Making Room for the River

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In this study we analyze plan integration for flood resilience in the city of Nijmegen, the site of the largest Room for the River project in The Netherlands. Little is known about the degree to which local and regional plans are coordinated with the national Room for the River program or about the cumulative influence of plans on flood vulnerability. To effectively investigate these issues, we use and build upon the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard (PIRS) concept and method, which analyzes the consistency and effects of networks of plans on community vulnerability. We expand the scope to include plans from multiple administrative scales and the focus to include environmental vulnerability. Using a three-phase evaluation process, we demonstrate that Room for the River policies are well integrated in Nijmegen’s network of plans, particularly with respect to flood safety and natural protection. However, we also find that policies at different administrative scales lack consistency in some places, some socially vulnerable neighborhoods receive comparatively little policy attention, and local plans often prioritize development over flood resilience, though higher tier plans sometimes make up for these policy gaps. Flood resilience is still finding its way in the Dutch planning system.

Takeaway for practice: The PIRS offers planning practitioners a method to assess how networks of plans influence community vulnerability and, as demonstrated in this analysis, to determine the degree to which plans at multiple administrative scales target the most physically, socially, and environmentally vulnerable geographic areas. It can be used to support the ambitious goals of a program like Room for the River and align them with local development priorities.     

Using Simple,Decision-Centered,Scenario-Based Planning to Improve Local Coastal Management

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Scenario-based planning offers the promise of enhancing local coastal management given uncertainties from shoreline dynamics and climate change. Deploying it can require substantial capacity, however, or can obscure the key policy choices a community faces. We set out to develop and test a simple, decision-centered approach to scenario-based planning as a way to improve local management of coastal shorelands through master plans, focusing on coastal hazard mitigation. We also looked for ways to use basic spatial analysis techniques and off-the-shelf data sources that could be manipulated to generate meaningful and reasonably accurate analyses. We find the simplified and decision-centered methods we have developed can provide useful information for local decision makers. We also find the quality of the master plans adopted by two partner localities that used our scenario-based planning methods substantially exceeds the quality of comparison plans with regard to coastal management.

Takeaway for practice: Using simplified, decision-centered, scenario-based planning methods can facilitate enhanced hazard mitigation analysis and policy adoption in local master plans. Those methods necessarily will and should be tailored to the unique political and physical conditions of the community, as demonstrated by the leadership provided in the localities studied here.     

A probabilistic framework for multi-hazard risk mitigation for electric power transmission systems subjected to seismic and hurricane hazards

Abstract

Many areas of the world are prone to multiple hazards that can be concurrent/non-concurrent and dependent/independent. Infrastructure systems located in such areas will likely be subjected to more than one hazard in their lifetime. The damage due to such hazards on electric power systems is well documented. Over the years, strategies to mitigate single hazards have been proposed for electric power systems. However, accurate long-term decisions on investment in risk mitigation strategies require the consideration of multiple hazards that can impact a system over its lifespan. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the cost-effectiveness of mitigation strategies in reducing risks to infrastructure systems that are vulnerable to multiple hazards given the constraints on resources. This requires a comprehensive multi-hazard risk assessment approach. This paper presents a framework for investigating the effectiveness of multi-hazard risk mitigation strategies for electric power systems subjected to seismic and hurricane wind hazards. The framework includes probabilistically weighted deterministic hazard analysis model, component vulnerability models, topologically based system performance model, component importance measure appropriate for networked systems, and life cycle cost analysis. A notional electric power network assumed to be located in Charleston, SC, and New York, NY, is used to demonstrate the proposed framework.     

Adaptive Planning for Disaster Recovery and Resiliency: An Evaluation of 87 Local Recovery Plans in Eight States

Problem, research strategy and findings: A pre-disaster recovery plan that considers how a community should be redeveloped is a logical first step to support resiliency during high uncertainty and rapid change, yet limited attention has been given to recovery plans. In this study, we evaluate local disaster recovery planning in eight southeastern states and find that such planning receives limited public support: Less than one-third of vulnerable local jurisdictions had a recovery plan, and those plans received low plan quality scores. Unfunded state mandates produce weaker plans than plans in other states without mandates. We find that a collaborative network of stakeholders initially intent on reordering priorities results in stronger plans.

Takeaway for practice: Local recovery planning should be designed to operate under conditions of high uncertainty. Local jurisdictions can choose plan design options that reflect how they build capability for recovery planning: 1) standalone community-wide recovery plan; 2) comprehensive land use plan; 3) emergency management plan; and 4) small area recovery plan. Because recovery planning lacks a public constituency, and is new to most local jurisdictions, the stand-alone community-wide recovery plan design option is the most effective at building local commitment. This option involves a plan-making process that concentrates time, effort, and resources focused on a building a network of stakeholders who likely have the greatest responsibility in rebuilding efforts because they care most about the impacts of a disaster.     

Do Practicing Planners Value Plan Quality? Insights From a Survey of Planning Professionals in Ontario,Canada

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Researchers have developed conceptualconsensus on core plan characteristics that contribute to plan quality, but rarely assess how practitioners view plan quality. I explore how Canadian planners view the characteristics thought to create quality plans. I asked planners in 290 municipalities across southern Ontario (Canada) their view of the importance of plan quality and asked that they identify additional plan quality characteristics, rate the infl uence of various plan characteristics, and explain why they omitted certain characteristics in their offi cial plans. I find that practitioners valued quality plans because they facilitate implementation and help inspire the community while adding credibility and legitimacy to planning processes and the planning profession. Planners did not value all plan elements equally; they felt that clear and enforceable polices were crucial, but that it was less important to report participation in plan preparation or discuss monitoring or interorganizational cooperation in the offi cial plan. Planners did not always include important plan quality elements in their offi cial plans because they lacked suffi cient resources to prepare comprehensive plans and rarely signifi – cantly updated older plans. These case study findings may not be generalizable to other jurisdictions in Canada or internationally, but still offer useful insights.

Takeaway for practice: Scholars should ensure that planning practitioners have a key role in shaping understanding of plan quality. Academics and practitioners should work together to create refl ective practitioners who use plan quality characteristics to guide them as they create or update plans. The profession needs to better train current and future planners on how to prepare and evaluate quality plans through improvements in planning curricula and professional development courses offered by the American Planning Association and the Canadian Institute of Planners.     

Whole Community Resilience: An Asset-Based Approach to Enhancing Adaptive Capacity Before a Disruption

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Conventional hazard mitigation and pre-disaster recovery planning processes typically begin with hazard scenarios that illustrate probable events and analyze their impacts on the built environment. The processes conclude with responses to the hypothetical disruption that focus on “hardening” buildings or structures or removing them from threatened areas. These approaches understate the importance of natural and social sources of adaptive capacity. Three “proof-of-principle” exercises designed to strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s Risk MAP (Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning) process in Washington State suggest how better to conduct hazard mitigation and recovery planning. Each begins with workshops where stakeholders identify built, natural, and social assets that contribute to human wellbeing (HWB) before introducing earthquake scenarios that affect HWB. Participants then identify assets that could facilitate adaptation to changed circumstances (a “new normal”). Participants discuss how these assets would achieve the goals of comprehensive community planning as well as hazard mitigation and recovery from disaster. Neighborhood-scale social organization emerges as an important priority.

Takeaway for practice: Asset-based approaches enable communities to better recover from disaster and adapt to a post-disaster “new normal.” By premising planning discussions on a more holistic set of assets, communities can balance physical recovery goals with qualities that help them to adapt to future change. Furthermore, thinking about recovering before an event actually occurs can enlarge the menu of mitigation strategies. Planning for adaptation can also help communities achieve many non-risk-related objectives.     

Adaptation to Climate Change

Problem: Even if significant reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions are achieved, some amount of climate change appears to be inevitable. Local, regional, state, and federal planning and regulation should begin to address how to adapt to these changes.

Purpose: This article presents a policy synthesis of adaptation planning issues, using California as a case study. We examine the institutional and regulatory challenges and tradeoffs that climate change poses in six particularly vulnerable areas: water resources, electricity, coastal resources, air quality, public health, and ecosystem resources. We discuss obstacles to adaptation planning and successes overcoming these barriers, and suggest how planning can incorporate adaptation.

Methods: This article presents a policy synthesis of adaptation planning issues, drawing on our recent research on California's experience and related literature. We summarize the results of six studies that draw on quantitative and qualitative information gathered through surveys, interviews, and literature review.

Results and conclusions: Planners should use forward-looking climate data that include higher water and air temperatures, sea-level rise, and increased numbers of extreme events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires when making decisions about future development, infrastructure investments, open-space protection, and disaster preparedness. Climate change will exacerbate conflicts between goals for economic development, habitat protection, and public safety, requiring stronger interagency coordination and new laws and regulations.

Takeaway for practice: Local and regional planners can help society adapt to a changing climate by using the best available science, deciding on goals and early actions, locating relevant partners, identifying and eliminating regulatory barriers, and encouraging the introduction of new state mandates and guidelines.

Research support: Partial support for this research was provided by Pacific Gas and Electric, The Nature Conservancy, and Next 10.     

Adapting traditional shelter for disaster mitigation and reconstruction: experiences with community-based approaches

Natural disasters are on the increase, not so much because natural hazards are growing in number, but because poor people are becoming more vulnerable. Vulnerability is as important a cause of disasters as the physical events that trigger them. Poor people's vulnerability is often increased when development goes wrong. Thus, development is a contributing factor in the occurrence and scale of disasters. At the same time, disasters, when they happen, cause serious setbacks to development. To get out of the vicious circle, more attention will have to be paid to mitigation and tackling the causes of vulnerability. Formal approaches to mitigation, initiated mainly by the public sector, have often been inefficient and at times have left people more vulnerable. A successful alternative approach, community-based disaster mitigation, can reduce vulnerability by engaging popular approaches, local knowledge and social capital, whilst addressing their weaknesses. Some examples of community-based mitigation are derived as lessons: learn from the past, build relations with communities, encourage participation, involve local builders and artisans, build local capacity, document and share lessons, and influence formal education.     

Plan Quality and Mitigating Damage from Natural Disasters: A Case Study of the Northridge Earthquake with Planning Policy Considerations

Planners have long believed as an article of faith that land use planning can reduce damage from natural hazards. After evaluating the relationship between the seismic safety elements of comprehensive plans prepared in the Los Angeles region of California and damage caused by the 1994 North-ridge earthquake, we provide evidence that this faith is not misplaced. The State of California requires every local government to include a seismic safety element in its comprehensive land use plan. The 1994 Northridge earthquake provided an opportunity to evaluate the extent to which the quality of state-mandated, locally prepared seismic safety elements reduce earthquake damage. We found that fewer homes were damaged when local governments had developed high-quality factual bases, formulated goals for improving seismic safety, crafted regulatory policies to manage development in hazardous areas, and advanced policies that made the public aware of seismic risks. We conclude that including a high-quality seismic safety element in land use plans can reduce property damage associated with seismic events. Our work has broad implications for land use planning.     

Metropolitan Transportation Planning: Lessons From the Past,Institutions for the Future

Problem, research strategy, and findings: There are more than 400 U.S. metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) overseeing multiple transportation projects totaling billions of dollars, yet these crucial organizations and their history and current role are generally unknown or confusing to many planning practitioners and scholars. MPOs face major challenges in developing meaningful long-range regional transportation plans, challenges rooted in their history that planners should understand as they grapple with metropolitan planning efforts. MPOs may approve projects and their funding, but disparate agencies and often competitive local governments control budgets and actually build projects. MPOs, moreover, do not fully represent all regional interests and have no control over the local land use decisions that would support less autocentric communities and human-powered modes. I provide a metareview of the history of regional transportation planning and the MPOs responsible for it, describing U.S. metropolitan transportation planning from the early 20th century. Federal legislation in the 1960s first suggested a regional forum for conversations about metropolitan transportation. Federal legislation in subsequent decades made incremental if incomplete progress toward creating a meaningful regional forum, adapting institutions and practices to increase stakeholder involvement as well as the scope of transport planning, yet MPOs have multiple limitations that planners can address.

Takeaway for practice: History suggests that MPOs can be a force for regional change. Planners and policymakers could anchor future reforms to MPOs’ existing legal and administrative frameworks. Planners should revisit the membership and voting structures of MPO boards to ensure better stakeholder representation and permit some MPOs to generate and direct transportation funds at the local level.     

Florida's Planning Requirements and Affordability for Low-Income Households

Growth management states in the USA, such as Florida, Oregon, and Washington, require their local jurisdictions to plan for an adequate supply of housing for all current and future residents, including low-income households. This research uses regression analysis to test the relationship between the strength of local comprehensive plans toward affordable housing and subsequent changes in housing affordability for low-income households. Semi-structured interviews with local planners about their perceptions of the efficacy of local plans provide insight into the quantitative findings. The initial plans passed after Florida's Growth Management Act were not associated with subsequent changes in housing affordability, but more recent plans were. Planners in a number of jurisdictions indicated that Florida's planning mandate increased awareness among public officials of affordable housing issues and the tools available to address them, despite the state's weak oversight.     

Cultural Insights for Planners: Understanding the Terms Hispanic,Latino, and Latinx

Abstract

Planners use various terms—Hispanic, Latino, and Latinx—to refer to people of Latin American descent and from Spanish-speaking countries. Understanding the differences among these terms is relevant to planning given that Hispanics/Latin/o/a/x are a fast-growing group in the United States and terms have evolved over time and differ between users. I ask three questions: Why do planners need to better understand the ethnonyms Hispanic/Latin/o/a/x? How can planners understand the evolution of Hispanic, Latino, and Latinx terminology? Which strategies can help planners to decide which terms to use? Recommendations for practicing planners include hiring more diverse planners; developing a context-specific manual of style; organizing conversations with local organizations, their state APA chapter, or planning school about ethno-racial identity; mapping identities; and creating equity plans at the department or city level. By becoming more culturally competent, planners can plan for and with the Hispanic/Latin/o/a/x community more effectively.     

Sustaining the Commons: The Coercive to Cooperative,Resilient, and Adaptive Nature of State Comprehensive Water Planning Legislation

Problem, research strategy, and findings: States need guidance to adopt comprehensive water planning legislation that can affect urban planning and built form. Current state legislation, however, may not yet incorporate emerging water resource paradigms that promote sustainable water management at the state and substate levels. Planners can improve existing state legislation, but need guidance on incorporating the latest thinking on resilience, adaptive capacity, and sustainable commons management. I identify the 26 states with comprehensive water planning legislation, and analyze that legislation using a new assessment tool that builds on the coercive versus cooperative metric (CvCA). I determine where each state's water planning legislation falls on a coercive versus cooperative spectrum, and the extent to which each state's legislation incorporates sustainable commons management (SCM) and social–ecological resilience (SER) mechanisms and attributes. Most of the 26 states with comprehensive water planning legislation balance coercive and cooperative approaches to achieve state and substate water plans, although research suggests that planning is most effective when legislation is more cooperative. Moreover, most have not codified SCM and SER mechanisms into state water planning legislation, suggesting that the plans that follow may lack the adaptive capacity to increase the resilience of the water system. Research limitations include the single data source and potential interpretive coding bias.

Takeaway for practice: Planners can advocate for new or improved state water legislation that incorporates integral adaptive and resiliency concepts, encouraging states to include the fundamental features of the social–ecological system that lead to better water management.     

Management of bridges with shallow foundations exposed to local scour

Abstract

The Serbian road network includes a large portion of bridges with shallow foundations vulnerable to local scour as tragically demonstrated during the extreme flooding in May 2014. Currently, the bridge management procedures in Serbia and worldwide do not comprehensively account for a risk of bridge failure due to flooding and fail to provide sufficient information for the decision-making. Thus, a novel methodology for quantitative vulnerability assessment is suggested as a tool to identify the most vulnerable bridges in a network. Herein, the essential task is evaluation of the conditional probability of a bridge failure due to local scour in a flooding event of a certain magnitude. To apply this approach on a network level, there is a dire need to establish precise practice-ready guidelines on an optimal set of information to be used and/or collected in situ, which is discussed on an example of the Serbian bridge database. The vulnerability of a bridge to local scour may be used as a comprehensive indicator of a bridge performance in a flooding event. For a network level, the vulnerability maps with respect to flooding of different magnitudes will give road operators crucial information to apply adequate quality control plans to vulnerable bridges.     

The Link Between Local Comprehensive Plans and Housing Affordability: A Comparative Study of the Atlanta and Detroit Metropolitan Areas

Problem, research strategy, and findings: I question whether the strength of affordable housing policies in local comprehensive plans is associated with better affordable housing outcomes, which I measure as a decrease in the share of low-income households who spend more than 30% of their income for housing, otherwise known as cost-burdened households. I first assess the strength of affordable housing policies in 58 local comprehensive plans, counting the number of—and degree of coercion in—those affordable housing policies. I then analyze the relationship between the strength of affordable housing policies and changes in the share of low-income households with cost burden. I find that the strength of affordable housing policies is higher in the Atlanta (GA) metropolitan area than in the Detroit (MI) metropolitan area. I also find that the strength of affordable housing policies is positively associated with a decrease in the share of low-income households paying more than 30% of their income for housing in the Atlanta metropolitan area. I do not find a comparable relationship between plan strength and housing outcomes in the Detroit metropolitan area. I also find that the state role matters: Georgia provides more support and guidance for local comprehensive planning, and for affordable housing policies in those plans, than does Michigan.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should continually promote local comprehensive plans that include more and stronger affordable housing policies and advocate for greater state support for comprehensive planning and affordable housing policies because these appear to lead to a greater likelihood of implementing stronger plans.     

Whiteness and Urban Planning

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The ability of planning to address America’s urban problems of inequality, crime, housing, education, and segregation is hampered by a relative neglect of Whiteness and its role in shaping urban outcomes. We offer a justification for centering Whiteness within urban planning scholarship and practice that would examine its role shaping and perpetuating regional and racial injustices in the American city. The focus of planners, scholars, and public discourse on the “dysfunctions” of communities of color, notably poverty, high levels of segregation, and isolation, diverts attention from the structural systems that produce and reproduce the advantages of affluent and White neighborhoods. Planners and planning scholars frequently invoke a “legacy of injustice” with regard to concentrated poverty and disadvantage but not in regard to neighborhoods of White affluence. One is segregated and problematized and the other is idealized.

Takeaway for practice: Planners and planning scholars need to understand the role of Whiteness, in particular White affluence, to assess the potential impacts of planning interventions. Doing so will inform a wider range of planning approaches to problems of racial and spatial equity.     

Regional cities: international references in Brazilian regional planning in the 1950s and 1960s

ABSTRACT

A new stage of urban planning emerged in Brazil in the 1950s, with the region as the object of planning. Planners began to recognize the international contribution to the institutionalization of planning and to the development of proposals for Brazilian cities, as well as the connection between planning and urban decentralization ideas. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to delineate the city model that was being proposed within regional scale plans as the result of international urban practices and ideas. Two examples of such plans are presented in this paper: the Regional Plan of Santos (1950) and the Basic Regional Plan for the Coastline of Parana State (1966). As a result of the international references incorporated into these plans, a mixture of urban principles can be identified in these territorial proposals. The regional city model is the predominant principle arising from these plans, derived from the association of two planning scales: urban and regional.     

Words Matter: The Importance of Issue Framing and the Case of Affordable Housing

Recent studies have shown substantial variation within and between states in the levels of local planning for hazardous materials emergencies. To explain these variations, literature on strategic planning, disaster planning and team effectiveness was used to construct a model of Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) effectiveness in developing emergency plans. Data from Michigan LEPCs showed that emergency planning outcomes (e.g., quality and degree of completion of critical planning tasks and submission of plans for approval) were correlated with internal factors such as member inputs, staffing and structure, and emergency planning resources. External factors such as community support and recent hazard experience also affect success, possibly by endowing emergency planning with importance for LEPC members either directly (e.g., recent evacuation experience) or indirectly (community support arising from the high priority given emergency plans by others). These results suggest that community planners should take such strategic actions as developing community support and redesigning the LEPCs structure to be more effective in preparing for hazardous materials emergencies.     

State and Municipal Climate Change Plans: The First Generation

Problem: Global warming has emerged as one of the new century's top planning challenges. But it is far from clear how state and local governments in the United States can best address climate change through planning.

Purpose: As of 2008, 29 states had prepared some sort of climate change plan, and more than 170 local governments had joined the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign that requires that a plan be developed. This article analyzes this first generation of climate change plans and seeks to assess the goals being set, the measures included or left out, issues surrounding implementation, and the basic strengths and weaknesses of state and local climate change planning to date.

Methods: I conducted this research by analyzing planning documents as well as interviewing state and local officials by telephone. I analyzed the plans of three types of governments: all states with planning documents on climate change; cities with populations of over 500,000 that are members of the CCP campaign; and selected smaller cities that are CCP members.

Results and conclusions: Most plans set emissions-reduction goals, establish emission inventories, green public sector operations, and recommend a range of other measures. Many recent plans have been developed through extensive stakeholder processes and present very detailed lists of recommendations with quantified emissions benefits. But emissions-reduction goals vary widely, many proposed actions are voluntary, few resources have been allocated, and implementation of most measures has not yet taken place. Most plans do not address adaptation to a changing climate. Officials see rapidly growing public awareness of the issue and general support for climate change planning, but reluctance to change personal behavior.

Takeaway for practice: Future climate change planning should (a) set goals that can adequately address the problem; (b) establish long-term planning frameworks in which progress toward these goals can be monitored on a regular basis and actions revised as needed; (c) include the full range of measures needed to reduce and adapt to climate change; (d) ensure implementation of recommended actions through commitment of resources, revised regulation, incentives for reducing emissions, and other means; and (e) develop strategies to deepen public awareness of the need for fundamental changes in behavior, for example regarding motor vehicle use.

Research support: This research was supported by the University of California, Davis Department of Environmental Design.     

Becoming Vulnerable to Flooding: An Urban Assemblage View of Flooding in an African City

ABSTRACT

Assemblage thinking has emerged over the last two decades as an important theoretical framework to interrogate emerging complex socio-material phenomenon in cities. This paper deploys the assemblage lens to unpack the vulnerability of informal communities to flood hazards in an African city. Focusing on Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, the largest informal settlements in Accra, Ghana, this paper employs multiple methods including archival analysis, institutional surveys, focus group discussions, and mini-workshops to study the processes of exposure and vulnerability to flood hazards in these two communities. We find that being vulnerable to flood hazards in these informal settlements emerges from historically contingent, co-constitutive processes and actants: the city officials’ modernist imaginaries and socio-cultural identities of residents in informal settlements; the social material conditions experienced by residents in these settlements; and the translocal learning networks of government and non-government actors that simultaneously (re)produce oppressive urban planning policies and grassroots resistance to these policies. The paper concludes with a call to urban planners and allied built environment practitioners to understand flood vulnerability as both a process and product of these complex interactions.