Victoria Simonsen discussing a map of the town’s flood damage with visitor, 2014
Ten years ago this month, Colorado faced a crisis. Following previous years of drought and wildfires, Rocky Mountain monsoon rains dumped a year’s worth of precipitation on the Front Range in a single day. Water poured down mountainsides that were sometimes so parched and scorched from previous high heat and fires that they could not absorb the rainfall, which then carried mud and debris downhill through the towns in its path. One of those towns was Lyons, which we visited on July 13 to interview Town Administrator Victoria Simonsen, who has remained on the job through thick and thin, helping to guide a remarkable recovery. But she also helped arrange for us to interview homeowner Priscilla Cohan, who is also a local artist, and Neil Sullivan, owner of the St. Vrain Market local grocery store. He has also served on the town’s planning commission, and his wife served two terms as mayor during the recovery.
Click here to watch the blog video recorded in Lyons.
I had previously visited Lyons twice in the early years after the flood, discussing some of the situation in an early blog post here. During the same time, a Community Planning Assistance Team (CPAT) from the American Planning Association spent several days visiting Lyons and producing a report with its own recommendations for moving forward. Lyons received other outside help too, from agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, of course, but also from entities like the planning school at the University of Colorado at Denver.
Aerial view of damage to bridge over St. Vrain River in September 2013
Now, the town is moving forward this month with a commemoration of that infamous flood that divided this Rocky Mountain hillside community into six islands divided by flood waters, compounding the difficulties of search and rescue until the flood waters receded. Why did we go there now? We wanted to capture this story and learn how it fit into a larger story of the State of Colorado building capacity for local governments to develop resilience in the face of cascading disasters like drought, wildfires, landslides, and flooding. We will integrate that story into the final film product for Planning to Turn the Tide, made possible by the assistance of people like Simonsen and numerous other volunteers from the Colorado APA Chapter and the Colorado planning community.
If you wish to support this endeavor, please use the QR code below or link here.
I was lying half awake in bed at 4 a.m., unable to return completely to sleep after using the bathroom. My mind kept rolling over various competing obligations and necessities, and the thought hit me:
“You must catch up while slowing down.”
Frankly, that made about as much sense to me in the moment as it probably does to you upon reading it. One’s subconscious mind can shed strange light sometimes. The whole idea is as paradoxical as it is imperative. And yet, I mention it because I strongly suspect that many people can relate to it at some level.
We get caught in situations. Mine is partial explanation of why it has been weeks since I last posted on this blog, but that is a minor measure of the overall impact of a combined events and circumstances. As a professional urban planner, I can state flatly that life does not always follow our plans. It springs surprises and throws nasty curveballs.
Work piles up, even if much of it, in my case at the moment, is pro bono or volunteer work. The thought that I am sharing occurred last weekend, and I wrote the first four paragraphs above that morning. I got sidetracked until now, but there’s no better time to finish a blog post than now–I guess.
Let’s go back almost two months. On April Fool’s Day, aka April 1, I flew with my wife (Jean) and a teenage grandson (Alex) to Philadelphia to attend the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference. This was important to me on several levels, including my role as immediate past chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, which keeps me on the Executive Committee until the end of this year. Even then, I will still be involved, primarily in charge of a documentary film project, but I will save that topic for my next blog post. You can see the work piling up already. Being there allowed me to network with numerous people about numerous issues and projects and attend our division reception, where we announced a fundraising campaign to support the film project. Over breakfast, it gave one colleague from APA’s International Division an opportunity to recruit me for its Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group. But it was also a chance, during spring break for the Chicago Public Schools, to tour parts of a historic city with Alex and Jean.
A much earlier request to speak at a conference in Georgia set me up to fly back to Chicago on April 4 to stay overnight and fly the very next day to Atlanta. The occasion was the Larry Larson Speaker Series of the ASFPM Foundation at Lake Lanier, attached to the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Floodplain Management. Our distinguished panel was addressing issues of disaster resilience from federal, state, nonprofit, and local planning perspectives.
Little did I know my own resilience was to be tested. Wicked weather sweeping through the Midwest and South that week created havoc. By the time I arrived at O’Hare International Airport, having neglected to check for cell phone text messages, I learned that my flight to Atlanta was canceled and no others were available that day. I needed to be at Lake Lanier by that evening, so I conferred with the event organizers. I had to cancel my flight and hotel room and ended up speaking the next morning by video connection, missing out on personal interactions but delivering my comments anyway. Perhaps my own most notable remark was that I no longer wanted to hear any local official say after a natural disaster that “no one could have foreseen” the event. If the event happened, I said, it was always within the realm of possibility. “What you’re telling me,” I said, “is that you may not have spent much time thinking about it beforehand.” Terri L. Turner, a long-time colleague and recently retired development services administrator for the city of Augusta, Georgia, told me later that there was a ripple of laughter in the audience after I said that. Floodplain managers too often know the truth of such assertions.
Within two weeks, I discovered that my personal resilience was to be challenged in more significant ways. By mid-April, I experienced a sudden problem on the bottom of my left foot that appeared to be some sort of lesion or blister. Not sure, the best move seemed to be a consultation with my primary care physician to see what he thought. That happened on April 19, but he was also uncertain and referred me to a podiatrist. However, the very next morning, I reported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a previously scheduled prostate biopsy, which produced its own complications over the weekend. I might have just waited those out restfully if I had not been scheduled as co-instructor for a week-long online, all-day FEMA class that week, which was largely an exhausting experience. In mid-week, I left right after class adjourned for a follow-up appointment with the urologist to learn the results of the biopsy, which were reassuring but will involve some further measures this summer.
I finally managed to see the podiatrist the following Monday. He determined a need to biopsy the growth, a decidedly painful and messy experience even with a local anesthetic. I went home with a bandaged foot that I needed to protect for several days until it healed. A week later, however, I learned that the growth was benign; surgery would still be beneficial though not urgent.
Somewhere, in between all this, my printer died. I bought a new one from Best Buy but asked that the Geek Squad do me the favor of installing it. After all, I bought it the day of the foot biopsy. Our aging electric mower also died, and I brought our 19-year-old college student grandson to Home Depot to help buy a new one. I let him assemble it and mow the yard. I’m fine with mowing now, but for a few days, it was decidedly not a good idea.
By now, the second week of May had arrived, and a number of commitments beyond the FEMA class were amassing a backlog of work for which I needed a rapid rise in stamina, which I have mostly managed to generate. Nonetheless, I wish I had more energy and more hours in the day. That does not even speak to family obligations as summer arrives and school ends, and I dream of a vacation while arranging to see doctors in August. I’ll figure it all out, but as I said, life throws curveballs. The value of being 73 is that one has presumably learned something about how to handle matters more efficiently and wisely. I am applying that wisdom to regain control over those pending tasks and establish priorities. I am learning how to catch up and slow down at the same time.
My next post, coming very soon, will share the biggest project currently on my plate. I hope you will find it as fascinating and exciting as I do. Resilience matters.
Jim Schwab
P.S.: While editing this piece for publication, I learned that a Sunday feature article in the Chicago Tribune, in which I was quoted, has appeared online here. The article discusses the impact of climate change on urban heat and social disparities in the city. In addition, the two links below provide methodology for the article and searchable maps:
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.
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.
I miss my gym already, closed just two weeks ago. There was a profusion of equipment to keep anyone in shape, whether you were working on legs, biceps, core, cardio, some combination, whatever. Here at home, I have small barbells, some ankle weights, and perhaps most importantly, a newly tuned 26-inch bicycle. There are other bicycles in our garage, mostly to accommodate grandchildren but also one my wife uses. We were out briefly yesterday for a ride in the neighborhood before the blustery spring winds brought more rain.
Closed entrance to the 606 Trail at California Ave.
A friend joked a few days ago that, after closing the Lakefront trail, adjacent parks, and beaches, and the 606 Trail plus park district field houses and playgrounds, Mayor Lori Lightfoot may have been praying for rain to enforce the stay-at-home, social distancing restrictions in effect throughout Illinois. If so, she got her wish over the weekend, but the weather is changing already, and Chicagoans are likely to take advantage of it. That’s okay, as long as we use those big park spaces that are still open to maintain social distance and help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Alex at a closed entrance to the 606 Trail.
Quite frankly, just one week ago, after picking up my bike from a nearby shop that performed the tuning, I used it to ride a portion of the 606 Trail, feeling the liberation that comes with such a small adventure. That was Monday afternoon, and the closures came on Thursday. I was not surprised. The 606, which is a great community-building amenity in normal times, seemed far too narrow and crowded for public safety in these times. I have not returned. Future rides will be on winding paths in the 700-acre Humboldt Park, where one can move past other human beings without encroaching on personal space. And I can still invigorate my body and spirit with some healthy exercise.
Humboldt Park is open, but the playgrounds are closed.
So, what is this blog post about, exactly? It is about adjustments in the time of COVID-19. But let me be clear. I am sharing the adjustments being made in our three-member household, and everyone else is making their own. Each set of adjustments is unique, yet many of us can learn from one another. I am also painfully aware that we are safer and in a better position financially than many people who have lost jobs or are suffering lost income, or have a sick family member. I can empathize, while knowing their experience will unquestionably be very different. And I wish such people the very best. Our nation is in for one tough slog against a ghastly microbial enemy.
My wife and I are both in our early seventies, but our three-member household includes an 11-year-old grandson, for whom we assumed guardianship two years ago. His mother has long faced mental health challenges. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed, and as of now, they will remain so until April 20. After that? Who knows? At first, the closure was for two weeks, but that would have ended today. Officials at all levels of government have underestimated the scope and duration of this problem, but the important thing is that they are learning daily and adjusting strategies, as we all are. Universities have suspended semesters and moved classes online. A friend of mine who teaches at an area community college admits to being “dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century” as he learns online teaching skills. I, on the other hand, have already been teaching online for the University of Iowa. My one class each year occurs in the fall, so the question is whether we enroll enough students to move forward by August. The odds seem good, but so much changes so quickly. Again, who knows? I will have to wait for the answer.
I practice what I call “alleged retirement,” which involves a part-time mix of teaching, consulting, public speaking, and writing. At worst, my wife, Jean, a retired teacher, and I can live off our pensions and Social Security. We would have to retrench if I had no outside income, some provided by the university, but we could survive. That makes us feel far more secure than I know is the case for gig workers, restaurant and hospitality workers, travel and tourism workers, and many others affected by shutdowns and restrictions aimed at containing contagion.
Jean in front of Moos School, now closed because of coronavirus.
Meanwhile, precisely because she is a teacher, my wife works with Alex on reading and math, so that lost school days do not translate entirely into lost learning. But that has involved its own learning curve. In the first week, we both noticed Alex’s ability to refocus his time on television and video games. We were busy figuring things out in that week of canceled St. Patrick’s Day events and the Illinois primary, in which Jean was an election judge. But we discussed the situation, and Jean quickly began to insist on specific hours for learning exercises. I am grateful, and hope Alex is, for her knowledge of teaching methods to keep him fresh on everything from multiplication to vocabulary expansion. I can only imagine what single mothers with four children no longer attending school must be doing to cope with the situation. Many in Chicago or rural Illinois or throughout America do not have Internet, or lack personal computers, and lack daily connection with the schools that kept their children busy until just recently. We have a 16-year-old grandson who is a high school sophomore. He is staying with his father, who works long hours in a warehouse to pay the bills. While we provided Angel with a small laptop at Christmas, I have noticed that CPS is not updating information on Aspen, its grade- and assignment-tracking online program, so we have no idea what, if anything, he should be doing in his classes. I used to help him with courses like Spanish, but now I have not a clue what he should be doing. It is as if CPS just vanished into thin air. The only solution from a learning perspective may be to extend the school year in June—but only if we have coronavirus under control by then. Otherwise, you could take his lost opportunities and multiply them by the tens of thousands across the city.
Jean works with Alex on spelling.
Then there is the drumbeat of coronavirus news to which people can subject themselves if they sit in front of the television all day long. I choose not to do that because I find that one hour of news tells me 90 percent of what I need to know, barring some breaking announcement, and the rest is repetition. I read the Chicago Tribunethoroughly each morning. My wife knows counselors and others who suggest limiting exposure to such news to reduce anxiety. She has taken to using some online meditation one of them has provided, and it works for her. I don’t share the anxiety because I am a different sort of person. My professional experience in the urban planning field is heavy on planning for disasters and disaster recovery. I read the news with an analytical eye, looking for clues to what we, as a society or region or city, can do better, and often turning that into commentary on this blog, but also applying it in various planning tasks. Since I retired from the American Planning Association (APA), many of those tasks have been pro bono activities, such as serving on policy guide task forces and chairing APA’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. There is no shortage of opportunities, and I am grateful every day for the chance to contribute something through all those channels. It’s not all about earning money. Just helping makes our lives richer; how we do it depends on our skill set and interests.
But clearly, the precautions we are all observing can be frustrating and lead to adjustments. Travel, in most cases, is a non-starter for the near future. Little more than a month ago, I was in Rockport, Texas, assisting the APA Texas chapter with a Hurricane Harvey recovery event that allowed Texas planners to interact with planners from New York and New Jersey who could share perspectives from Sandy recovery. Two weeks later, after a quick recovery from a mild case of the flu, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, speaking at the annual conference of the Nebraska Planning & Zoning Association, sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues there. The first hints of a truly serious public health catastrophe were becoming clear, and that became my last trip so far this year. By March 18, APA had canceled its annual National Planning Conference in Houston, an event that has typically drawn about 5,000 people. Not this year. As a division leader, I am involved in many of the leadership discussions about what comes next in taking many meetings and sessions and other events online, and moving forward. This is happening across the board to numerous organizations of widely varying sizes, with huge impacts on the hotel, airline, and convention industries not only nationwide but across the world. Caught in the maws of this economic and public health earthquake are millions of workers.
Yet, as obvious as this seems to me, with my laser focus on news that matters, I have learned that not everyone is fully aware of its consequences. Alex’s mother invited us to visit her apartment, and Jean declined because we have no way of judging how safe it is. Then, two other people visiting her apartment suggested coming to our house to visit Alex. Again, Jean said that would have to wait, but they seemed only marginally aware of developments like restaurant closures and social distancing. Meanwhile, my mother, whose resilience at an advanced age has been stunning, was released last week from a hospital in suburban Cleveland after a brief non-COVID illness to a rehab facility, where she is confined to her room for 14 days because she had been in a hospital. Visitors are not permitted, as they also will not be when she finally returns to her retirement home. In short, although I have two siblings who live near her, I could not visit even if I chose to drive there.
But that brings me to a closing note. I can stay home not only because I am “allegedly retired,” but because I am not a health care worker. Their adjustments have been the reverse of those of most of us, involving thorough engagement, exposure to life-threatening infection, and long hours of treating growing numbers of patients. And not just in urban areas. As of today, for example, Illinois has 4,596 reported cases, resulting in 65 deaths, spread across 40 of 102 counties. Small towns and rural areas will not be immune. I just heard New York Gov. Cuomo note that COVID-19 has spread to all but one county in his state.
Amidst all our concerns, the ducks in the lagoon at Humboldt Park are blissfully oblivious to human problems with the novel coronavirus.
We’re all making adjustments, most of us in our homes, but our public health workers, doctors, and nurses are making theirs at the front lines. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and everything we can do to support them, especially those who have voluntarily returned to work from retirement, or serve in the National Guard, and didn’t have to take those risks. God bless them all, every last courageous one of them.
