It has been a couple of months since I last posted a video of our progress in filming for Planning to Turn the Tide. That last article summarized our film efforts in Jacksonville, Florida, in September 2023, but we had another trip in the offing then, to the Texas Gulf Coast. In between, as noted in a January 1 post, I underwent prostate surgery on September 29, which required at least a month of rest and inactivity at home before venturing out again, in order to ensure successful recovery. But on November 7, I met up with videographer David Taylor at Houston Hobby Airport and we drove to Corpus Christi, where the annual conference of the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association was getting underway. The new blog video presented here was filmed there but edited and produced later.
Devastation in the Bolivar Peninsula from Hurricane Ike, 2009
Despite my own challenges, what compelled this schedule was that conference at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi because it allowed us to interview eight Texas planners who have been prominently involved in efforts to confront and address resilience issues along the Gulf Coast, where coastal storms and flooding remain major concerns. Hurricane Harvey, which struck in the fall of 2017, may be the most famous, and famously expensive, disaster of recent history in the area but is certainly not unique. People with a longer memory can cite Tropical Storm Allison, which struck Houston in 2001, and Hurricane Ike, which devastated Galveston in 2008, as part of the long parade of such events.
It is easy enough to cite shortcomings of the past that made destruction in such storms worse than it needed to be, but it is also important to note the resources that Texas has created to tackle those problems, including Texas Target Communities, a program at Texas A&M University that aids resource-challenged communities. These groups were present at the Texas APA conference, and we interviewed both Jaimie Masterson, the director of Texas Target Communities, and Shannon Van Zandt, a professor of urban planning at the Texas A&M School of Architecture, who has long researched and advocated for better affordable housing solutions in disaster recovery.
Tornado impacts in Van Zandt County, Texas, April 2017. Seven tornadoes struck the area in one evening.
I should also note that disaster resilience has been a consistent theme of the Texas Chapter. Back in November 2017, I spent time in Texas at the behest of the chapter, which asked me to facilitate and keynote a recovery workshop in Canton, Texas, following a series of tornadoes there, but I also worked with their Harvey Recovery Task Force well into 2020. The film trip grew out of that partnership, which extends even further back to my speaking at chapter conferences in El Paso and Galveston after Hurricane Ike. We want to thank the Texas Chapter for their logistical and promotional support during the conference.
Peer exchange workshop in Rockport, February 2020, involving Harvey and Sandy recovery planners. Kim Mickelson, of Houston, with microphone, is moderating this session.
Following our time in Corpus Christi, we drove up the coast to Rockport, the site of the first landfall of Hurricane Harvey, where we interviewed four community leaders, including a city council member, the local newspaper editor, the public works director, and a former president of the local chamber of commerce, about Rockport’s experience in recovery. I have learned a great deal in recent years about Rockport, in large part because of my work with Amanda Torres, the former city planner there, now working for the Corpus Christi Planning Department, and Carol Barrett, a veteran planner now living in Austin, who led APA’s Community Planning Assistance Team in Rockport in 2019. They helped me design the Rockport case study for an interactive workshop, including both graduate students and practicing planners, that is part of a course I teach for the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs.
We ended our trip in Houston, which included a tour of largely Hispanic neighborhoods in the shadow of the city’s huge petrochemical complexes, where they face ongoing racially disparate environmental impacts. We were hosted on that tour by TEJAS Barrios, a local environmental justice advocacy group. We hope to return to Houston, but our challenge for now is to raise substantial money to try to complete the film project in the coming year. Fortunately, our core team has grown, with more hands on deck focused on fundraising. If you are willing to help, you can donate here or use the QR code below to contribute online at the APA website.
Over the past few months, we have posted ten short blog videos detailing the progress of Planning to Turn the Tide, the documentary on planning for resilience against natural disasters being produced by the American Planning Association’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. In this post, we highlight the support of APA Chapters by featuring a staff member from APA Florida, Suzie Gray, who talks about her role at the APA Florida conference we visited in Jacksonville in early September.
Florida APA annual conference reception at Hyatt Regency Jacksonville
From our first interactions with Florida Chapter representatives and staff, they have been enthusiastic about supporting the project. Not only did they supply numerous contacts, suggesting people for interviews or information, but they also extended a gracious invitation for us to visit their annual conference in Jacksonville, which took place September 5-8. We have forged similar alliances with other APA chapters since then, one of which was illustrated in Colorado in July, and most recently in Texas, the subject of upcoming blog videos. These are really important opportunities for professional collaboration and support within the framework of a larger professional organization, but it also affords us an effective base of operations during a conference, especially in the use of space suitable for recorded interviews.
The core team of the HMDR video project wishes to thank APA Florida staff and volunteers for their wonderful assistance in putting us in touch with the best planning voices in their state and lending their credibility to what we are trying to accomplish. Our challenge would be much greater without them.
To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.
But first, I wanted to offer a short note for readers on why there has been a longer gap between posts on this blog since September. Two main factors delayed this article, which will, I hope, restore the earlier pace. The first was surgery. I was aware since last spring that medical developments would probably lead to prostate surgery, though I only learned in August what type of surgery and what it would mean. It took place on September 29, and I am still emerging from a variety of activity and dietary restrictions that followed during the recovery period. I may write about that more fully later, but it kept me out of circulation for about a month. The second was a week-long trip to Texas, for reasons similar to the Florida trips, that began with my arrival in Houston on November 7. We recorded additional blog videos in Texas, along with a dozen interviews for the movie, and you will read and hear about that in coming weeks.
Florida APA annual conference reception at Hyatt Regency Jacksonville
One impetus for our trip to Jacksonville was that the Florida Chapter extended a gracious invitation and welcome to our team early in the summer, encouraging us to attend and film at the conference, and providing accommodations to do so, including a press pass for our videographer, David Taylor, and a room next to the staff office for the conference in which we conducted the interviews. They were and have been fully supportive of our undertaking and helped forge a working partnership with our division that we have used as a model with other chapters subsequently. We are very grateful to Florida APA President Whit Blanton and the chapter staff for their assistance and their understanding of the value of what we are trying to accomplish.
The other primary impetus was a need to fill in the gaps in the story we had already recorded about Florida’s natural hazard challenges and struggle to confront the impacts of climate change, sea level rise, and rapid urban growth. We had learned, for instance, from staff at the Tampa Baby Regional Planning Council that they had borrowed lessons in resilience planning from the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, a four-county consortium that was the first to tackle the impacts of climate change on a multi-county regional basis. Their leadership is not surprising when one considers the high stakes of climate change, such as increased impacts of storm surge from hurricanes when coupled with sea level rise, or increased salt-water intrusion into groundwater sources, among other considerations. The potential ramifications involve billions of dollars in climate-resilient infrastructure investments over coming decades. That sort of problem, when faced realistically, absolutely demands visionary planning.
So, we decided to identify and interview some of the best and most experienced planners addressing these issues. The Florida APA conference afforded a certain efficiency in finding many of these people in the same place at the same time, but it also let us learn that the Northeast Florida Regional Council, based in Jacksonville, is adapting its own lessons in resilience in a part of the state that once tended to see itself as immune to the sorts of major coastal storms that afflict most of Florida. Now they are seeking to confront and prepare for such eventualities. In each region that begins to adapt resilience planning to its own needs, experience with such approaches grows, and Florida gets steadily smarter in its strategies for coping with its environmental challenges, even as population growth and new urban development continue to raise the bar. The challenge is relentless, but progress is essential.
To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.
In the latter half of June 2008, it was hard to imagine Cedar Rapids as the city it had been just one month earlier. A massive flood along the Cedar River clobbered the city with a classic double whammy: About the time existing flood crests that had already swamped upstream Cedar Falls hit Cedar Rapids, a severe thunderstorm reached the city to compound the impact. The river, which runs through downtown in this city of 130,000 people, reached a flood level of 31.2 feet, besting the all-time previous record of 20 feet, reached in 1851 and 1929.
Downtown Cedar Rapids undergoing debris removal, late June 2008
Flood waters covered 14 percent of the city, more than 10 square miles. About 10 percent of the city’s population was evacuated from the deluge. Highway ramps became inaccessible, and at one point, a bus carrying prisoners from the county jail stayed just inches ahead of the rising waters to make its escape. City Hall, unfortunately situated on Mays Island in the middle of the river, was underwater, and governmental operations were moved to high ground elsewhere. In the end, nearly 1,300 flood-damaged homes were demolished, many making way for permanent open space as the city used federal hazard mitigation grants to acquire the properties with deed restrictions. Amazingly, as city officials have often said, there were no deaths due to the flood.
Relocated Czech & Slovak National Museum following June 2008 flood, Cedar Rapids
The avoidance of loss of life can be credited to the city and Linn County’s rapid response, which was not limited to emergency management. Within days, the Cedar Rapids City Council adopted a set of recovery goals that guided planning for long-term recovery for months and years afterwards. It shifted outside consulting contracts from riverfront planning to flood recovery. And it moved forward with a litany of creative approaches to business restoration, employment stabilization, and affordable housing development. Cedar Rapids became a living laboratory for community resilience.
Click here to hear two Cedar Rapids officials—Jennifer Pratt and Brenna Fall—discuss why they are supporting the HMDR film project.
These lessons have had lasting impacts in Cedar Rapids, which also suffered massive tree canopy devastation, as well as building damage, from an August 2020 derecho whose worst winds, exceeding 140 mph, swept through Linn County, including several suburbs. Taking climate change seriously, the city also last year adopted its own climate action plan. Cedar Rapids has quite probably done more to attack these problems in a forward-looking fashion than any other city in Iowa.
In coming weeks, this blog will feature new video clips from a four-day visit to the Florida APA conference in Jacksonville in early September. Meanwhile, plans are afoot for a November trip to Texas to capture additional content from the Texas APA conference in Corpus Christi, follow a mobile workshop exploring Hurricane Harvey recovery in Rockport, a Gulf Coast city where Harvey first made landfall in September 2017, and visit environmentally disadvantaged communities in the Houston area and record interviews with planners and activists there. Those posts will acknowledge the gracious support we are already receiving from several organizations and institutions in Texas.
To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.
A bit more than a month ago, I introduced this blog audience to Planning to Turn the Tide, the film project being undertaken by the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. I noted that we would be rolling out a series of updates as we completed work on new trips around the country, but the first was in Southwest Florida in late June of this year. A week later, we shared the first blog video discussing our progress, focusing on a series of interviews with planners and others at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Commission. Today, I am sharing the second blog video, which discusses our subsequent work in Sarasota County.
Phillippi Creek in southern Sarasota County
Click here to watch the summary video about the interviews we conducted in Sarasota County.
SW Florida, USGS map. Sarasota is midway along the central coast in this section.
One key point throughout the discussions was that Hurricane Ian at one point had been projected to move through Sarasota County before weather patterns in the Gulf of Mexico pushed it eastward into Lee County and Fort Myers instead. That near-miss still allows Sarasota County officials, like those further north in Tampa Bay, to make the point that preparation for a direct hit in a future storm is the entire region’s best bet.
Except for one unrelated post on July 4, it has been a while until now. David Taylor and I left Chicago on a road trip on July 6 to film in Colorado and Iowa, returning on July 18. The delay since then in putting this series back on track arose from both a short-term illness and a long to-do list of other tasks once I was back home, but here we are. We have much more to share now about Florida, Colorado, and Iowa to keep readers aware of our progress, so please keep tuning in every few days. We’ll be working to keep you updated.
If you wish to support the project, please use the QR code below for an online donation.
Okay, call me a copycat. If an idea is good enough, why not copy it proudly? On New Year’s Day, I read in a Chicago Tribune column by Heidi Stevens about a woman, Jen Kramer, who began a daily effort on Facebook a year ago as #yearoflove. Every day she posted about someone who meant something.
It occurred to me that we all have many people for whom we should be grateful, and we may not always do a good job of saying so. I thought hard about whether I could sustain a daily effort for a year as Kramer did, and then I thought, you’re a professional writer. How hard can one paragraph a day be? So I decided to take the plunge, starting that day, with #gratitudeonparade. Friends will begin learning why I am grateful and to whom. Some of it may be random, and some may be well planned. It’s a daring commitment, so I’ll see how it goes. But I have a feeling I may learn much about myself by trying.
Once a week, I will compile these short entries into a composite blog post to expand the audience. So, if you miss the daily feed on Facebook, feel free to visit www.jimschwab.com/Hablarbooks.
Posted on Facebook 1/1/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Gratitude should start in the most logical places. My mother, Hazel Schwab, who has outlived almost all her peers, would probably prefer that I not state an age on Facebook (she does not own a computer and has never used the Internet), but I want to state that she has shown me and three siblings the power of determination and the will to live and resilience many times over. She and my father early on made sure that we were in a good school district and encouraged education, even though they finished high school but never attended college. When I moved to Iowa, later married in Nebraska, and ended up in Chicago, I knew she would rather I had stayed in Cleveland. Reluctantly at first, however, she learned pride that I had spread my wings and soared professionally, even if she never fully understood exactly what I did–it was a bit esoteric by her standards, not easy to explain to her friends. (Even my wife wondered what an urban planner was when she first met me.) But she was tough of mind, and if we did not always agree on some things, we learned to disagree. But by now I have watched her survive and surmount so many challenges, it is hard to escape the conclusion that I owe some of my own dogged persistence to my mother. Thanks, Mom. You get the first tribute.
With my brother, Jack, his son, Kyle, and Kyle’s two young sons, Ryan and Dylan, at Christmas.
I suffered a disappointing discovery yesterday while
composing my blog
post. Long-time friend and former University of Iowa professor
Michael F. Sheehan had died on May 30. I
was mentioning his role in my career and searched for an appropriate link only
to find a May 30 obituary. He was 72. A physically fit ex-Marine, I expected he
would live longer, and the obit does not say how he died. I had not talked to
him in a long while, but I still felt a loss. He was the pivot point in a vital
decision that changed my life.
In late 1981, I was pursuing options for graduate school
after two and a half years as the executive director of the Iowa Public
Interest Research Group. Mike was a fierce advocate for the environment and
knew me in that role. At lunch one day, I mentioned that I had just explored a
Ph.D. program in the University of Iowa’s political science program, but had a
disappointing conversation in which I had told the head of the department’s MPA
program that I had lobbied in Des Moines in my Iowa PIRG role. He responded,
“That wouldn’t be relevant here. If you had done a study of lobbying . . . .”
Mike reacted to this curt dismissal of real-life experience
by simply asking, “Why don’t you apply to our urban planning program? We love
people like you.” I did, and the rest is history, so to speak.
But it was more than that turning point. In his classes,
Mike had high expectations for me and tolerated no flimsy excuses if I fell
short. That was of a piece with his approach to life. He never hesitated to be
a thorn in the side of polluters, the powerful, and the pompous. By the time I
completed my degree, he was entering law school so that, as they say, he could
“sue the bastards.” The advocate in his soul triumphed over the academic.
Several years later, still in his needling mode but living in Oregon (where he
remained), he joked that I was the best of a “mediocre lot” in my class. But
this time, I was ready with a verbal ambush. My first book was out, and the reviews
were appearing.
“Do mediocrities get their books reviewed in the New York Times?” I asked.
I could hear the chuckle over my one-upmanship. “You know, I’ve been bragging on you, Schwab,” he replied. It was like that with him, and it was always fun. Today’s tribute of gratitude may be too late for Michael Sheehan to read, but it is owed nonetheless. Here’s to the man who guided me into a career I have never regretted.
Yesterday, I offered tribute to Michael Sheehan, who persuaded me to try a career in urban planning. Today’s honoree gets to enjoy reading his tribute, fortunately. University of Iowa Professor John W. Fuller followed closely on Mike’s heels by quickly hiring me as a research assistant as soon as I was accepted into the program. I worked with him year-round for more than three years in the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and in the Legislative Extended Assistance Program, neither of which remains extant. The latter produced policy studies each year from four-year colleges and universities for the Iowa legislature at the request of its leaders. In my final year of graduate study in both Urban and Regional Planning and Journalism, John sold those leaders on my combination of writing and analytical skills to produce what he promised would be a plain-English assessment of the farm credit crisis, arguably the biggest issue facing the state as the 1985 legislative session commenced. John knew I could also draw upon research I was doing for my master’s project in journalism, an oral history of the farm credit crisis, to humanize the report’s conclusions.
As the due date in February 1985 approached, I was so
grateful for this remarkable opportunity that I pulled an all-nighter in the
LEAG office at the Oakdale Campus in order to ensure that the 100-plus-page
report could be printed and delivered to Des Moines on time. As for that
master’s project, it eventually became a book—Raising Less Corn and More Hell—published by the University of
Illinois Press in 1988. Just a few months later, he and Kathy regretted missing
our wedding in Omaha because they were on an academic exchange at Universidad
de los Andes in Venezuela, but later that summer they returned with a beautiful
Andean marital blanket as a wedding gift.
But John was never done manufacturing opportunities. Two
decades later, when the 2008 floods were swamping Iowa and the School of Urban
and Regional Planning was seeking expertise to add some hazards training to the
curriculum, it was John who spoke up and asked, “Why don’t we bring back Jim
Schwab?” That was the beginning of an ongoing relationship that has allowed me
to teach and mentor my own crop of students ever since then as an adjunct
assistant professor, teaching an annual course on hazard mitigation and
disaster recovery.
John and Kathy have offered their own home as a place to stay when I visit. This is not at all unusual. He and his wife, Kathy, have hosted and housed innumerable international visitors, students, and others for decades. They are among the most generous people I know. John is a profile in professional dedication and has been a powerful asset for the students he has taught for nearly four decades.
John Fuller (left) with me at his daughter Libby’s wedding near Cedar Rapids, April 29, 2017.
Last night, I failed to post my daily installment of
Gratitude on Parade, but I will make up for it. My excuse is that a groin muscle
strain flared up late in the day, making it uncomfortable to continue working,
so I sat back and watched television instead. Jean was watching the Joy Reed
town hall on MSNBC with Nancy Pelosi, so I joined her.
When such days occur for me, and they are rare, I think about people with much more serious illnesses or injuries, and how they demonstrate personal resilience. They all have lessons to teach the rest of us—to be grateful for their examples, and for our own generally good health. One of those people, who I know thinks the gratitude should run the other way because I have filled in for her as acting chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division for much of the year, is Allison Hardin. Allison, a planner for the city of Myrtle Beach, SC, was doing fine as the real chair through April, had the misfortune of nearly being killed in a serious auto accident in which a young man drove into the sports car Allison’s son Robert was driving, and in which she was a passenger. A long string of examinations, surgeries, and treatments has followed for both, and Allison has shown great courage in moving from wheelchair to walker to her own two feet while nurturing her son back to health as well, with the help of her husband. Through it all, she has coped with mountains of delayed e-mail on her job, tough decisions about her own future, and the usual major insurance and medical issues that accompany such a calamity. Allison has occasionally reminded me that she is aware that, while we planners talk about community resilience, it really all starts at a personal level.
I remain happy to be her “acting chair” of HMDR because,
frankly, I have never faced a predicament like hers, hope I never do, and have
no clear idea how well I would handle it But at least I have an example if I ever
need one.
Allison, second from right, after presenting me with my “retirement” t-shirt at the HMDR reception at the APA National Planning Conference in New York, May 2017. Miki Schmidt and Susan Fox of the NOAA Digital Coast staff are to our left and right.
