event, I learned to love Iowa during the seven years (1879-1985) that I spent there as both a civic activist and a graduate student at the University of Iowa, where I studied urban and regional planning and journalism.

In coming months and years, I hope that this website will provide an avenue for people to exchange thoughts, experiences, and wisdom with me about what we all learned from the two major floods. I want to find the people who lived through the floods, worked through the floods, helped solve the problems created by the floods, and wrestled with the many public policy dimensions of the floods. My goal is focused toward issues of planning and land use: I want to know:

• How we made the floods worse than they needed to be;
• What we learned about the problems we created over time;
• What we were and are able to change in our public behaviors and policies;
• What we now know about what works and what does not in mitigating flood damages;
• To what extent planners and public officials are heeding the lessons of the impacts of new development in floodplains;
• How we are sorting out the responsibilities of various levels of government for a wide variety of tasks related to flood safety;
• What impacts the 1993 and 2008 floods have had in shaping public consciousness, public policy, and the law.

These are just a few of my questions. I want to see as many plans, studies, and ordinances from both eras as possible, from as many communities as possible, and hear from as many citizens, planners, floodplain managers, public works officials, local elected officials, and others with a passionate but informed interest in the subject as possible. If you wish to contact me with information you think might improve the end product when I write the book, click here.

APA Projects

The book about the floods is a personal project, though it is enhanced by my teaching at the University of Iowa, which has facilitated access to a great deal of information on the topic. All of that supplements my “day job” as a senior research associate at the American Planning Association and the manager of its Hazards Planning Research Center. Current projects there include the following:

• Planning the Urban Forest, a Planning Advisory Service Report that we are now using as the basis for a full-day training workshop on planning the use of green infrastructure;
• Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning, a brand new PAS Report issued in May 2010, which highlights with six major case studies how communities can best integrate hazard mitigation into all aspects of the local planning process;
• A webinar scheduled for March 16, 2011, on that same subject as part of APA’s annual series of audio/web conferences produced in conjunction with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy;
• A new APA partnership with the Digital Coast program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help bring to the nation’s planners access to a suite of mapping and visualization tools to address coastal development, erosion, and sea-level rise, among other coastal issues.

Other proposals and projects are in the works. As they materialize, that information will appear here. Stay tuned.