Volume 42: Re:(Anything)

R E ( ANY THING ) Fro m Rev i t a li z at i o n t o Resi li enc e

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL Vol ume 4 2 / 20 17

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

The Carolina Planning Journal is the annual, student-run journal of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

© Copyright 2017, Carolina Planning Journal. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

PRINTING

Glover Corporation Raleigh, North Carolina ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Funding for this publication was generously provided by the John A. Parker Endowment Fund, the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association, the Student Congress of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and by our subscribers.

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

Department of City and Regional Planning University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill CB #3140, New East Building Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3140 USA carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Rachel Wexler Carly Hoffmann EDITORIAL BOARD

Chris Bendix Karla Jimenez Katy Lang Amanda Martin Taylor McAdam Katey Mote Brian Vaughn GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Audrie Lathrop

www.carolinaangles.com

COVER

Our cover photo was taken by Sha’zire White as a part of the ReFraming Food photo series.

SPECIAL THANKS

The Carolina Planning Journal would also like to thank the many people who have helped us all year long. These people and organizations include John Morck and Ben Howell from the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association; our faculty advisor Danielle Spurlock; Wesley Harris and the entire team at Glover Printing; former Carolina Planning Journal editors Julia Barnard, Cara Isher-Witt, Ashley Williams-Clark, Bill King, Patricia McGuire, David Daddio, and Brika Eklund; Planners’ Forum student leaders Blake Montieth, Shati Khan, Stephanie Watkins Cruz, and Ellis Johnson II; and, of course, all of our subscribers.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill D e p art me nt of C ity + Reg ional Planning

R E ( ANY THING ) Fro m Rev i t a li z at i o n t o Resi li enc e

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

BAC K I S SU E T I TLE S

1975

V1

INAUGURAL ISSUE

1976

V2.1

AGING AND LAND POLICY

1976

V2.2

THE COASTAL ENVIRONMENT

1977

V3.1

THE ENERGY BREAKDOWN

1977

V3.2

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

1978

V4.1

LAND USE POLICY

1978

V4.2

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

1978

V5.1

ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING

1979

V5.2

NORTH CAROLINA'S ECONOMIC PREDICAMENT

1980

V6.1

NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING

1980

V6.2

COASTAL

1981

V7.1

CASH, CONDOS, AND CRISIS

1981

V7.2

PLANNING IN THE EIGHTIES

1982

V8.1

RURAL PLANNING

1982

V8.2

PUBLIC/PRIVATE VENTURES

1983

V9.1

NORTH CAROLINA'S SMALL CITIES

1983

V9.2

WATER RESOURCES

1984

V10.1

TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1984

V10.2

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR URBAN ECONOMIES

1985

V11.1

AFTER THE STORM: PLANNING FOR DISASTER

1985

V11.2

ISSUES IN HOUSING & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

1986

V12.1

DEVELOPMENT DISPUTE RESOLUTION

1986

V12.2

FROM PLANNING PRACTICE TO ACADEMIA

1987

V13

COST RECOVERY FEES

1988

V14.1

PLANNING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

1988

V14.2

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA

1989

V15.1

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

1989

V15.2

EMERGING PLANNING ISSUES

1990

V16.1

POLITICS & PLANNING

1990

V16.2

FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1991

V17.1

REVIEWING TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES

1991

V17.2

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

1992

V18.1

ON THE WATERFRONT

WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

1993

V18.2

UNIVERSITIES AND PLANNING

1993

V19.1

FEDERAL MANDATES

1994

V19.2

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

1995

V20.1

PLANNING IN NORTH CAROLINA CITIES

1995

V20.2

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1995

V21.1

MAIN STREET PROGRAM

1996

V21.2

REGIONAL AND COUNTY-LEVEL PLANNING

1996

V22.1

NEW URBANISM

1997

V22.2

CONSERVATION-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

1998

V23.1

GROWTH AND THE TRIANGLE

1998

V23.2

REVOLVING LOAN FUNDS IN NORTH CAROLINA

1999

V24.1

SPECIAL ISSUE: WEISS URBAN LIVABILITY SYMPOSIUM

1999

V24.2

PLACE, TYPOLOGY AND DESIGN VALUES IN URBANISM

2000

V25.1

PLANNING OUR COAST

2000

V25.2

PRESERVING AFFORDABLE HOUSING

2001

V26.1

RURAL HOUSING

2001

V26.2

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH STRATEGIES IN THE SOUTHEAST

2002

V27

REDEFINING LIVABILITY IN THE URBAN SOUTHEAST

2002

V28.1

MANUFACTURED HOUSING

2003

V28.2

SMART GROWTH AND RURAL AMERICA

2004

V29.1

FORGING AHEAD AND LAGGING BEHIND

2004

V29.2

ARE WE IN THE RIGHT LANE?

2005

V30.1

GREEN BUILDING, GREEN PLANNING

2005

V30.2

PATHS TO HEALTHY PLANS

2006

V31.1

THE CHANGING FACE OF PLANNING

2006

V31.2

PLANNING ACROSS THE COLOR LINE

2007

V32.1

TOWARDS THE NEXT 50 YEARS

2007

V32.2

EMERGING ISSUES IN HOUSING

2008

V33

RESILIENT CITIES

2009

V34

URBAN GREENING

2010

V35

TRANSPORTATION + ACCESSIBILITY

2011

V36

REGAINING RELEVANCY

2012

V37

PLANNING FOR EQUITY

2013

V38

COLLABORATIONS IN PLANNING

2014

V39

PLANNING FOR THE NEW ECONOMY

2015

V40

JUST CREATIVITY

2016

V41

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

CON T E N T S 008 FROM THE EDITORS 010 NEWS & EDITORIAL BOARD

FE AT URE S 0 12 RE-INVENTING PUBLIC HOUSING: HUD’S CHOICE NEIGHBORHOODS’ STRATEGIES AND OUTCOMES Carolina Dwyer, AICP & Alan Steinbeck, AICP

0 2 2 REFINING THE EDGE CITY: ADAPTING PLANNING CONCEPTS IN TYSONS, VIRGINIA Navid Roshan-Afshar

0 2 8 BEST MASTER’S PROJECT OF 2016 | REMEDIATION: ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE AND COAL ASH IN NORTH CAROLINA Libbie Weimer

036 SPARKING REDEVELOPMENT: THE REZONING SOLUTION Cara Isher-Witt, AICP

038 RETHINKING URBAN CHANGE: TRANSFORMATION AND METALLAXIS Michael A. Vidalis, PhD

038 RECREATING HEALTHY BUILT ENVIRONMENTS: THE CHARLOTTE PLAN4HEALTH INITIATIVE Michelle Nance, AICP & Katherine Hebert

05 2 REFRAMING FOOD: A PHOTO ESSAY The Food Youth Initiative

R E SI LI E N CY 0 6 6 THE ROLE OF PLANNING AND RESILIENCE IN AN ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE Gavin Smith

070 RESPONDING TO SEA LEVEL RISE: COASTAL NORTH CAROLINA David R. Godschalk, FAICP

0 7 6 FROM HAZARD MITIGATION TO COMMUNITY SUSTAINABILITY: RESILIENCE PLANNING IN ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA James Fox, Matt Hutchins, Nina Hall, & Karin Rogers

0 8 6 INCORPORATING RESILIENCE: HOW LOCAL PLANNING TOOLS ADVANCE RESILIENCE IN NORTH CAROLINA Scott Schuford, AICP

0 9 6 RESHAPING THE DEVELOPMENT DISCUSSION: CONNECTING ELECTED OFFICIALS AND RESILIENCE EXPERTS IN COASTAL LOUISIANA Traci Birch, PhD, AICP & Jeff Carney, AIA, AICP

1 04 STEPS TOWARD RECOVERY: A TOOL FOR DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING, MANAGEMENT, AND TRACKING Katie Kirsch, MS & Jennifer Horney, PhD, MPH

1 1 0 REIMAGINING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE: THE COASTAL DYNAMICS DESIGN LAB

Andrew Fox, PLA, ASLA & David Hill, AIA

BOOK REVIEWS 1 1 8 PRECARIOUS CLAIMS: THE PROMISE AND FAILURE OF WORKPLACE PROTECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES Shannon Gleeson | Book Review by Darien Williams

1 2 0 THE WELL-TEMPERED CITY: WHAT MODERN SCIENCE, ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS, AND HUMAN NATURE TEACH US ABOUT THE FUTURE OF URBAN LIFE Jonathan F.P. Rose | Book Review by Jonathan Peterson

1 2 2 EVICTED: POVERTY AND PROFIT IN THE AMERICAN CITY Matthew Desmond | Book Review by Sadie Nott

1 24 ETHICS IN THE REAL WORLD: 82 BRIEF ESSAYS ON THINGS THAT MATTER Peter Singer | Book Review by Chris Bendix

1 26 INVISIBLE NATION: HOMELESS FAMILES IN AMERICA Richard Schweid | Book Review by Stephanie Watkins-Cruz

ST UDENT WORK 128 MASTER’S PROJECT TITLES

Class of 2016

130 YEAR-IN-REVIEW: AN UPDATE FROM NEW EAST Nate Seeskin + Lisa Mae Fielder

131 NC-APA CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

VOLUME 43 CA LL F OR PA PERS

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

F RO M T H E E D I TO RS

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RACHEL WEXLER is completing her master’s degree in

CARLY HOFFMANN is a co-editor of the Carolina

City and Regional Planning in Spring 2017 and holds a bachelor’s in English from UC Berkeley. While finisher her degree, Rachel launched AirRev, an artist residency program in Greensboro, North Carolina, as part of a Self-Help Credit Union real estate project. AirRev aims to serve artists who represent marginalized populations and whose work is socially-engaged. Rachel’s interests lie at the intersection of art, entrepreneurship, and social justice.

Planning Journal and a first year master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, focusing on housing and community development. She is also a Fellow at UNC’s Center for Community Capital, researching the impacts of mixed-income development on low-income communities. Prior to UNC, she worked as a book editor for Amazon.com. Carly graduated from Columbia University in 2010 with a degree in Urban Studies.

D E A R RE ADE RS, The prefix “re-” holds two contradictory connotations. It can mean “again,” or multiple repetitions, or it can mean a withdrawal or reversal. While one meaning implies forward motion, the other suggests retreat. And what a provoking approach to take to the multitudes contained within planning topics like revitalization, resiliency, and reinvestment, all of which are viewed by some as progress, others as regression, and still others as both. Through these divergent meanings we explore the incongruities in planning-related endeavors: the displacement that can occur through revitalization, the resistance to resilience, the disinvestment that precedes reinvestment, and more.

While our general feature articles probe the breadth of this theme, a partnership with Professor Gavin Smith and the Coastal Resilience Center at UNC has informed our special section, which looks deeply into one particularly pressing and controversial issue: resilience. This section takes us from the North Carolina mountains to the state’s coastline and farther south to Louisiana. We cover disaster recovery, assessment tools, evaluation of policies, design interventions, and preparedness.

From rezoning, to revitalization, to reinvestment, to disaster recovery, this issue traverses myriad topics, all of which are particularly relevant in today’s political climate. In this age of uncertainty, the following pages allow you, Dear Reader, to reflect on our received wisdom and conventional practices in order to charge forward promoting the greatest common good.

Happy reading, Rachel + Carly

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

N EW S & E DI TO RI AL BOARD

The following people are integral to the success of the Journal and its online platform, CarolinaAngles.com: AMANDA MARTIN Senior Advisor

Amanda Martin, AICP, is a city planner and PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill. Originally from Boston, she has lived and worked in Washington, D.C., northern Nevada, New Orleans, and Providence, Rhode Island. Most recently, she was a Principal Planner with the State of Rhode Island’s Statewide Planning Program, where she managed social equity initiatives, climate change projects, and demographic analysis. Amanda’s doctoral research explores how regions or neighborhoods that receive major private or public investment can share that prosperity with low-income communities and communities of color. She is working on answering this question in the context of coastal communities’ recovery from major storms. Amanda holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a Master in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

KATY LANG Managing Editor of Online Content

Katy is a masters student in the Department of City & Regional Planning. She spent seven years in the Washington, DC area and as a result, she has a lovelove relationship with DC’s Metro system and all things urban and transportation. She is passionate about pedestrian safety and the pedestrian’s right to the city and the street. Prior to coming to UNC, Katy worked in change management. She likes long runs on Carrboro’s short bike trails and eating popcorn.

TAYLOR MCADAM Online Content Editor

Taylor is pursuing a master’s in City and Regional Planning, focusing on transportation and equity. She is a California native, excited for the chance to explore a new region of the country and a new set of planning challenges. A typical week includes a good game of basketball, many hours toying with maps and GIS, and an attempt at a new dish, ideally to be shared with friends. Writing is Taylor’s favorite way to work through new ideas and keep critical conversations afloat.

KATEY MOTE Online Content Editor

Chris has a passion for seeking efficiency, equity, and sustainability in policy-making, especially at the nexus of transportation and real estate. A Seattle native, Chris earned a BA in Philosophy from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. He is a member of the CPJ Editorial Board and will graduate from DCRP in 2017 with a specializations in Housing and Community Development and Transportation.

Katy is a dual degree master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina. Katey is interested in the intersection of urban planning and public health, particularly the ways health and planning policies can impact our social determinants of health. Katey worked as the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) Planning Coordinator at the Baltimore City Health Department before returning to North Carolina for graduate school. Katey graduated from UNC in 2012 with a degree in Health Policy and Management.

KARLA JIMENEZ Online Content Editor

BRIAN VAUGHN Director of Undergraduate Content

CHRIS BENDIX Online Content Editor

Kara is a dual degree master’s student at UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning and Department of Health Behavior. She found her interest in planning through her hobbies of filmmaking, food exploration, and critiquing services. Prior to UNC, Karla was a public health research analyst at RTI International and a radio producer at WNCU.

12

Brian is a sophomore undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studied and wrote about planning and energy issues in Spain and Germany during the summer, returning to North Carolina with a renewed invigoration to explore and discuss these issues as online content editor of the Carolina Planning Journal. Brian also writes for the Daily Tar Heel’s opinion page, and works with the Sierra Student Coalition’s coal divestment campaign.

AMANDA MARTIN

CHRIS BENDIX

KARLA JIMENEZ

KATY LANG

TAYLOR MCADAM

KATEY MOTE

BRIAN VAUGHN 13

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

R E -I NVE N TI NG P UBLI C HOUS ING H U D ’s C h o i c e N e i g h b o r h o o d s ’ S t rat e g i e s a n d O u t c o m e s

CAROLINE DWYER, AICP is a Senior Planner with Renaissance Planning based at the firm’s Durham, North Carolina office. She holds a BA in Environmental Design, Policy & Planning from SUNY Stony Brook

and received her Master of City and Regional Planning degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Caroline’s academic and professional experiences in the areas of sustainability, disaster recovery, resiliency, and community development have given her unique understanding of these concepts, and how to effectively incorporate them into planning.

ALAN STEINBECK, AICP is a Principal with Renaissance Planning, based at the firm’s Durham, North Carolina office. He holds a BS in Architecture and an MS in City and Regional Planning, both from the Georgia

Institute of Technology. Alan is an accomplished planning and design professional with

interests in the areas of transportation, land use, community development, scenario planning, economic forecasting, transit oriented development analysis and sustainability.

After more than half a century of providing public housing for residents of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the Cleveland Avenue Homes have reached the end of their useful life: housing units are outdated, severely distressed, and lack modern amenities.1 The surrounding neighborhood of East Winston suffers from a deficiency of resident services and public and private investment. It faces the persistent challenges of low educational attainment rates, a high unemployment rate, and an extremely high poverty rate. To address these issues, and to help neighborhood residents benefit from the changes occurring in other parts of the city, the Housing Authority of the City of Winston-Salem (HAWS) applied for, and received, a US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant in 2013.2 This article describes experiences and lessons we learned while working as a consultant to HAWS. We helped to create the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood Transformation Plan— the required deliverable for Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant recipients. Choice Neighborhoods is currently HUD’s 14

marquee grant program, and one of the few federal funding options available, for the revitalization and replacement of distressed and dysfunctional public housing. Understanding the nuances of this program is critical to helping applicants and grantees submit successful applications and plans. Furthermore, we must also understand how to best serve and represent the people who call these neighborhoods home.

FEDER AL PUBLIC HOUSING POLICY:

HOPE VI, and rental assistance demonstration (RAD) projects. Choice-based policy aims to offer more variety in housing options and ultimately attempts to deconcentrate pockets of poverty. However, evidence suggests that flaws in program design work against these goals, trapping residents in impoverished neighborhoods. These issues may arise from the fact that Section 8-qualified units tend to be in lower-income neighborhoods with higher minority concentrations (Semuels, 2015).

To overcome these challenges, the Choice Neighborhoods Program builds on and supplements the successes of the earlier mixed-income housing programs, and expands the policy focus beyond housing by considering neighborhood revitalization and supportive services championing benefits for public housing residents as well as other neighborhood residents and stakeholders (HUD “Choice Neighborhoods,” 2016).

WHAT IS CHOICE NEIGHBORHOODS?

FIGURE 1 - Cleveland Avenue Homes - The Cleveland Avenue

Homes are an aging public housing development in northeast Winston-Salem. Photo Credit: Renaissance Planning

MOVING TOWARDS CHOICE The failures of large-scale, concentrated public housing developments, the drying up of funding for publiclysponsored housing, and a legacy of institutionalized racism have resulted in a shift of federal housing policy towards the de-concentration and private provision of assisted housing. Concurrently, older public housing projects—like the Cleveland Avenue Homes—are phased out through programs such as the housing choice voucher program (HCV, also known as Section 8),

In 2010, HUD introduced the Choice Neighborhoods Program, which consists of two competitive grants programs—Planning Grants and Implementation.

Both programs support local solutions for revitalizing public housing and transforming distressed communities into healthy, viable, and vibrant neighborhoods. HUD defines neighborhoods of choice as those with revitalized housing; retail and services that residents want and need; high-quality schools, educational programs, and early learning opportunities; access to jobs that residents can fill and that pay a living wage; access to transportation; high quality neighborhood assets such as parks, sidewalks, community centers; and low crime rates (US HUD, 2016). To identify and plan for those solutions, grant recipients must consider three core 15

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

areas of intervention: people, housing, and neighborhood.

They do so by developing a required Transformation Plan that addresses these areas and identifies specific strategies to achieve the community’s goals.

THE CLEVEL AND AVENUE NEIGHBORHOOD Cleveland Avenue Homes, owned and managed by HAWS, were built in 1956 during major shifts in federal public housing policy. The development’s physical design reveals its age: apartments are contained within two-story, brick sided, multi-unit structures with floor plans of one to four bedrooms. The development is configured in a “superblock,” lacking through streets and limiting connectivity to the rest of the City of Winston-Salem. The Cleveland Avenue Homes are in the City’s East Winston neighborhood—the home of Winston-Salem’s historically African American communities (City of Winston-Salem, 2016).

High turnover in residents and chronic disinvestment have contributed to a lack of cohesion and daunting demographic and socioeconomic challenges in the Cleveland Avenue Homes development and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The community is young with a median age of just 26.4 years compared to 34.6 in Winston-Salem (US Census).3 More than 18% of residents are under the age of five and 32.6% of households are headed by single parents (US Census).

Nearly 80% of residents identify as African American or black, requiring a close consideration of racial and environmental justice issues when developing strategies for transformation (Smiler, 2015). When surveyed, over 42% of residents indicated that they had not worked in the previous year and over 30% of residents do not have a high school diploma or equivalent (Smiler, 2015). The community’s poverty rate is extremely high, particularly among families with children under age 18 (84.1%) (US Census). The violent crime rate is more than nine times greater than the city average.4 While many challenges exist, there are also opportunities based on the neighborhood’s location and assets. The Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood is a fifteen-minute walk from Winston-Salem’s vibrant downtown district and the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter: a biomedical research facility that is forecast to stimulate long-term economic 16

growth and community workforce development. City resources are being committed to fund pedestrian and street improvements along Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, the neighborhood’s primary through-street, and a revitalization effort is underway along the nearby Liberty Street commercial corridor. HAWS has been planning for the neighborhood’s revitalization since 2010, when they commissioned the Cleveland Avenue Master Plan. Several strategies from that plan have already been implemented including the Oaks at 10th and Camden Station Apartments—two renovated public housing developments.

CREATING THE TR ANSFORMATION PL AN Even though the Cleveland Avenue Homes are in a neighborhood with virtually no stores and services, and the development lacks modern amenities, it still has a list of prospective residents waiting for units. In addition to the development being generally distressed, another major issue is a mismatch between the size of the units available (bedrooms per unit) and the size of the units needed by potential residents. This is an issue faced not only at Cleveland Avenue, but at many of the developments managed by HAWS that were built prior to the modern era.

To meet the needs of residents while also updating their stock of public housing, HAWS requested and was awarded a Choice Neighborhood Planning Grant by HUD in 2013. This planning grant was used to facilitate a process engaging residents in identifying a vision for the future of the neighborhood, setting goals, and outlining strategies for the plan’s implementation. The authors were hired as consultants to help navigate residents, stakeholders, and the housing authority through the planning process. HUD requires that grant recipients conduct certain mandatory activities; a few of these will be discussed in the following sections (HUD, 2013).

Needs Assessment A mandatory comprehensive needs assessment of the target neighborhood and a household level survey was conducted to better understand patterns of neighborhood disinvestment, and to identify challenges, assets, and

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

FIGURE 2 - This page of the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood Transformation Plan shows a Neighborhood

Transformation Goal and Strategies. Image Credit: Renaissance Planning

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gaps in services. The Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood survey focused on eight areas, addressing topics such as housing and neighborhoods, education, health, and employment. The rate of response for the survey was 98%— a feat managed by the fact that surveys were conducted by residents who had been trained and paid by a community non-profit organization called Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods (discussed further in the community engagement section of this article). The results of the needs assessment were used to inform the strategies that will help transform the neighborhood.

Planning Process and Approach HUD required a description of how the Transformation Plan was created: the “Planning Process and Approach.” At the most foundational level, two primary approaches informed the development of the Cleveland Avenue Transformation Plan. The first was asset-based community development (ABCD), an approach that considers the unique needs of the community but, instead of “fixing” what is perceived to be broken or not working (a purely needs-based approach), ABCD takes a more positive approach to transformation by harnessing the unique power, skills, and talents of the community by identifying and leveraging assets (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). Building upon ABCD, the Transformation Plan was additionally guided by the concept of collective impact.

Collective impact aims to eliminate the isolated actions of individual contributors to transformation by focusing on five conditions of social success—a common agenda, shared measurement system, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organizations (Kania & Kramer, 2011).

Identifying and leveraging the connections between the neighborhood’s assets ultimately led to the development of a comprehensive and synergistic set of strategies to bring about neighborhood transformation.

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Transformation Vision and Transformation Strategies The Transformation Plan must contain a communitydeveloped vision for transformation. There were two elements to this vision: a verbal statement of a desired future and a physical plan for redevelopment.

Residents and stakeholders developed the following Transformation Vision to help guide their efforts: The Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood is welcoming, safe, and well connected to the rest of Winston-Salem. There is a focus on providing public amenities, resources, and supportive services to both future residents, and existing ones who do not return to the neighborhood. There is a strong sense of community, and respect for the neighborhood’s culture and history, with places and spaces for residents and visitors of all ages. Residents, both existing and new, have access to a wide range of safe, affordable, and suitable housing options.

Goals and key strategies for transformation are contained within three separate sections, conforming to the three main topic areas of the Choice Neighborhoods Program— People, Neighborhood, and Housing. Each of these topics has more specific focus areas that HUD requires the Transformation Plan to address. For example, within the People theme, focus areas include education; health; safety and security; and workforce development and employment. Residents and stakeholders developed goals and strategies for transformation within each of the People, Neighborhood, and Housing topics.

In addition to requiring elements within the plan itself, it was expected that grantees would conduct a robust program of community outreach and engagement to ensure that all voices are represented while planning the neighborhood’s transformation. To do this, a variety of traditional engagement techniques were employed including a resident survey, the convening of stakeholder committees, neighborhood events, a website, public meetings, and community workshops. But, as in many high need/low resource communities it was often difficult to activate the level of engagement that was desired.

By working with a community-based organization, it became possible to build the trust necessary to engage a broader cross-section of the community than would

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

“

By working with a community-based organization, it became possible to build the trust necessary to engage a broader cross-section of the community.”

have been possible otherwise. The following section describes the unique partnership that was established to stimulate participation by training residents to be their own best advocates.

BUILDING CAPACIT Y TO DRIVE TR ANSFORMATION HAWS and the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood leveraged a unique opportunity to work closely with the non-profit organization Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods (NBN), a group local to Winston-Salem dedicated to supporting and promoting resident-led community change. In 2014, NBN began work in the Cleveland Avenue Homes to identify residents who might be interested in learning more about the Choice Neighborhoods planning process while also developing leadership and community development skills. Fifteen residents were taken through a series of Neighbors in Action (NIA) trainings on topics such as “Understanding your Personal Power,” “Neighborhood Visioning and Planning,” and “Training the Trainers: Organizing 101.”

These 15 residents have since come together to form the Cleveland Avenue Transformation Team (CATT).

Through their training, they have strengthened their individual voices through collective action and are acknowledged as emerging leaders in Winston-Salem’s Northeast Ward. In addition to executing the household level survey required for the Transformation Plan, CATT developed an action plan that was included in the Cleveland Avenue Transformation Plan. The Action Plan covered tasks and responsibilities in the following six areas: Organizing and Unifying; CATT Resources; Reentry Support; Job Training; Community Development; and Housing. This model of partnering with a community based organization to build trust and capacity, and to strengthen community involvement in the planning process, has been recognized by HUD as an emerging best practice for Choice Neighborhood grant recipients.

FIGURE 3 - The Cleveland Avenue Transformation Team (CATT)

leads a community visioning workshop in April 2015; Photo Credit: Renaissance Planning

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WHAT’S NEXT? In April of 2016, the final Cleveland Avenue Transformation Plan was submitted and approved by HUD. In June 2016 HAWS applied for $30 million in Choice Neighborhoods Implementation funding. While they were not among the four communities who were awarded grants (out of the 34 who applied), the residents, the Housing Authority, and the City of Winston-Salem are committed to the transformation of the neighborhood and the implementation of the strategies identified as part of the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood Transformation Plan. CATT members are continuing with their organizing work, as well. The group is currently focused on finding a solution for the neighborhood’s food access and food insecurity issues. One option they are investigating is developing a community owned, cooperative grocery store. With many successful models to learn from, including the newly opened Renaissance Community Co-op in nearby Greensboro, North Carolina, CATT is digging in and figuring out where to start.

LESSONS LEARNED Through the process of facilitating the development of the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood Transformation Plan, several key takeaways emerged. Some of the issues are relevant to the Choice Neighborhoods Program overall and some relate more specifically to assisting with the creation of a plan or a grant application for this program. It is critical to note that while some of these issues may currently represent challenges, we believe that, through thoughtful planning, there are ways to overcome these potential barriers.

ISSUE: The Choice Neighborhoods Program goes beyond previous

mixed-income, federal public housing policy by broadening the scope of planning and investment beyond just four walls and a roof, but persistent challenges remain.

While HUD is making progress by acknowledging that housing issues can’t be addressed without considering the people who live there and the neighborhoods in which they are located, there is still work to be done. The level of disinvestment in the neighborhoods that Choice Neighborhoods is intended to benefit is often so deep 20

that traditional methods of stimulating the economy and community fail to bring about the transformation that is desired by the housing authority, the city, and residents. Without outside sources of funding, such as funds earmarked for implementation, there is a chance that many of these communities will not be able to stimulate the investment needed to drive revitalization.

One step towards solving this problem are the “Planning and Action” grants that are now part of the Choice Neighborhoods program. These three-year grants provide additional funding for “doing while planning” to stimulate interest in the program and investment in the neighborhood by kick-starting early project successes.

In the absence of this type of public funding, a Choice Neighborhood recipient might consider working with a community or non-profit partner to achieve some early successes.

ISSUE: There is a level of institutional capacity required to

apply for, and manage Choice Neighborhoods Program grant applications and awards that may favor larger agencies or cities with greater resources.

When considering the communities that have been successful in applying for grant assistance, there is a noticeable bias towards larger, comparatively more wellresourced places, particularly for the Implementation Grant program. In past rounds, grants have gone to target neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and New Orleans (HUD, 2011). The materials required for the Implementation Grant application add up to well over 200 pages of information. The Planning Grant application demands much less. However, in addition to the grant application, the preparation of the Transformation Plan requires a tremendous amount of capacity and resources from the grantee. One potential solution to this issue might be a technical assistance program sponsored by HUD to assist smaller and less well-resourced communities with grant application preparation and development of Transformation Plans.

ISSUE: A competitive application for the Choice Neighborhoods

Program, and a successful Transformation Plan, requires numerous partnerships, dedication of resources, and wide scale

These three key elements of both a successful grant application and an effective Transformation Plan may seem like “no brainers�, especially to practicing planners, but their importance cannot be overemphasized.

The Transformation Plan requires identifying implementation strategies across a broad range of topics. Many different stakeholders need to be involved in the identification, refinement, and synthesis of these strategies. The Implementation Grant application requires at least a 5% leverage of funds requested, but for an application to be competitive, the amount leveraged must be significantly higher. For communities who are not benefitting from the additional Implementation funding, which is most communities, these partnerships and resources will be critical to implementing the strategies contained within the Transformation Plan.

Because the Choice Neighborhoods program requires the dedication of so much time and resources, it would be useful for both planning grantees and implementation grantees to convene a steering committee consisting of key community partners and stakeholders. This steering committee could keep planning efforts on track, help track down and manage the information needed to complete the grant application, and secure commitments from potential partners and funders to ensure a competitive application.

ISSUE: The resident and community engagement elements

required by HUD demand a lot of energy and participation from low resource/high need communities and from people who may be struggling to meet basic needs.

HUD requires a high level of participation from members of the target public housing development and stakeholders in the surrounding community.

This participation is often difficult to generate. In the case of Cleveland Avenue, residents were trained as community organizers through the Neighbors-inAction program and functioned as a trusted, two-way source of information for both residents and planning facilitators. Training residents to conduct surveys

helped to reach 98% of residents in the household needs survey. The other skills that residents gained through the program led to the creation of a resident-generated action plan that was included in the Transformation Plan. To stimulate the level of engagement desired by HUD, it is first necessary to understand the residents of the community. For example, in Cleveland Avenue, very few residents had access to the internet or computers at home. To spread the word about Choice Neighborhood community meetings, it was necessary to engage the trained residents and ask them to take flyers door to door. Through this process, residents learned about upcoming events and had access to informed individuals, instead of relying on the community grapevine for information about the Transformation Plan. We need to develop techniques beyond the go-to engagement media that planners are familiar with, such as evening meetings, web surveys, and workshops, to reach a full representation of the community. A resident training program is one option.

ISSUE: Residents can be mobilized to lead and design

community development projects, but capacity and resource gaps, and a lack of community-led organizational infrastructure, need to be addressed with assistance for these types of efforts to succeed.

For every well-funded and fully enfranchised neighborhood champion, there are other less wellresourced potential community leaders lying patiently in wait for the support and assistance they need to fully mobilize. HUD lays out a grand vision for grassroots, community-driven planning for transformation, but without some level of guidance and facilitation, and certainly without some resources, these efforts are likely to fall flat. This paradox extends the burden of an unfunded mandate to the very people this program is aiming to assist demanding the residents be involved in planning but providing no resources to train or compensate them. The root cause of this seemingly myopic approach to enforcing resident engagement is not immediately apparent, but is a topic worthy of further investigation.

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community support; these elements need to be considered early and often.

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The training that Cleveland Avenue residents received helped to build the type of capacity required for effective community organizing, but not all communities have this type of resource at their disposal. For all its successes, it’s likely that this outcome will remain an outlier without an ample infusion of funding for resident capacitybuilding. As we recommended assisting communities with preparing grant applications and developing plans, there may be an opportunity for HUD to offer technical assistance to communities to help build resident capacity and organizational infrastructure and assist with finding the resources required to foster effective resident leadership.

(1) Requires major redesign, reconstruction, or redevelopment, or partial or total demolition, to correct serious deficiencies in the original design (including inappropriately high population density), deferred maintenance, physical deterioration or obsolescence of major systems, and other deficiencies in the physical plan of the project;

CONCLUSIONS

(iii) Is lacking in sufficient appropriate transportation, supportive services, economic opportunity, schools, civic and religious institutions, and public services, resulting in severe social distress in the project;

Although the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood Transformation Plan is now complete, the hard work of real transformation on the ground has only just begun. In the coming months and years residents, stakeholders, HAWS, the City of Winston-Salem, elected officials, and other partners will be working to organize and implement the strategies contained within their plan. Their commitment is evident in the incredible amount of time and energy that have already been dedicated to the planning process and it will, undoubtedly, continue until homes, community, and lives in the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood have been improved.

(2) Is a significant contributing factor to the physical decline of, and disinvestment by public and private entities in, the surrounding neighborhood; (3) Is: (i) Occupied predominantly by families who are very low-income families with children, have unemployed members, and are dependent on various forms of public assistance; (ii) Has high rates of vandalism and criminal activity (including drugrelated criminal activity) in comparison to other housing in the area; or

(4) Cannot be revitalized through assistance under other programs, such as the Capital Fund and Operating Fund programs for public housing under the 1937 Act, or the programs under sections 9 or 14 of the 1937 Act (as in effect before the effective date under section 503(a) of the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (Pub. L. 105-276, approved October 21, 1998)), because of cost constraints and inadequacy of available amounts; and (5) In the case of an individual building that currently forms a portion of the public and/or assisted housing project targeted by the application to this NOFA: (a) Is sufficiently separable from the remainder of the project of which the building is part, such that the revitalization of the building is feasible; or (b) Was part of the targeted public and/or assisted housing project that has been legally vacated or demolished, but for which HUD has not yet provided replacement housing assistance (other than tenantbased assistance). “Replacement housing assistance” is defined as funds that have been furnished by HUD to perform major rehabilitation on, or reconstruction of, the public and/or assisted housing units that have been legally vacated or demolished. b. A severely distressed project that has been legally vacated or demolished (but for which HUD has not yet provided replacement housing assistance, other than tenant-based assistance) must have met the definition of physical distress not later than the day the demolition application approval letter was dated by HUD.

ENDNOTES 1. US Housing and Urban Development Definition of Severely Distressed Housing https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/ huddoc?id=fy13cnimplemnofafinal.pdf a. In accordance with Section 24(j)(2) of the 1937 [Housing] Act, the term means a public and/or assisted housing project (or building in a project) that:

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2. HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Program offers two tracks of competitive grant programs: a $500,000 Planning Grant and an Implementation Grant, for which applicants may request up to $30,000,000 in HUD funding.

3. Unless otherwise noted, all data is taken from the US Census Bureau, 2013 ACS 5-year estimates for Census Tract 5, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

4. As reported to authors by representatives of the Winston Salem Police Department in 2014.

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

WORKS CITED City of Winston-Salem. History, “City of Winston-Salem Government History.” Web. September 16, 2016. http://www.cityofws.org/homecenter/discover-winston-salem/history.

Kania, J; Kramer, M. “Collective Impact,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter, 2011.

Mathie, A; Cunningham, G. “From clients to citizens: Asset-based Community Development as a strategy for community-driven development,” Development in Practice, 2003. Vol. 13, No. 5.

Semuels, Alana. “How Housing Policy is Failing America’s Poor,” The Atlantic, June 24, 2015, Web. 15 September 2016 http://www.theatlantic. com/business/archive/2015/06/section-8-is-failing/396650/.

Smiler, Andrew. “Choice Neighborhoods Survey,” March 2015.

Unpublished.

United States Census Bureau / American Fact Finder: “S0101: Age and Sex.” 2009-2013 American Community Survey. US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Office, 2013. Web. 15 November 2016 http://factfinder.census.gov.

United States Census Bureau / American Fact Finder: “S1101: Households and Families.” 2009-2013 American Community Survey. US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Office, 2013. Web. 15 November 2016 http://factfinder.census.gov.

United States Census Bureau / American Fact Finder: “S1701: Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months.” 2009-2013 American Community Survey.

US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Office, 2013. Web. 15 November 2016 http://factfinder.census.gov.

United States Housing and Urban Development. Choice Neighborhoods, Implementation Grants, “FY2010/FY2011 Implementation Grant Project Summaries.” Web. 3 October 2016. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/ documents/huddoc?id=CNFY2010-2011.pdf.

United States Housing and Urban Development. Choice Neighborhoods, Planning Grants, “FY2013 Grant Agreement.”

Web. 3 October 2016. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/ huddoc?id=CNFY13PlanGrantAgreeFINAL.pdf.

United States Housing and Urban Development. Choice Neighborhoods, Web. 3 October 2016. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/ program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/ph/cn.

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

R E FI NI NG TH E E DGE CITY: A d a p t i n g P l a n n i n g C o n c e p t s i n Ty s o n s , V i r g i n i a

NAVID ROSHAN-AFSHAR Navid Roshan-Afshar is a professional engineer who has written for TheTysonsCorner.com and

InTysons.com. His experience in local land development and civil engineering has provided an inside perspective on the rezoning and construction process, and allows him to relate the changes happening in Tysons to residents and commuters. He has watched, archived, and guided decisions in Tysons since the implementation of the new Comprehensive Plan as a

supporter of sustainable and smart growth concepts, which he believes is the way forward for many poorly planned and inefficient edge cities around the country.

In 2010, after decades of disjointed office park development, the commercial core of Tysons, Virginia saw stagnant growth, an inability to attract younger residents, and inefficient infrastructure that deterred investment in the region. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, in order to avoid a catastrophic abandonment of its business epicenter, adopted extensive and sweeping modifications to its Comprehensive Plan, which designated Tysons as a specialized district in 1978. The new Comprehensive Plan for Tysons removed this designation, which fit within the context of the overall countywide plan and instead created a new subsection specific to an emerging urban Tysons. The multi-year, multidisciplinary study was lauded as a key vision for America’s aging and disconnected suburban office parks, and received the 2011 APA Daniel Burnham Award for a Comprehensive Plan. Despite the impressive accolades, most non-planners, and some in the planning community, have never heard of Tysons.

It’s understandable why the general public is unaware of the quickly evolving city of Tysons; it lacks nearly every standard marker for being a human-scale city. Although Tysons has five Fortune 500 corporations headquartered within its downtown, over 100,000 employment positions, and 50 million square feet of development, it often feels isolated and devoid of people.

This is partially due to the relatively minimal population of 24

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20,000 residents. It is also attributable to the suburban and decentralized development pattern that typifies much of its early built form. Deep building setbacks, excessive parking minimums often achieved through surface parking, wide pseudo-highway arterials, and blank walls exaggerate the limited community feel of Tysons. For decades there hasn’t been a downtown to Tysons, and the average experience of the city was driving along one of its often traffic congested roads.

The idea of Tysons transitioning from its form in 2010 to a city with a defined center was rightfully viewed cynically. Although the urban district contained millions of square feet of development, much of it was haphazardly sited. If the problem was relegated to a handful of problem properties the solutions could be enacted quickly without second thought, but the sheer number of poorly-planned buildings – over one hundred – requires unique mitigation. This diffusion and proliferation is shared across many urban elements of Tysons, including infrastructure, transit, schools, parks, and placemaking.

Although there are many examples of excellent urban planning solutions in the D.C. metropolitan region, many of these are not implementable in Tysons due

to the constraints of the existing city. For example, creating a temporary pop-up public space in an already urban neighborhood has a high probability of attaining community use without any further jurisdictional contribution. In Tysons, however, independent design considerations alone do not result in successful implementation, and instead must be contextual in the interim suburban format. Edge cities, of which Tysons is a prototypical example (Garreau, 1991), cannot be improved the same way as their original central cities.

Despite the cynicism and constraints that Tysons has faced since 2010, the nascent city has grown substantially and out-performed most expectations of marketability. An initial fear after the approval of the Tysons Comprehensive Plan was that the increased cost of the new redevelopment requirements would further stymie an already slowed post-recession real estate market. However, the introduction of the Silver Line heavy rail spur of the Washington Metro proved to be a more powerful market factor. Tysons has seen over eight and a half million square feet of mid-rise and high-rise development via seventeen mid-rise and high-rise buildings in construction or completed since 2010. A further three million square feet is planned to break ground over the next eighteen months, and 25

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The Tysons Comprehensive Plan frames the old setback requirements as detrimental to the urban goals of the future city (Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan). In renderings of future development, the boulevards and streets look drastically different thanks to the mandate to build closer to the streetscape. Human-scale building pedestals, reduced blank walls, and street-level retail were supported in the master plan for the city.

New buildings in Tysons have implemented the revised massing and setback requirements successfully.

However, hundreds of existing buildings that disrupt the urban form remain. Many of these buildings could use minor modifications for mixed-use additions that could improve marketability and amenities for users.

This could be achieved by building in the currently underutilized setbacks, benefitting both the urban form and usage of the parcel. The majority of these buildings are in limbo between deleterious past requirements and having to wade through the expensive and prolonged rezoning process.

a total of thirty million square feet of redevelopment is in the pipeline via approved rezonings. While rezoning requirements incurred new costs to provide activated parks, better mixed-use developments, and affordable housing, these costs were successfully overcome through higher density properties with access to the Silver Line.

MASSING AND URBAN FORM In traditional urban landscapes, buildings are set close to the edge of the road and sidewalk to help activate the streetscape and reduce distances between destinations. It may seem arbitrary in terms of additional travel time, but when taken to the extreme as one can see in the original Tysons, where building setbacks could add an additional 100 to 200 feet per building, the cumulative effect is a sparseness that makes travel by foot more difficult. It also has the harmful effect of isolating a property or business from those who may be potential customers, employees, or residents.

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An intermediate and more straight-forward application process is necessary. Projects that accelerate the transition to a more walkable urban form should be encouraged. In Tysons, many of these buildings could be expanded into spaces previously devoted to surface parking, given that the Comprehensive Plan calls for lowered parking minimum requirements. For example, a project with seventy fewer parking spaces, would translate to twenty thousand square feet of recaptured and valuable ground space and in many cases much more given the green setback space requirements of prior countywide Comprehensive Plans.

TR ANSITIONAL PUBLIC SPACE Great established cities have numerous public spaces located through years of careful consideration, private patronage, and public input. Time has given them the versatility and adaptability to meet the desires of the community. Edge cities are not afforded the benefits of time when attempting to undo mistakes of the past.

Without public spaces like parks and plazas, edge cities lack the amenities necessary to attract new residents.

Creating activated, temporary public spaces has been one of the greater successes of a growing Tysons urban core, a symbiotic benefit for private developments, residents, and the municipality. At the prominent Tysons Corner metro station, a construction laydown area for the Silver Line rail spur was left as a fallow black top in 2013. Lerner Enterprises, the landowner of the parcel, was underway on a separate building two blocks away and did not have immediate use for the property. Instead of leaving the space unoccupied and without utility, the developer rebranded it Lerner Town Square and began plans for a series of public events (Mullins, 2015). Since that time, once-sporadic events have become a popular summer and fall series of food, music, and nightlife events catering to thousands of visitors. This past summer the temporary space may have seen its crowning achievement thus far in the hosting of Cirque Du Soleil for a two-month show run.

Fairfax County has also promoted active street-level commerce and encouraged better uses for low-use parcels through pop-up retail events (Pop-Up Tysons). The County initiated modifications to codes that restricted pop-up retail land uses in zoning codes and openly encouraged entrepreneurs and landowners to utilize interim land uses. The County commissioned reports and studies in collaboration with George Mason University regarding appropriate locations to support and encourage pop-up retail. At the Greensboro metro station, where crowds of office workers head home via metro each day, a popup Biergarten in an underperforming strip mall has created a transitional space in the shadow of an underconstruction high rise apartment. The Biergarten is a popular happy hour spot and proof that Tysons is more than an office park (Duggan 2014).

Tysons Corner Center Plaza, a new public space formed from the first phases of the Tysons Corner shopping center redevelopment, has become the most consistent gathering space in Tysons thanks to the flexible design (Singh 2014). The deck constructed between three mixed

use towers was designed as a transitional space that could support anything from one thousand concert goers to an ice rink in the winter months.

Small details like people-sized chess boards, lawn games, and seating that seamlessly integrate into the surrounding outdoor restaurant spaces contribute to the plaza’s success, as judged by the routine crowds.

TR ANSPORTATION The transportation network of a city defines how well it functions, grows, and is experienced. Spacing and size of roadways have been the building blocks of society since the development of the Roman insula, a parcel defined by four bounding roads and the original city block. City blocks have become larger over time due to changing technology and population preferences which has led to undesirable consequences in how people get around when not in their vehicle.

Tysons was a city first born in the era of the superhighway expansion of the 1950s, split in half by the most famous Eisenhower era of highway projects, the Capitol Beltway. It was believed that the interconnected highway system would solve the traffic problems of the growing commuter population, which it did until the system hit its limit. Decades of widenings and fly-over ramps have attempted to perpetuate the original concept but resulted in barriers to other forms of transportation and reduced quality of life.

The Comprehensive Plan for Tysons has established a new transportation pattern for the future city, breaking up the super blocks created by highwayscale roads and implementing a street grid. This will result in a more habitable human scale, but it will take decades to come to fruition, as each newly developed parcel contributes its piece to the grid. In the interim, smaller modifications are necessary to reform transportation on a human scale.

Transportation Demand Management (TDM) is a critical framework for improving efficiency in 27

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And without a groundswell of new residents, more permanent plans for a new city are impossible.

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Tysons transportation network. Incentivizing ridesharing and transit as well as establishing controls on parking has helped maintain road demand levels within Tysons despite millions of additional square feet of development. Small modifications within office buildings, like the addition of transit and traffic screens within Tysons Corner Center, have better informed commuters and residents on the fastest ways to get to their destinations. A growing transit ridership helps sustain emerging transit routes, forms core patronage, and pulls would-be automobile users from roads. The result is less congestion, more flexibility for road diets, alternative-use lanes, and other non-singleoccupancy vehicle minded priorities.

Community engagement regarding multi-modal shifts in Tysons has also been a priority for Fairfax County.

Transportation planners have staged several dozen meetings on small-scale projects, from conceptualization to final construction, to encourage a more open-source gathering of the region’s needs. These public meetings often only attract limited portions of the population, however, and do not gather a broad spectrum of ideas. Public meetings are also very time-consuming for the planning staff.

Fairfax County has created an innovative solution for public input – the Pedestrian Improvement Requests map, which provides the community with online interactive means to recommend small-scale transportation remediation for pedestrians. This map was used to help guide appropriate locations of bike lanes and crosswalk improvements in the summer of 2015, concurrently with the Fairfax County Department of Transportation’s pavement resurfacing plans for Tysons. By gathering information from the public outside of the limits of public meeting hours, the County had ample information to determine where funds and attention is most critical.

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CONCLUSION Edge cities are a construct of the postmodern world.

Retrofitting them to fit the model of pre-war, preautomobile cities will lead to failure. Tysons is at the forefront in the experiment to redefine suburban office parks. Abandoning planning dogma provides an opportunity for the burgeoning city to establish new criteria for transitioning spaces, a dilemma that most traditional cities are not faced with on a region-wide scale.

The Tysons Comprehensive Plan was a monumental reversal of transportation and zoning codes that have defined the suburban development pattern of the past five decades. Its implementation is essential to Tysons’ ongoing growth and sustainability. However, the plan alone cannot effectively change the built environment on a timeframe that most residents and commuters experience, leading to cynicism, repudiation, and dilution of the plans goals. The redefining of Tysons, and the step by step process that is leading to its transformation, provides much-needed guidance on how a reforming edge city can transition more smoothly and quickly to more habitable patterns of development.

Setbacks and failures serve to better inform planning decisions, which result in unanticipated successes.

Capturing these case studies in Tysons will guide both interim and future jurisdictional guidelines for other edge cities.

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

WORKS CITED Garreau, Joel. 1991. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Anchor Books.

Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan, Tysons Corner Urban Center, pg 7. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpz/comprehensiveplan/area2/tysons1. pdf Mullins, Luke. “The Audacious Plan to Turn a Sprawling DC Suburb Into a Big City.” Washingtonian, March 29, 2015. https://www.washingtonian. com/2015/03/29/the-audacious-plan-to-turn-a-sprawling-dc-suburbinto-a-big-city/ (accessed November 12, 2016).

Pop-Up Tysons, Building the Future of Tysons Now. http://schar.gmu. edu/wp-content/uploads/Final_Report_Pop_Up_Tysons_May13_2013. pdf Duggan, Paul. “Tysons’s small retailers don’t fit into grand development plans spurred by Silver Line.” Washington Post, July 4, 2015. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/tysonss-smallretailers-dont-fit-into-grand-development-plans-spurred-by-silverline/2014/07/04/6b4b6292-fd49-11e3-b1f4-8e77c632c07b_story.html (accessed November 12, 2016) Singh, Reena. “Tysons Corner Center Plaza Opens.” The Connection, July 30, 2014. http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2014/jul/30/ tysons-corner-center-plaza-opens/ (accessed November 12, 2016)

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 42

R E M E DI ATI O N BEST MASTER’S PROJECT 2016 Environmental Injustice and Coal Ash in North Carolina

LIBBIE WEIMER Libbie Weimer recently completed a master’s in the Department of City and Regional Planning

at UNC Chapel Hill with a specialization in Land Use and Environmental Planning. She is interested in the connections between energy production, water quality, and environmental justice. Weimer currently splits her time between academic research, GIS consulting, and documentary filmmaking.

The following article is an excerpt.

For the full-length text contact the author at libbie.weimer@gmail.com.

In February 2014, a drainage pipe breach leaked 82,000 tons of coal ash from a Duke Energy coal plant into the Dan River near Eden, North Carolina. The enormous environmental damage focused local attention on Eden, but what made national headlines was the state’s failure to regulate electric utilities (Gabriel, 2014). In response to the spill, both federal and state agencies developed new policies for coal ash disposal.

North Carolina’s Coal Ash Management Act, passed in August 2014, requires that Duke Energy clean up over 100 million tons of coal ash that currently sits in thirty-two open basins across the state (General Assembly of North Carolina, 2014).

Meanwhile, the EPA rule, finalized in April 2015, requires closure of unlined coal ash ponds and regulates the location and structure of all coal ash sites across the country (U.S. EPA 2015). Neither the state nor the federal regulation, however, addresses a crucial factor—the disproportionate incidence of environmental hazards within communities of color.

In the wake of the Dan River spill, the NAACP launched a civil rights investigation into the handling of the crisis, citing that a quarter of residents within a two-mile radius of the spill are from racial or ethnic minority groups (Porter, 2014). The spill represents one type of environmental justice concern—the impact of onsite industrial pollution within local communities. Regulation of coal ash introduces a second concern—the impact of off-site industrial waste within local communities. Both types of unwanted land uses—industrial

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Neither the state nor the federal regulation, however, addresses a crucial factor—the disproportionate incidence of environmental hazards within communities of color.”

polluters and toxic landfills—are disproportionately located in communities of color. Amidst competing state and federal policies, North Carolina has become a test case in how to clean up and manage coal ash waste.

WHAT IS THE COAL ASH MANAGEMENT ACT? A coal ash pond is an unlined basin containing a mixture of ash and water held in place by a dam creating an impoundment. Electric utilities began using onsite coal ash ponds in the 1950s as a cheap means of storing waste from coal combustion. As environmental consciousness evolved over time, North Carolina plant managers responded differently at each site, creating unique conditions at each one. Today, all fourteen coal ash sites are owned by Duke Energy. Seven of sites are closed plants, and one is slated to close within the decade. From Asheville to Wilmington, these fourteen sites encompass thirty-two ash basins containing 111.6 million tons of coal ash. The largest of the sites, Roxboro, holds over thirtyfour million tons of ash (Duke Energy, 2015).

The Coal Ash Management Act prohibits the creation of new coal ash ponds and requires cleanups at the fourteen existing sites, as determined by a prioritization process.

At ‘high’ or ‘intermediate’ risk sites, coal ash must be excavated and removed to a lined landfill. ‘Low’ risk sites can be capped in place. With a deadline of remediation by 2020, cleanups began at the ‘high’ priority sites in the fall of 2014. The four ‘high’ priority sites contain nearly fifteen million tons of ash, most of which will end up in a lined landfill (ibid.). Soon after the passage of the Coal Ash Management Act, the Department of Environmental Quality identified two sites for coal ash waste: the former Brickhaven mine in Chatham County and the Colon Mill mine nearby in Lee County. In 2015, both Chatham and Lee County officials made deals with Duke Energy to receive coal ash in exchange for payments of nineteen

and twelve million dollars respectively (Murawski, 2015). While these sites have enough capacity to absorb coal ash from the ‘high’ priority sites, the state will likely need more landfills for the remaining cleanups (Permit Application, 2015).

Meanwhile, coal ash has ignited conflict both between conservative lawmakers and progressives and among the conservative establishment. The resulting political wrangling has left impacted communities confused over when cleanups will occur, if their water is safe to drink, and who can be held accountable for implementing the law. By describing the communities impacted by coal ash and offering recommendations to address the concerns raised by environmental justice advocates, this paper attempts to provide clarity on a portion of the Coal Ash Management Act and its implementation.

STUDY METHODOLOGIES: DESCRIPTIVE AND CUMUL ATIVE IMPACTS All impoundments and landfills defined by the DEQ as coal ash ponds subject to regulation under the Coal Ash Management Act were included in the study. The two former mines permitted as structural fill projects are also included in the analysis. The paper presents the results of two studies that describe the communities affected by coal ash. The descriptive analysis shows what racial and ethnic groups are impacted by coal ash. Socio-economic factors are also crucial, but were deemed outside the scope of this paper. The cumulative impact analysis, which refers to the impacts of all local environmental hazards when considered together rather than on a siteby-site basis, shows what other environmental hazards are present in these communities.

In the descriptive analysis, census block level data were gathered from the 2010 full census. Using geospatial information systems, one, three, and five kilometer 31

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buffers were drawn from the edge of the coal ash ponds and structural fill sites to create the areas impacted by coal ash. Although this produced impact zones of varying sizes, buffering from the edge was chosen since it allows a more fitting comparison across sites. For each buffer distance, all census blocks that fall within the buffers were identified.

This produced a count of total population, white population, black population and latinx population impacted at the one, one to three, and three to five kilometer zones.

In the cumulative impacts analysis, environmental hazards within the five kilometer zone area were mapped using the EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) facility data. The TRI tracks chemical releases by facilities that manufacture, process, or otherwise use a TRI-listed chemical in an amount above the TRI reporting threshold during any calendar year (US EPA, 2016). The inventory tracks releases both on-site as well as off-site. While the TRI is a useful, publicly available tool, it does not cover all conceivable environmental hazards and does not account for non-point sources of pollution. With these limitations in mind, study details the number of TRI facilities and the pounds of onsite releases for each site impact zone.

DESCRIPTIVE RESULTS Evidence for disproportionate impacts are present at eight of sixteen sites, where the percentage of people of color increases as one moves closer to the site. Impacts are apparent at Belews Creek, Roxboro, and Dan River, where the proportion of people of color within the one kilometer buffer is not only significantly higher than the state, but also are more than twice than the three to five kilometer buffer. Weatherspoon and Belews Creek have the greatest overall impacts to people of color. At the three kilometer distance, people of color are the majority near the Weatherspoon plant. Impacts to African Americans are especially apparent at Belews Creek, which is thirtyeight percent African American within three kilometers of the site. Although population density is very low close to the site, the Sutton Plant also ranks among the highest impacts for people of color, with a larger impact on Latinos.

The Asheville site, compared to the state proportion of people of color, finds no disproportionate impact; however, when compared to the county, disproportionate impacts 32

are present. While the state has thirty-one percent people of color and Asheville’s one kilometer impact zone is twenty percent people of color, Buncombe and Henderson counties together are only twelve percent people of color, revealing a localized impact.

CUMUL ATIVE IMPACT ANALYSIS RESULTS Cumulative impacts are common among all sites, but the severity of the cumulative impact, as measured by number of sites and pounds of releases, varies significantly among sites. Among the fourteen coal ash ponds and the two structural fill sites, eleven of sixteen, have a TRI facility within a five kilometer buffer of the site. Since coal plants sometimes have multiple facility listings, sites with multiple TRI listings associated with the power plant within the five kilometer buffer are not counted as cumulative impact areas.

Unsurprisingly, all the currently operating coal plants, except for Mayo, (due to its proximity to Roxboro), have high proportions of onsite releases compared to reference counties. A cluster of facilities is observed near the Cape Fear Power Station, which is within a few kilometers of the Brickhaven site and about twelve kilometers from the Colon Mill site. Although Cape Fear has closed, the five kilometer buffer around the plant has over a quarter of the onsite releases for its three reference counties combined. Asheville also has a high number of TRI facilities within five kilometers of the site. A five kilometer buffer around the Asheville site contains more than thirty percent of all TRI sites within Buncombe and Henderson Counties and more onsite chemical releases than the entire Buncombe County.

POLICY RECOMMENDAT ION 1: Incorporate Environmental Justice within Decision-making North Carolina law does not require that regulators consider race or class when implementing the Coal Ash Management Act. As it stands, the Coal Ash Management Act does not acknowledge that the burden of coal facilities borne by these communities, in some cases for generations, is part of a larger pattern of systematic discrimination. Community residents and advocates

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see the pattern. They argue that they have been treated as expendable. The demographic analysis within this report indicates that half of sites face environmental justice concerns. By including environmental justice as part of the conversation, the state can improve the remediation process by concentrating resources on the most vulnerable communities.

As a preliminary step, the state should include environmental justice screening within the decisionmaking process. Methods such as those used in this report are feasible for a state agency without incurring prohibitive costs. The state also needs to think about disproportionate impact more broadly. While environmental justice matters in site prioritization, it also matters on a systemic level.

The state needs to conduct policy analysis to determine if new laws such as the Coal Ash Management Act will disproportionately negatively affect communities of color or low-income communities. In the case of the Coal Ash Management Act, such strategic thinking would highlight avenues to amend policy before it becomes law.

In addition, cumulative impacts are a pressing threat to public health and safety and must be incorporated in environmental justice screening. These impacts represent another manifestation of injustice conveyed through systematic discrimination. As shown in the Asheville case, a cumulative impacts analysis reveals where disproportionate burdens of pollution impact communities of color in North Carolina.

P OL I CY R E CO M M E N DATI O N 2 : Create Avenues for Community Input to Frame the Problem The public hearings on risk classification of each site revealed that community members have concerns not incorporated within the criteria specified by the Coal Ash Management Act. Not only did environmental justice concerns arise at these meetings, but also a variety of public health concerns that the Coal Ash Management Act has little means to address. By the time residents got a chance to participate in the site remediation process, lawmakers had already framed the problem primarily as an environmental crisis, with potential public health impacts in the event of 34

a future spill. In contrast, many residents framed the problem as one of decades of contamination and fear of a resulting public health crisis.

For example, residents from the Rosewood neighborhood abutting the H. F. Lee plant testified that historic flooding spread ash all over the neighborhood. They also reported that outflows of water from the ash ponds were clearly visible leading into drainage ditches that flow into the Neuse River, indicating that they may be experiencing the public health impacts of exposure even though the levies remain intact. Some had interviewed neighbors, reporting on the incidence of cancers within the community (Author observation, 2016). In the current framework, the law is unresponsive to these concerns.

POLICY RECOMMENDAT ION 3: Strengthen Regulations for Solid Waste Permitting The key for changing outcomes lies within solid waste permitting. Although beneficial reuse for coal ash is possible, the markets do not exist to capture any significant amount of this waste; furthermore, it is extremely expensive to convert wet coal ash into reusable product (Electric Power Research Institute, 2016). Unless something dramatically changes, the vast majority of coal ash will go into a lined landfill somewhere. If the state hopes to deal with this problem in an equitable and environmentally sustainable manner, it must strengthen regulations for solid waste permitting.

As a first step, definitions need to be clear. The Coal Ash Management Act currently defines ‘beneficial reuse’ of coal ash as “projects promoting public health and environmental protection, offering equivalent success relative to other alternatives, and preserving natural resources,” a definition that is murky at best (§ 130A309.201, 2014). This definition encompasses structural fill projects such as Brickhaven and Colon Mill. States regulating the management of coal ash should make a clear distinction between landfills and beneficial reuse projects. Simply put, structural fill on the order of millions of tons of material should not constitute a beneficial reuse.

North Carolina’s coal ash management is one part of a wider structural system that prioritizes the needs and desires of affluent white communities over those of communities of color and low-income communities.”

As a second step, state regulators should protect communities from discriminatory siting by invoking existing law. The N.C. Solid Waste Management Act of 2007 requires that the state deny a permit for a landfill in the case that “the cumulative impact of the proposed facility would have a disproportionate adverse impact on a minority or low-income community” (ibid.). As it stands, community residents are not notified if coal ash is going into a local landfill because no new permits are required. The law should be updated so that special permitting is required for any landfill to receive coal ash in order to invoke these regulations.

event near the Belews Creek site. Panelists included community members, researchers, and representatives from Duke Energy and the D.E.Q. It remains to be seen what changes may result from these conversations.

North Carolina’s history with these issues goes back to the birth of the environmental justice movement. The conversation continues today.

CONCLUSION North Carolina’s coal ash management is one part of a wider structural system that prioritizes the needs and desires of affluent white communities over those of communities of color and low-income communities.

Through the regulation of coal ash, the state has an opportunity to engage in the dismantling of systemic discrimination. As it stands, the Coal Ash Management Act treats the problem as if race and class are irrelevant.

In addition, by narrowly focusing the criteria on what factors increase risk of a spill, the law remains unresponsive to the fact that what happens in the event of a catastrophe like Dan River spill is just one facet of the problem. Decades of environmental exposure are part of the problem. Decades of disinvestment in fenceline communities are part of the problem. Cumulative impacts from other environmental hazards are part of the problem. Lack of access to healthcare for low-income communities is part of the problem.

North Carolinians across the state are making these arguments and they are gaining an audience. In April 2016, the North Carolina Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hosted a day-long 35

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WORKS CITED § 130A-309.201 Definitions, General Assembly of North Carolina, “Coal Ash Management Act” Senate Bill 729, August 2014.

Author observation. (March 2016). North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Public Hearing on the Site Classification of the HF Lee Site. Goldsboro, North Carolina.

Duke Energy, Duke Energy Coal Plants and Ash Management, last modified October 2015, https://www.duke-energy.com/pdfs/dukeenergy-ash-metrics.pdf.

Electric Power Research Institute, University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research & Golder Associates, (September 2016), Phase 1 Market Study Summary. http://2wkwcrd7u7m2kz1mxtfwko18. wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2016/09/Phase-1-Market-StudySummary.pdf.

Gabriel, Trip “Ash Spill Shows How Watchdog was Defanged,” New York Times, February 28th, 2014, accessed July 25th, 2015, http://www. nytimes.com/2014/03/01/us/coal-ash-spill-reveals-transformation-ofnorth-carolina-agency.html.

General Assembly of North Carolina, Coal Ash Management Act, Senate Bill 729, August 2014.

Murawski, John “Chatham County agrees to take coal ash landfill for $19 million,” News & Observer, June 16th, 2015, accessed March 24 2016: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/coal-ash-issue/ article24670618.html; John Murawski, “NC issues permits for coal ash landfills in Chatham, Lee counties,” News & Observer June 5th, 2015, accessed March Permit Application 1910-STRUCT-2015: Brickhaven No.2 Mine Tract “A” Structural Fill, Charah Inc. (March 2015), accessed January 19th, 2016, https://deq.nc.gov/news/hot-topics/coal-ash-nc/movingforward-coal-ash/brickhaven-mine-tract-a-site; Permit Application 5306-STRUCT-2015: Colon Porter, Jane “NAACP to launch own investigation into Dan River spill,” INDY Week, March 6th, 2014, accessed July 27th, 2015, http://www. indyweek.com/news/archives/2014/03/06/naacp-to-launch-owninvestigation-into-dan-river-spill. 24 2016: http://www.newsobserver. com/news/business/article23223537.html.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System; Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals From Electric Utilities, Final Rule,” Federal Register Vol. 80 No. 74 Parts 257 and 261, April 17th, 2015. https://www.duke-energy.com/pdfs/ ClayMineStructuralFillProjects.pdf.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program, last modified March 23rd, 2016, https://www.epa.gov/toxicsrelease-inventory-tri-program.

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R E ZO N I N G F O R RE DE VE LO P M E NT While every community is different, one common refrain is: we want to get more infill and

redevelopment in our downtown. Here is a short primer on reasons why downtown redevelopment is such a tough problem for communities, a toolbox of ways to address this problem, and options to consider when using zoning as a tool to spur downtown redevelopment.

IS THE ZONING CODE THE RIGHT TOOL TO SPARK REDEVELOPMENT? The answer is yes, and – zoning is but one of many tools, and most communities will need to use multiple strategies simultaneously to achieve downtown redevelopment goals. Other tools to consider using in conjunction with a redevelopment-friendly zoning code are:

• Leadership via investment in “catalyst sites:” municipalityled redevelopment projects that show potential developers what is possible in the downtown area. This reduces the “first mover” risk to future investors inherent in underdeveloped markets; • Introduction or strengthening of revolving loan funds that provide capital to downtown business owners and would-be developers and entrepreneurs; • Formation of a Business Improvement District to fund improvements in the priority area; • Dedication of funding and staff time to assist would-be

redevelopers with applications for historic tax credits and other forms of available funding; • Focused and intensive business recruitment to fill existing vacant buildings in the downtown - these efforts can begin to re-enliven the environment even before new development activity can occur; • Investment in infrastructure and beautification in the downtown area; and • Funding market studies to illuminate any unmet demand for downtown space and what types of property and prices the local market will bear.

(THE REZONING PART OF) THE SOLUTION Our practice has taught that to reverse the trend of sprawl and bring reinvestment back to downtowns, it is not enough to “level” the development playing field. Due to decades of difficult redevelopment experiences and the resulting stigma in the development community against infill projects, in order to spur redevelopment, communities must help shift the balance in the opposite direction by making downtown redevelopment easier and making greenfield development more difficult.

Don’t ignore your target audience.

The individuals and firms who will eventually bring redevelopment to downtown, or not – landowners, local developers, architects, engineers, real estate agents, and business owners – should be involved in rezoning for redevelopment from the beginning. Ask these key stakeholders why they have (or have not) been involved in development downtown and what barriers they and their peers perceive when considering downtown redevelopment projects.

These professionals have the potential to be the greatest allies or the fiercest opponents to a rezoning project.

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Let go of suburban ideas of what development standards “must” include. Keep in mind that when our most beloved downtowns were developing, setbacks, parking requirements, and lot coverage limitations did not exist! Recognize that downtown lots are smaller, typically difficult to combine, and often inherit a preexisting building orientation, lot coverage, and parking configuration. Remove parking requirements, or reduce them significantly and allow on-street parking spaces within a set distance of a building to count toward meeting the requirement. Allow bicycle parking to credit toward parking requirements. Reduce landscaping requirements - consider only requiring street trees. To be even more redevelopment friendly, use a fee-in-lieu instead of landscaping requirements, and have the municipality take over landscaping maintenance in the downtown area.

Build in flexibility wherever possible, and relax downtown development standards with the urban context in mind. Allow outdoor seating areas, roof gardens, or other urban elements to count towards open space requirements within a designated downtown area. Reduce or remove screening requirements for building elements that are not visible from the street.

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

CARA ISHER-WITT, AICP is an Associate at CodeWright Planners, a Durham, NC-based planning and

zoning consultancy. She holds a Masters of Public Administration and a Masters of City and Regional Planning. Cara is passionate about assisting local governments with preparing implementation-oriented

plans, sensible and effective zoning codes, and equitable economic development strategies. Born and raised in the WNC mountains and a two-time graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Cara is dedicated to serving North Carolina’s communities and people through her planning practice.

THE PROBLEM In most communities, the development “playing field” is titled sharply: greenfield development is much easier to accomplish, faster, and less expensive than redevelopment. Many of the factors that contribute to a developer’s decision of where to develop land conspire to push development away from infill sites and pull it toward greenfield sites, resulting in sprawl, rising utility costs, and underutilized downtowns.

REDEVELOPMENT ($$$)

GREENFIELD DEVELOPMENT ($)

• Parcel assembly is difficult and time-consuming

• A site can be graded, configured, and built to suit the developer and respond to current market trends

• Costly retrofitting of older buildings in order to satisfy building codes • “One size fits all” development standards, including setbacks, lot coverage, and parking requirements, that are often hard to meet on infill sites • Lots of unknowns, including the possibility of environmental contamination, structural concerns, and, in smaller communities, the marketability of downtown properties

• Greater visibility to drive-by traffic is a major decisionmaking factor in retail location • More predictable, and thus less costly, construction process • Lower land prices and larger parcels provide plenty of room to meet development standards

T H E D E V E LO PM E N T “ PL AY I N G F I E L D”: Development flows to where it is easiest and cheapest

Be judicious with form-based coding.

Introducing form-based codes to downtowns is a sweeping trend that can create great places but may also have unintended consequences in terms of dampening redevelopment, particularly in more challenged markets. Form-based codes are an extra layer of regulation, which developers may view as a hurdle. Keep these regulations as light and focused as possible by selecting only the form components that are vital to protecting your downtown’s unique characteristics. This may include build-to lines to keep buildings near the street, primary entrance placement required at the front of the building, and prohibition of parking between the building and the street.

Avoid the temptation to over-zone.

One philosophy of zoning for economic development holds that the zoning code should essentially “stay out of the way” of development in places where development, or redevelopment, is desired. While zoning and development codes have an important role to play in protecting the public interest and planning for the future, there is wisdom in using only as many tools as is necessary.

Relax code compliance requirements for redevelopment projects. Consider a sliding scale of compliance for redevelopment sites with existing nonconformities.

Minimize restrictions on allowable uses.

When it comes to revitalizing an area, almost any use is better than an empty building or a vacant lot. We suggest designating a new use type called “Adaptive Reuse” that allows almost any use (except heavy industry) to occupy existing building stock.

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R E -TH I N KI NG U RBAN C HA NGE Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n a n d M e t a l l a x i s

MICHAEL A. VIDALIS, PH.D. Michael A. Vidalis is a Registered Architect in private practice in Athens, Greece, and a Doctor of Urban Sociology. He graduated from The Ohio State University with a Master of

Architecture degree and the University of the Aegean with a Doctor of Sociology (Urban) degree.

His experience includes working in planning and architectural firms; with a stint in the

Planning Department / Housing Preservation Office, of the City of Cleveland, Heights. He has taught at various institutions of higher learning. He is a researcher, interested in urban

change, urban design, urban ecology, urban quality of life, modes of urban terrorism, and sociologically characterizing the present epoch.

Cities as systems are dynamic social constructs, and, as such, are constantly evolving and changing. A historical retrospect of most cities shows new settlement areas, patterns of growth associated with population increase or decrease, or new land uses; with space always being the protagonist.

Until now, this change was generally labeled as transformation, with the exception of Michael J. Dear (2000) who employs the term mutation in reference to the postmodern city, although he does not set a distinguishing framework to qualify the term. A handful of other researchers similarly employ the term mutation, describing certain unexpected, unnatural or undesirable patterns of urban change.1 Indeed, the term metallaxis is more appropriate to describe these abnormal change processes occurring in many cities over the course of the twenty-first century: It can be safely stated that most contemporary public urban spaces have mutated, as a result of metallaxis.2 While urban sociologists investigate the root causes of urban problems, such as social inequality, inadequate housing stock, deviant behavior, etc., planners and architects propose solutions to ameliorate them. However, often enough, regardless of the best of intentions, enthusiasm, and sufficient funding, urban projects fail.

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F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

FIGURE 1 - Downtown Youngstown, Ohio. Source: Wikipedia – Wikimedia Commons, 2005

Design professionals have at times resorted to psychology (particularly to Sigmund Freud, his student Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, or Carl Jung), or even phenomenology, in an attempt to understand the city, mainly from an artistic and quasi-philosophical viewpoint. However, this approach is superficial. In its exclusive concentration on aesthetics and the cerebral, the psychological approach cannot address the real problems cities face, or understand urban change.

As most of the people in the world now live in cities, as the city has overtaken the suburb (for the popularity of the city is credited to a new, global ecological perspective, or increased employment opportunities), it is imperative more than ever to resolve chronic urban spatial problems.

This paper shall investigate and qualify the process of change in the contemporary urban environment and its associated public space and offer a pragmatic response to resolve the associated urban conditions. This approach is differentiated from the established modus operandi and offers a new theoretical and methodological framework to understand and properly address or manage urban change.

THEORETICAL FR AMEWORK Paul Watzlawick, John H. Weakland and Richard Fisch, in their influential and provocative book Change – Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution revolutionized the field of short-term psychotherapy.

Surprisingly, this classic book published in the seventies can lend an appropriate methodological framework to understand and resolve contemporary urban problems.

Important for the field of planning are the authors’ definitions of “problem” and “difficulty.” The authors make it clear that a “difficulty” unresolved or mishandled will definitely become a “problem,” which is defined as an impasse or dead-lock.

Loaded with practical examples and sketches, the book points out the paradoxes or the inadequacies of conventional thinking, which is doomed to fail. An example of conventional thinking is a case where the “solution” becomes the problem. The authors use the term “Utopia Syndrome” to describe situations where action is taken when it shouldn’t be.

Essentially, it is the pursuing of the unattainable while making impossible the realizable. The opposite of this is 41

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called “Terrible Simplifications”: Seeing no problem when there is one.

Furthermore, change is classified into two types: “First Order Change” (FOC) and “Second Order Change” (SOC).

FOC occurs within a given system which itself remains unchanged. SOC, when realized, changes the system itself – a change of change. First Order Change, when mishandled, is the simplistic, common sense approach, while SOC begins when the assumptions around the problem are questioned.

A typical example of SOC is presented by Watzlawick et al: A person is having a nightmare, in which she or he is facing a life-threatening situation, and her or his only two choices will certainly lead to her or his death. The only way out is to wake up from the dream. SOC is always in the nature of a discontinuity or a quantum leap. Therefore, the practical manifestations of SOC are often perceived as illogical and paradoxical.

In a wider sense, this approach can teach us how to approach deadlocks, or how to break the status quo. Most people fail to effect “change” simply because they are not aware of the process of “change” or do not possess the necessary tools or techniques to accomplish this.

Change that takes place as a result of the usual or expected historical evolution of a city, is often simply termed “transformation.” For contrast, change occurring as a result of often consciously aggressive redevelopment action – usually in the form of gentrification, especially prevalent in the postmodern age – or some catastrophic event such as a great fire or earthquake, is termed “metallaxis” (Vidalis, 2016).

The Theory of Interventional Urban Change is defined the approach of Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch, integrated with the differentiation of urban change as formulated by the author. The following case studies will illustrate the urban planning applications of the Theory of Interventional Urban Change.

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CASE STUDY: YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO Youngstown, Ohio, is a particularly interesting case study of a once-thriving metropolitan area on a seemingly unstoppable path towards decay that achieved metallaxis.

Youngstown, founded in 1796 and incorporated as a city in 1867, was named after John Young, an early settler. In 1900, the population of the city was 45,000; by 1930, the population had grown to 170,000, making it the 43rd largest U.S. city – thanks to the steel industry. In the mid20th century, the city was the 4th largest center of steel production in the country. However, in the decades that followed, it became clear that the city’s steel mills were at a disadvantage due to inadequate means of transport and antiquated plant facilities; plus, the demand for U.S. steel fell sharply due to competition from foreign producers.

So the city that was once living the American industrial dream began to systematically wither. The economy stagnated, unemployment rates rose as the steel mills closed, crime incidences increased, and the downtown area became blighted, accompanied by a subsequent sharp reduction in real estate values. In a dramatically changing economy, other cities had recognized the importance of the emerging high-tech and information sectors, while Youngstown failed to have the necessary foresight to plan for the future.3 In the late 1980’s, the City of Youngstown sought the help of Gould/Associates, Inc., a planning and architectural firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. William Gould, the Principal for Gould/Associates, supervised the comprehensive development plan and blight evaluations for the City’s Belmont/Fifth Avenue Redevelopment Plan, including management of the acquisition and relocation plan for the development of two major health facilities. A dozen contiguous urban blocks were studied through a windshield survey and systematic analyses of land use and other factors, such as crime, population density, housing conditions, etc. The firm, with an established expertise in urban revitalization and economic development, presented a creative yet realistic course of action, attempting to ameliorate the problems by redefining the character of the affected area.4

The former Rust Belt city made a conscious and successful revision of its planning priorities, most notably the decision to diversify economically while retaining traditional strengths and focusing on changing the community’s image, targeting an improved quality of life (see figure 1). Today, the City’s Office of Economic Development assists current businesses, new businesses, and businesses interested in relocating to the City through various economic tools and programs such as the Youngstown Small Business Administration Initiative, the HUBZone Empowerment Contracting Program, Ohio Enterprise Zone Program, Business Park incentives, and the Citywide Façade Renovation Program.

How does the Theory of Interventional Urban Change apply to this case study? Through the 1980s and 1990s, the City engaged in what Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch termed “Terrible Simplifications” by not realizing there was indeed a problem. Then, for decades the city attempted First Order Change, specifically, a “more of the same” approach. However, the difficulty had evolved into a problem and a Second Order Change was desperately needed. The quantum leap happened when the city realized the futility of hanging on to its former economic anchor – steel mills – and sought a new approach that focused on architectural character and fueling a creative economy.

CASE STUDY: BARCELONETA, SPAIN Diametrically different from Youngstown, Barceloneta, is a neighborhood in the Ciutat Vella district of

Barcelona, Spain. Barcelona, in preparing for hosting the 1992 Olympic Games, decided to undertake a sizable gentrification project by demolishing the former waterfront seafood restaurants known as xiringuitos, or “house of the fishermen,” in order to recapture the coast line (see figure 2). A new, triangle-shaped waterfront area, with low rise structures against a surreal backdrop of skyscrapers (one of them the famed “W Barcelona” glass building, shaped like a sail), was built to attract both tourists and locals. The area now features a waterfront promenade, a marina, a beach, seafront cafes and restaurants (for fresh fish and paella), open air concerts and theater performances, upscale stores, one of the largest aquariums in Europe, and the famed Museum of Catalan History. The project, served by a convenient metro station, is a socially vibrant and safe area with a festival-like atmosphere that fosters social interaction and multiculturalism.

The positive value of the waterfront of Barceloneta is attributed to the social interactions the space encourages. Comparing the present to the past, there has been a distinct differentiation in the meaning of the particular space, which came about through forced displacement. While the ethics of gentrification and displacement are outside the scope of this paper, I recognize the problematic nature of this approach (see scheme 2). That said, in the case of Barceloneta, the venture was generally heralded as a planning success and much needed change.

Examining the Barceloneta case under the lenses of the Theory of Interventional Urban Change, we reach the following conclusions: Barceloneta underwent a metallaxis, bypassing the usual transformation phase.

The change was of the SOC type, as it was forcibly imposed. Interestingly enough, the area operated for years with no apparent problems (besides the fact that the industrial port was not being utilized), and it could have continued for decades. What may have been perceived as an unnecessary or unfair project or “change for change’s sake” by the fishermen, the patrons of their rather affordable restaurants, or the locals, was ultimately a project for the economic and aesthetic 43

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

The City later collaborated with Youngstown State University and city residents on an ambitious, comprehensive planning effort known as Youngstown 2010. The Master Plan received national attention and in 2007 the City won the prestigious American Planning Association’s National Planning Excellence Award for Public Outreach. The plan acknowledged Youngstown’s post-industrial population loss and focused on envisioning a smaller, greener, more efficient city that capitalizes on its many cultural amenities and business advantages.5

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enhancement of the area and an opportunity to showcase Barcelona to the world at the Olympics. The fishermen had to go in the interest of a greater cause, as the priorities of the City and the country took precedence.

Difficulty

FOC Transformation

Problem

FOC Metallaxis

The process of urban change, as understood in this paper, can be summarized in the following diagram.

C

T

M

SCHEME 2

C: Change T: Transformation M: Metallaxis

SCHEME 1 Cities do change in time, undergoing either a transformation or a metalllaxis. As noted, the last is characteristic of many contemporary cities of our era. Some cities progress gradually from transformation to metallaxis, while others take the quantum leap into metallaxis, bypassing the preceding transformation step (such is the case of Barceloneta).

Youngstown, Ohio, the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon and South Lake Union, in Seattle, Washington, are also prime examples of urban metallaxis.

Furthermore, “Scheme 2� delineates more analytically the process of the model. Note that the dotted line paths indicate unconventional or undesirable paths, as seen in Barceloneta.

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Previous theories of urban change have focused on one aspect of urban life, such as, politics, the economy, good city form, the market for land, regulatory determinants, or the growth machine. This logical and universal model of socio-spatial urban change is versatile in its application: the Theory of Interventional Urban Change is fairly inclusive, allowing the coexistence of other theories, such as the Regime Theory (Fainstein, 1983; Elkin, 1987; Stone, 1989), the Time Scale of Urban Change (Wegener, Gnad and Vannahme, 1986), and the Evolutionary Theory of Urban Change (Coquilllat, Pablo, 2015), etc.

The Theory of Interventional Urban Change, as formulated here, is a universal and versatile framework through which to understand and assess the complex metamorphosis of the contemporary city. Urban planners and architects need to be realistic in evaluating or assessing undesirable urban situations, and understand when and how to intervene. Waiting too long for various reasons (political cost, erroneous evaluation of the severity of the situation at hand, etc.), can turn a difficulty into a problem, necessitating an often very expensive SOC, carrying an even greater political cost. In conclusion, the Theory of Interventional Urban Change allows urban planners and architects, through the specifics of the process and quality of change, to address and manage the myriad problems plaguing the contemporary city.

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

FIGURE 2 - La Barceloneta, Barcelona, Spain. Source: Wikipedia – Wikimedia Commons, 2014

ENDNOTES In the Greek bibliography, the term is employed in reference to the same context (i.e., the postmodern condition), by Silia Nikolaidou (1993) and Anna Melanitou (2008). Again, without a framework in place qualifying transformation versus mutation.

1

Vidalis, Michael A., “The metallaxis of the meaning of “space” in the contemporary city and its interdependence from the architectural “form” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of the Aegean, 2016), p. 266.

Advisor: Sotiris N. Chtouris, Professor and Director of Urban Sociology.

2

Dear, Michael J. (2000). The Postmodern Urban Condition. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers.

Kalltorp, Ove, ed., Elander, I., ed., Ericsson, O., ed., Franzen, M., ed.

(1997). Cities in Transformation – Transformation in Cities: Social and Symbolic Change of Urban Space. Aldershot, England: Avebury publishing.

Mitchell, William J. (2000). e-topia. Urban Life, Jim - but not as we Know it. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press.

Drennan, Matthew P, The Information Economy and American Cities (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 2-3.

Mossberger, Karen, Stoker, Gerry. “The evolution of Urban Regime Theory. The Challenge of Conceptualization”. Urban Affairs Review, Sage Journals, vol. 36, no. 6 (July 2001): 810-835.

The author was an associate at the firm for more than four years, and was a member of the team that studied the blighted area, under the leadership of Principal William A. Gould, AIA, AICP

Mumford, Lewis (1961). The City in History - its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

http://www.cityofyoungstownoh.org/about_youngstown/ youngstown_2010/index.aspx (September 28, 2016).

Novak, Marcos. The Maul of America. 1995. http://www. electronicbookreview.com/thread/endconstruction/bit-sized

3

4

5

WORKS CITED Antoniou, Jim (2000). Cities: Then and Now. New York: Book Sales, Inc. Bentley, Ian (1999). Urban Transformations: Power, People and Urban Design. New York: Routledge.

Boyer, Christine M. (1996). Cyber Cities. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Vidalis, Michael A. (2016). “The Metallaxis of the Meaning of Space in the Contemporary City and its Interdependence from the Architectural Form”. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of the Aegean (Advisor: Sotiris N. Chtouris, Professor).

Watzlawick, Paul, Weakland, John H., and Fisch, Richard Change (1974). Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution with a foreword by Milton H. Erickson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

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R E CRE ATI NG H E ALTH Y BUILT ENVIRONMENT S The Charlotte Plan4Health Initiative

MICHELLE NANCE, AICP is the Planning Director for Centralina Council of Governments, providing planning services

to nine counties in the greater Charlotte region. She directs the Council’s work related to

land use and transportation, healthy community initiatives, energy, and the environment.

Her work is focused on helping local governments address shared, long-term issues through collaboration and partnerships. Michelle received her Masters of Public Administration and Bachelors of Science in Urban and Regional Planning from East Carolina University.

KATHERINE HEBERT is a Healthy Community Design Specialist with the Centralina Council of Governments and is the founder of Creating Community Change Consulting, a consultant practice dedicated

to helping communities make small changes to greatly improve the health of its citizens.

Katherine has a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, Environmental Policy and Planning from Appalachian State University.

Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, experiencing the tenth largest numerical population increase in the country among large cities in 2015, and it is by far the largest city in North Carolina with a population of over 827,000.1 Like most southern cities, Charlotte has a checkered past that shapes its current physical, social, and political landscape. Charlotte’s land use pattern is consistent with postWorld War II development with an urban core surrounded by suburban growth. In the early 20th century, redlining and racebased covenants restricted suburban growth outside the urban core to middle and upper class whites. Predominantly African American neighborhoods such as Brooklyn and McCrorey Heights developed near Uptown Charlotte as white residents from the urban core moved out to the suburbs and the African American middle class grew. These historic neighborhoods that were thriving with opportunities for housing, education, and economic advancement, were decimated by the construction of the highway system including Interstates 77 and 85 in the 1960s.2 Taking place almost simultaneously to the disruption of the neighborhood unit, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools slowly 46

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“

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

– MARGARET MEAD

started to desegregate after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1957. Following lawsuits in 1965, the school districts in overwhelmingly segregated areas were desegregated through busing. Lawsuits once again shaped the school system in the 1990s, as the busing policy ended and Charlotte-Mecklenburg returned to a “neighborhood school model,” essentially re-segregating the schools. Negative outcomes followed, including lower test scores, decreased graduation rates, reduced likelihood of attending a four-year college, and increased criminal activity among young minority males. 3

work cooperatively to improve the built environment to promote public health. In November 2015, the coalition, in partnership with the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA-NC), was awarded funding from the American Planning Association as part of the second cohort of Plan4Health grantees.7

CENTR ALINA HEALTH SOLUTIONS COALITION AND PL AN4HEALTH

Plan4Health aims to connect communities across the country and fund work at the intersection of planning and public health. Plan4Health is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and operated through APA’s Planning and Community Health Center. Plan4Health is one initiative within a larger project, Partnering4Health, which facilitates information sharing and collaboration among the American Heart Association; the National Women, Infants, and Children Association; the Society for Public Health Education; and Directors of Health Promotion and Education. These organizations and their grantees, in turn, support the CDC’s ongoing work to reduce health disparities in communities of color through its Racial and Ethnic Approach to Community Health (REACH) and Partnerships to Improve Community Health (PICH) funding opportunities. The combined effort of these organizations is changing the environments in which people live and providing them more options when it comes to their health.8

The Centralina Health Solutions Coalition (CHSC) was formed as a result of the CONNECT Our Future project, an ongoing regional effort started in 2012 to create a framework for guiding and investing in the growth of the Charlotte Metropolitan Area.6 CHSC is coordinated by the Centralina Council of Governments with the mission to create healthy, lifelong communities within the ninecounty Centralina Region. Each year, the coalition hosts the Planning for Healthy Communities Conference that brings together professionals in public health, planning, and parks and recreation to discuss ways to

In North Carolina, this has translated into a year and a half of working with community partners and neighborhood leaders in Charlotte with the goal of improving opportunities for physical activity in over thirty neighborhoods considered at risk for poor health outcomes. These neighborhoods are in the Mecklenburg County Public Health Priority Area (PHPA), established by examining eighteen social determinants of health, defined by the World Health Organization as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work,

As Charlotte enters the twenty-first century, neighborhoods remain racially segregated. Many older neighborhoods are threatened by gentrification, highways still traverse the historically African American neighborhoods in North and West Charlotte, over fifty school campuses are racially or economically isolated,4 and Charlotte is ranked last in upward social mobility for impoverished children in a study of the fifty largest U.S. cities.5 Fortunately, steps are being taken to address most of these issues and rebuild neighborhoods, including the Charlotte Plan4Health Initiative led by the Centralina Health Solutions Coalition.

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and age, and health outcome data. Using the Quality of Life Explorer developed by Charlotte Business and Neighborhood Services,9 project administrators narrowed down the PHPA from six zip codes and over 210,000 residents (one fifth of the population of Mecklenburg County) to a more manageable project area consisting of thirty-four neighborhoods representing 53,635 residents.

Neighborhoods within the project area are predominantly African American and have higher rates of unemployment, lower median incomes, and lower educational attainment levels in comparison to the rest of Mecklenburg County.

They also tend to have higher crime rates and greater health challenges such as higher rates of obesity, lower rates of physical activity, less access to healthy nutrition, and significantly shorter life expectancies – on average five years shorter than the rest of the county.10 To start addressing these social determinants of health and challenges to living a healthy lifestyle, the Centralina Health Solutions Coalition, consisting of representatives from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department, the Mecklenburg County Health Department, Charlotte Neighborhood & Business Services, the Charlotte Department of Transportation, the Charlotte Area Transit System, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation, and state chapters of the American Planning Association and the American Public Health Association, convened. The coalition developed a multifaceted approach, including six strategies that would examine the existing conditions, summarize the work already in progress by coalition members, and identify ways that coalition members could work together to promote health within the project area and share lessons learned throughout the Centralina region, North Carolina, and the nation.

THE STR ATEGIES DEVELOPED BY THE COALITION INCLUDED:

1.

Lead community needs assessments of the neighborhoods within the Public Health Priority Area, including reviewing existing plans and neighborhood board retreat summaries, and holding neighborhood meetings to discuss the challenges and opportunities for increasing physical activity levels.

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2.

Conduct walkability audits to evaluate the condition of the streets within the study area, and determine if they provide a safe and pleasant walking environment, or if and where improvements need to be made.

3. Consider park access both in terms of physical access to the park entrance as well as recreational opportunities and accessibility within the park, for users of various ages, abilities, and needs.

4.

Educate individuals on, and encourage the implementation of, shared use agreements and open use policies to make school grounds and other facilities available to the public after hours.

5.

Develop communication materials including newsletters, website content, presentations and trainings on the Plan4Health initiative and the four previous strategies.

6.

Share our lessons learned and work with state partners to help communities replicate the project throughout the Centralina Region and North Carolina.

These strategies, combined with community engagement, paint a comprehensive picture of what is happening in the targeted neighborhoods, provide recommendations to our coalition members to improve these conditions, and equip and empower community members with the tools they need to have meaningful conversations with coalition members. The Centralina Health Solutions Coalition uses these strategies to build a successful framework for achieving the goal of getting people to move more.

COMMUNIT Y NEEDS ASSESSMENTS After reviewing existing plans, neighborhood board retreat notes, and studies of neighborhoods within the priority area, the leaders of the West Boulevard Neighborhood Coalition (representing eighteen neighborhoods along West Boulevard), Oaklawn Park, Seversville, Biddleville-Smallwood, Lincoln Heights, and University Park Neighborhoods were contacted for additional information. The original

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FIGURE 1 - Park and Recreation professionals attempt to learn

how to measure the accessibility of a local park during a regional training and identify the need for a simpler tool for community participation. Photo Credit: Blair Israel, AICP.

plan was to set up focus groups with residents of each of these neighborhoods, but after finding that these neighborhoods have been “studied to death,” members of the coalition decided instead to attend one meeting of each neighborhood association, introduce the project, and ask each neighborhood two questions: what is going on in your neighborhood that promotes being active, and what barriers are there to being physically active? The responses varied, with groups mentioning not having safe places for the kids to play with updated playground equipment, fields, and courts; parts of their neighborhood not having sidewalks, adequate street lighting, or nice places to walk similar to surrounding areas that have recently been improved; not having coordination among the churches and nonprofits to offer programs for kids especially during summer months and after school; and a desire to work with area schools to improve the condition of the schools and increase use of school property after hours and on the weekends. With this feedback, actions were taken to provide each neighborhood with a planning product (street revisualization, park plan, lighting survey, etc.), project (park cleanup), or collaboration-building activity (such as a convening of area church health teams) to work towards addressing barriers to physical activity in their neighborhood.

WALK ABILIT Y AUDITS The Centralina Health Solutions Coalition developed a walkability audit tool in coordination with the Charlotte Department of Transportation, and based on AARP’s

FIGURE 2 - Planners and Public Health Professionals work

together to assess street conditions and discuss solutions for improving the pedestrian realm in Charlotte, NC. Photo Credit: Blair Israel, AICP.

Streets and Sidewalks Survey.11 Seven streets – Clanton Road, Morehead Street, Oaklawn Avenue, Remount Road, Rozzelles Ferry Road, and Tuckaseegee Road, and West Boulevard – were audited by coalition members.

Generally, road conditions were inconsistent in terms of good streetscape design, with prevalent gaps in sidewalks, narrow sidewalks without a buffer from traffic, dangerous intersections, and unsupportive land uses (large parking lots, buildings set far back from the sidewalk, and single family detached residential buildings on busy streets). Dangerous pedestrian activity included jaywalking, using a wheelchair within the lane of traffic, and standing in unprotected turning lanes while waiting to cross. It was also common to witness distracted driving, speeding, and failures to yield. The findings of the audits were shared with the Charlotte Department of Transportation and recommendations for improvement will be developed by the coalition and neighborhood residents.

PARK ACCESS Similar to the walkability audits, a user-friendly park access auditing tool to measure ease of access to the entrance of a park and the features within each park was deemed necessary by the coalition. A map showing the five- and ten-minute walkshed to each park entrance had already been created by Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation and just needed to be updated.12 However, a user-friendly way of measuring the accessibility of park facilities, including ADA accessibility and a mixture of facilities to meet the needs and interests of all ages 49

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increase awareness of the availability of school property for recreational use by the surrounding neighborhoods and ultimately increase their use. The taskforce is also exploring ways to collaborate with places of worship to identify and increase the number of health-promoting programs that are offered and open to surrounding neighborhoods and the shared use of parks, playgrounds, community gardens, classrooms, and kitchens.

COMMUNICATION, REPLICATION, AND SUSTAINABILIT Y

and abilities, was not as readily available and the coalition worked on developing this tool and piloted it on a handful of parks within the study area.

SHARED USE The shared use of schools and community facilities are often accomplished through two approaches: joint use agreements and open use policies.13 A taskforce consisting of representation from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the Mecklenburg County Health Department, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation, Mecklenburg County Real Estate Services, and North Carolina Active Routes to School was formed to examine the current use of joint use agreements in Mecklenburg County and to see if a more formal open use policy is warranted or if there are other ways to increase neighborhood use of the schools’ outdoor facilities during off hours and on the weekends.

With assistance from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the taskforce hopes to 50

In an effort to share the lessons learned through the project, replicate these efforts throughout the Centralina Region and North Carolina, and sustain healthy planning initiatives beyond the initial Plan4Health funding period, the coalition has developed communication materials on each of the strategies and will provide additional training and tools to planners throughout North Carolina. The coalition has also received Planners4Health funding through the American Planning Association to further integrate planning and public health efforts throughout the state.

All of these communications, including the findings and recommendations of the initial Plan4Health project, the tools used to conduct the analysis, and presentations on the value of integrating public health considerations into planning processes will be made publicly available.

The Centralina Health Solutions Coalition has also been expanded to include representation from additional counties within the Centralina Region and state agencies interested in expanding the project’s reach statewide.

LESSONS LEARNED Working with people is a messy process. It takes time, often significantly more than originally expected, to coordinate a coalition, identify and connect with those who need to be involved, and build trust, especially in neighborhoods that have been “studied to death” and promised much without seeing results. Hiring the Lee Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving and strengthening organizations and individuals who share a commitment to building great communities, has been key to our success in engaging predominantly African American neighborhoods in conversations

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SOURCE - Charlotte Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer (http://mcmap.ord/qol/)

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about improving physical activity opportunities as well as the overall conditions of their neighborhoods. Perhaps the most important aspect of the project is the opportunity to empower residents and community leaders so that they not only have a grasp of the physical and perceptual barriers to physical activity, but understand the process by which policy and infrastructure improvements are made, and can effectively advocate for community improvements.

We don’t know what we don’t know. At the beginning of the grant there was a long list of work that needed to be done but as conversations with coalition members continued, project managers came to the realization that a lot of progress was already being made by our partnering organizations without our knowledge. More importantly, our coalition members did not know what the other coalition members were doing although their work had a very clear connection to another agency’s focus. Therefore, it is important to be flexible when putting together a work plan, communicate often with the coalition, and encourage collaborative members to communicate with each other.

Communicating externally is also critical so that others can learn from and replicate successes in their own communities. Communicating the value proposition of healthy community work, especially to elected officials, is also a key success factor.

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CONCLUSIONS Although it can be messy, time-consuming, frustrating, and confusing, community engagement and working towards healthier communities can be very rewarding.

Through this type of work, practitioners collaborate across sectors, continuously learn new things, and work together to test currently accepted methods and policies in their own communities. Long-term system change cannot occur through one strategy alone and it will take a consistent and forward thinking effort to undo decades of federal and local policies that have segregated the growth of Charlotte. Although the Plan4Health work in Charlotte will have an impact on these neighborhoods, a combination of complementary strategies that work together is necessary for long-term success. By shaping the built environment to promote healthy lifestyles and increase access to nutritional foods and places to be physically active, planners can have a significant impact on the life of current and future residents in a community. However, to have the most impact and get the most out of the experience, planners must take the time to understand and meaningfully engage the neighborhoods and community members impacted by the work.

WORKS CITED

1. Gavin Off, Richard Stradling and Mark Washburn, “Are you 1 in a million? Charlotte’s getting there,” The Charlotte Observer, May 19, 2016. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article78623577. html.

The Atlantic. Accessed January 06, 2017. http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2016/09/charlotte-race-history/501221/.

2. Alan Pyke, “To understand Charlotte’s rage, you have to understand its road,” ThinkProgress. September 23, 2016. https://thinkprogress.org/ charlotte-rage-charlotte-roads-1ee83a4753a4#.rj3rzbvwz.

3. David A. Graham, “Shattering Charlotte’s Myth of Racial Harmony,” The Atlantic, September 22, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ archive/2016/09/charlotte-race-history/501221/ 4. Graham, “Shattering Charlotte’s Myth of Racial Harmony.”

5. Emily Deruy and Janie Boschma, “Where Children Rarely Escape Poverty,” The Atlantic, March 7, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/ education/archive/2016/03/poor-children-rarely-escape-povertyhere/472002/ 6. “About CONNECT.” CONNECT Our Future. http:// www.connectourfuture.org/about-connect/.

7. “Centralina Council of Governments E-Newsletter.” Centralina Council of Governments E-Newsletter. http://www.centralinanews. com/mystory.cfm?NID=266.

8. “About Plan4Health.” Plan4Health About Plan4Health Comments. http://plan4health.us/plan4health/.

9. Tobin Bradley, “Quality of Life Explorer,” Quality of Life Explorer. http://mcmap.org/qol/.

10. Bradley, “Quality of Life Explorer.”

11. “Sidewalks and Streets Survey.” Sidewalks and Streets Survey. http:// createthegood.org/toolkit/sidewalks-and-streets-survey-1.

12. Meckgov.maps.arcgis.com. http://meckgov. maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/basicviewer/index. html?appid=26410256cfa54c7ca488d3e708871899.

The Atlantic. Accessed January 06, 2017. http://www.theatlantic.com/ education/archive/2016/03/poor-children-rarely-escape-povertyhere/472002/.

Meckgov.maps.arcgis.com. Accessed January 06, 2017. http://meckgov. maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/basicviewer/index.

“About CONNECT.” CONNECT Our Future. Accessed January 06, 2017. http://www.connectourfuture.org/about-connect/.

“About Plan4Health.” Plan4Health About Plan4Health Comments.

Accessed January 06, 2017. http://plan4health.us/plan4health/.

Bradley, Tobin. “Quality of Life Explorer.” Quality of Life Explorer.

Accessed January 06, 2017. http://mcmap.org/qol/.

“Centralina Council of Governments E-Newsletter.” Centralina Council of Governments E-Newsletter. Accessed January 06, 2017. http://www. centralinanews.com/mystory.cfm?NID=266.

Gavin Off, Richard Stradling and Mark Washburngoff@ charlotteobserver.com. “Are you 1 in a million? Charlotte’s getting there.” Charlotteobserver. Accessed January 06, 2017. http://www. charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article78623577.html.

“Move More: A Toolkit for Promoting Open Use of School Property in North Carolina.” 2016.

Pyke, Alan. “To understand Charlotte’s rage, you have to understand its roads.” ThinkProgress. September 23, 2016. Accessed January 06, 2017. https://thinkprogress.org/charlotte-rage-charlotte-roads1ee83a4753a4#.rj3rzbvwz.

“Sidewalks and Streets Survey.” Sidewalks and Streets Survey.

Accessed January 06, 2017. http://createthegood.org/toolkit/sidewalksand-streets-survey-1.

13. “Move More: A Toolkit for Promoting Open Use of School Property in North Carolina,” 2016. http://www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com/News/ Texts/Move_More-A_Toolkit_for_Promoting_Open_Use_of_School_ Property_in_North_Carolina-Final.pdf

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ENDNOTES

The Food Youth Initiative (FYI) is a network of four working in Food Justice in their own communities. FYI is housed under the Center for Environmental Farming systems and supported by community partners across the state. FYI is comprised of four youth groups: Conetoe Family Life Center, Growing Change, Poder Juvenil Campesino (PJC), and Transplanting Traditions.

Youth all over NC actively engage in local food systems work, in their schools, faith communities, local organizations, and across their communities. Youth have been the drivers of every successful social justice movement in US history. The youth in the FYI network believe that change in the food systems starts with them and their communities. The FYI youth are not merely “future” leaders in our food system, but are current agents of change, increasing their communities’ access to food while also impacting local, state, and national policy

PHOTO C R E DIT B R A XTO N MA H OR

on immigration, education, and criminal justice, all with using food as a platform. We come together with the goals of building strong relationships; sharing skills and experiences with one another; minimizing the isolation of social action, especially as experienced in rural communities; amplifying youth voice and visibility; and co-facilitating our futures in food systems/social justice work. We work creatively, focusing on storytelling as advocacy, because we believe in the power of collective work.

FYI is committed to supporting youth in telling their own stories, of their work, their play, their lives, and supporting the development of a JUST food system.

All photos were created as a result of a photography learning project facilitated by the Food Youth Initiative (CEFS) and led by Pete Eversoll, NC Photographer and adult ally.

REFRAMING FOOD

PHOTO C R E DIT E LVIS MA N U E L

PODER JUVENIL CAMPESINO: Poder Juvenil Campesino or PJC addresses many issues, all connected to migrant farm worker advocacy. Poder Juvenil Campesino means Rural Youth Power and they embody exactly that: any of the youth have worked, themselves, as farm workers and use photography, youth panels, research and other tools to raise awareness about the unjust conditions of (migrant) farmworkers in rural NC.

P H OTO C RE DIT YE S E NIA C U E L LO

PHOTO C R E DIT N E FTA LI CU E LLO

P H OTO C RE DIT YE S E NIA C U E L LO

TR ANSPL ANTING TR ADITIONS COMMUNIT Y FARM: Transplanting Traditions is a non-profit that addresses food accessibility, health and the economic well-being of refugees, especially those coming from Burma.

They work as a community to manage a farm that centers skills development and the preservation and celebration of culture.

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P H OTO C RE D IT TAT H A H S O

PHOTO C R E DIT R E E R E E HSA R

P H OTO C RE DIT E H S E R T H AW

PHOTO C R E DIT SHA’ ZIR E WHI T E

CONETOE FAMILY LIFE CENTER: Conetoe’s mission is to improve health outcomes of youth and community through providing access to healthy foods and services and increasing opportunity for physical education. They model and continue to create processes of building community ownership and resiliency.

P H OTO C RE D IT DAIJ I W ILLIAMS

GROWING CHANGE: Growing Change works on an array of projects to address many issues that present challenges for North Carolina.

To name a few, their work addresses the school to prison pipeline, food accessibility, joblessness of veterans and health disparities amongst People of Color communities.

P H OTO C RE D IT CO DY OXE NDINE

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T H E RO LE O F P LAN N ING A ND RES ILIENC E I N AN E RA O F CLI M ATE C HA NGE DR. GAVIN SMITH Dr. Smith’s research interests include hazard mitigation, planning for post-disaster recovery, and climate change adaptation. Translational activities include advising international, federal, state and local governments on a number of issues including the linkage between sustainable

development and risk reduction, pre- and post-disaster policymaking, and improving the nexus between disaster management initiatives and emerging climate change adaptation measures.

First, a definition of resilience: responding to an immediate or slow onset shock to a system in a manner that results in a return to a previous, or ideally, an improved state through a series of coordinated actions spanning broad networks of varied individuals, groups, and organizations (National Research Council 2012).

The articles that follow describe a number of important themes undergirding resilience, including planning, as well as the closely aligned roles of governance, engagement, design, and the development of tools to assess risk and measure progress.

For instance, Dr. David Godschalk notes that planners can and should play a vital role in assessing and communicating risk as an important precursor to action, and should include scenariobased planning for threats like sea level rise that entail some degree of uncertainty. Godschalk goes on to provide examples of communities that have taken on this challenge, while the State of North Carolina has refused to consider policies that empower communities to address this growing threat. The “wait and see� approach assumed by the state legislature and many local planners in North Carolina hinders the creation of resilient communities as their options to adapt to change over time is compromised.

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Scott Shuford posits that while planners possess the requisite tools to foster resilience at the community level, good planning practice requires injecting resilience into all plans rather than developing a stand-alone plan, like those being developed to address hazard mitigation or climate change adaptation. Shuford provides a number of examples of stand-alone plans, including comprehensive plans (Norfolk, Virginia) climate adaptation plans (King County, Washington), community design-based plans (Desert Hot Springs, California), infrastructure plans (Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick), and economic resiliency plans (San Francisco). He goes on to suggest that developing plans in isolation may dissuade communities from effectively integrating resiliency into all facets of public policy and regulation.

One way in which planners can integrate broad concepts like resilience into plans is through the development of indicators, as described by Katie Hirsch and Jennifer Horney. The process of disaster recovery provides a unique venue from which to assess the degree to which resilience has been achieved over time by evaluating the degree to which a community rebounds from an extreme event like a flood or hurricane. The indicators described by Hirsch and Horney provide a useful tool to assist communities in prioritizing goals and actions, promoting a greater disaster recovery readiness through a review of pre-disaster capabilities, allowing for the collection and application of pre-identified data for use in pre-disaster recovery plans, and assessing and tracking the degree to which goals, policies, and projects that advance resilience are achieved.

Fox, Hutchins, Hall, and Rogers at UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modelling and Analytics Center (NEMAC) describe how their center served as a boundary spanning organization following severe flooding in the area by bringing together university, businesses, non-profits, and local government officials to identify risk and create actionable solutions to reduce or “mitigate” identified vulnerabilities. This was achieved through a process of exploring climate threats, assessing vulnerabilities and risks, investigating options, prioritizing and taking action. This process not only highlights the importance of applying sound analytical techniques, but it also emphasizes how deep engagement and communication can facilitate change.

Like the UNC Asheville-based NEMAC, two Universitybased design studios, the Louisiana State University Coastal Sustainability Studio, led by Jeff Carney and Traci Burch, and the Coastal Dynamics Lab, led

by Andrew Fox and David Hill at North Carolina State University, describe the important role “design thinking” can play in our efforts to become more resilient in the face of natural hazards and disasters, including those exacerbated by climate change. Both focus on those communities in the coastal zone, an area that is particularly dynamic and highly vulnerable to a range of hazards and climate change-related challenges. In order to accomplish these aims they note that investing time in building relationships is vital. Successful engagement also requires establishing clear goals and objectives that not only build trust, but also serves to provide a set of measures that potential funders of resilience-based efforts can support.

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“

our discipline is uniquely positioned to help confront one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, namely how we as a society strive to become more resilient in an era of climate change.

Discussing the work of the Coastal Dynamics Lab, Fox and Hill emphasize transdisciplinary research, engagement, and education focused on addressing the interface between ecological and community development and design-based challenges in coastal communities. Partners include faculty and students in landscape architecture, architecture, graphic design, engineering as well as scientists and local stakeholders. Organizational partners include the University of North Carolina’s Coastal Studies Institute and the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence. Participatory design processes couple data collection and analysis with ongoing community input and varied scenarios describing both short- and long-term socio-ecological conditions.

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In the articles described in this edition of the Carolina Planning Journal, several overarching themes emerge, including the importance of governance, the value of strong inter-organizational partnerships, deep community engagement, and the role of data in support of sound policy. Each of these themes are embedded in key roles that planners play and as such should support the argument that our discipline is uniquely positioned to help confront one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, namely how we as a society strive to become more resilient in an era of climate change.

WORKS CITED Beatley, Timothy. 2009. Planning for Coastal Resilience: Best Practices for Calamitous Times. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Glavovic, Bruce and Gavin Smith. 2014. Adapting to climate change: Lessons from natural hazards planning. Dortrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Godschalk, David R. 2003. Urban Hazard Mitigation: Creating Resilient Cities. Natural Hazards Review 4(3): 136-142.

National Research Council. 2012. Disaster resilience: A national imperative. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.

Smith, Gavin, Amanda Martin and Dennis Wenger. (forthcoming) “Disaster Recovery in an Era of Climate Change: The Unrealized Promise of Institutional Resilience.� In Handbook of Disaster Research, Second Edition, Eds. Havidan Rodriguez, Joseph Trainor and William Donner. New York: Springer.

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R E SP O NDI NG TO SE A LEVEL RIS E Coastal North Carolina

DAVID R. GODSCHALK David R. Godschalk, FAICP, is an emeritus professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the co-author

of Sustaining Places: Best Practices for Comprehensive Plans (American Planning Association 2015).

Coastal North Carolina communities face daunting future hazards. The state is especially vulnerable to coastal erosion, severe storms, hurricanes, and sea level rise. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew once again demonstrated the vulnerability of our ocean and riverine shoreline settlements to natural hazards.

It caused $1.5 billion in damage to more than 100,000 homes, businesses, and government buildings in the state, and 26 people died in North Carolina due to flooding caused by the storm (Fox News 2016).

Planners must account for these threats, especially those associated with long-term future risks. Sea level rise is a slow-arriving and poorly understood hazard, which may be overlooked in the comprehensive plans and development strategies of coastal and riverine communities. Meanwhile, the North Carolina General Assembly has restricted debate on the issue, declaring that only short-range estimates of sea level rise can be addressed by state coastal planners and officials (Peach 2014).

To prepare for the risks ahead, it is important to communicate the full nature and extent of anticipated sea level rise impacts.

Only when government officials and citizens understand the gravity of future dangers to life and property will it be possible to build community resilience to the threat. Without full understanding, communities are being developed without adequate consideration of the potential costs of protecting 72

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In order to prepare for the danger ahead, public officials should recognize the need for long-term sea level rise planning and begin now to adapt.”

or relocating them from sea level rise-related erosion, flooding, and storm damage.

Are North Carolina coastal areas prepared for sea level rise? This article considers that question. It describes the state’s vulnerability to sea level rise, looks at sea level rise policies in two local comprehensive plans, presents a planning tool to map sea level rise impacts, and outlines a resilience planning strategy.

SEA LEVEL RISE VULNER ABILIT Y

Sea level rise projections are evolving as more evidence about continental ice melting and ocean warming is recorded. The current consensus projection of sea level rise for the United States by the year 2100 is three feet or about one meter.2 By comparison, the maximum rise allowed to be discussed by North Carolina government agencies is based on thirty-year projections (N.C. Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel 2015). In response to alarmed outcries from coastal development advocates, the North Carolina General Assembly directed that long-term projections be scrapped in favor of more moderate short-term ones. The Science Panel’s year 2045 projections now range from a low of 1.9 inches to a high of 10.5 inches, with lower heights in the south coast and higher ones in the north coast, to be updated every five years.

How is sea level rise being considered in the planning policies of at-risk North Carolina local governments?

In order to sample the treatment of sea level rise, I reviewed the 2016 comprehensive plans for Wilmington and New Hanover County. In neither plan was there a specific policy for dealing with sea level rise.

The reluctance of North Carolina plans to deal with potential land use and development issues resulting from future sea level rise is part of a prevalent national “watch and see” attitude (Butler, Deyle, and Mutnansky 2016). In order to risk over-responding in the face of uncertain evidence, land use planners tend to take a cautious, low-regrets incremental stance. The majority monitor the state of sea level projection science and the local impacts of sea level rise while committing to “take sea level rise into account” in planning community facilities and infrastructure, and proposing development regulation changes and comprehensive plan amendments. They postpone the costs of risk elimination for future generations to bear.

Nonetheless, Butler, Deyle, and Mutnansky (2016, 327) found that more than one-third of the forty-two Florida coastal counties and municipalities that they examined have adopted enforceable plan policies, development regulations, or capital improvements commitments to cope with sea level rise. Meanwhile Norfolk, Virginia, has taken an even more progressive stance. Norfolk’s Vision 2100 (www.norfolk.gov/vision2100) includes a section on “Designing the Coastal Community of the Future.” It identifies established neighborhoods that experience more frequent flooding and commits the City to reduce flood risk and invest in extending the resilience of key infrastructure.

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North Carolina coastal areas face high vulnerability to sea level rise (USGS 2016). The risk is especially high for the northern part of the coast, from Wilmington north to the Virginia border, including the Outer Banks (see Riggs et al. 2011 for an Outer Banks breakup scenario).1 In their 2001 report assessing coastal vulnerability to future sea-level rise, Hammar-Klose and Theiler assessed the vulnerability of the northern two-thirds of the state’s coast as “very high.”

SAMPLE SEA LEVEL RISE PL ANNING POLICIES

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The Wilmington plan, Create Wilmington, does include a two-page discussion of the general impacts of sea level rise in its Coastal Resilience section. It states that despite the range of possible future scenarios, it would be unwise to ignore the issue. It identifies potential impacts as inundation of developable land, increased flooding impacts, infrastructure damage, increased shoreline erosion, migration and loss of wetlands, saltwater intrusion into fresh groundwater, and increased storm surges. The plan notes that developing strategies to adapt to sea level rise will make the city more resilient. However, it does not propose specific sea level strategies or policies. The New Hanover County plan, Plan NHC: Charting the Course, discusses flood hazards, but does not mention sea level rise.

Despite the lack of focused planning attention, there is already evidence of a growing problem in the regular occurrence of so-called “sunny day flooding, caused by high tides.” A front page story in the New York Times documented the increase in tidal nuisance flooding along the East Coast (Gillis 2016). Wilmington is among the worst-hit areas of the country, suffering eighty days of flooding greater than ten inches in 2015. Since this will only be compounded by sea level rise, coastal planners must begin to map and consider potential impacts.

CLIMATE EXPLORER: VISUALIZING SEA LEVEL RISE Projected sea level rise coupled with ongoing coastal storms and erosion could devastate coastal North Carolina.

To assist planners in visualizing the effects of sea level rise, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit (toolkit.climate.gov) with an embedded Climate Explorer map-viewer (toolkit.climate.gov/tools/climate-explorer2).

The Climate Resilience Toolkit provides tools, work processes, and case studies to help communities build climate resilience.

Climate Explorer is an interactive computer program that allows users to depict the impacts of sea level rise in their community. It was developed by UNC-Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) in partnership with NOAA. As currently configured, the 74

program shows how any selected coastal area will fare under a one- through six-foot sea level rise. Communities can also access a combined coastal hazard map that integrates sea level rise with flood inundation maps in order to view areas that are exposed to flooding.

For example, Figure 1 shows the current Wilmington area. The development intensity is shown in shades of gray with higher density areas in a darker shade.

Downtown Wilmington abuts the Cape Fear River, as does Southport, and some neighborhoods face the Intracoastal Waterway, Masonboro Sound, and Greenville Sound. Beachfront areas include Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, Baldhead Island, Caswell Beach, Oak Island, and Holden Beach. Farther up the coast are Figure Eight Island and Topsail Island.

Figure 2 depicts the Wilmington area after a threefoot sea level rise; note that the “official” estimate is 6.8 inches at Wilmington by 2045. As illustrated by the dark areas, nearly all riverine and beachfront communities are underwater or severely impacted.

Flooding has reached far inland into neighborhoods along creeks and waterways, affecting daily quality of life. While this illustrates a future situation demanding a major adaptation in land use and public facilities planning, it may actually be just the precursor of a more catastrophic future sea level rise. What will it take for these communities to be resilient in the face of this type of crisis?

BUILDING RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF SEA LEVEL RISE Resilience is a multi-faceted capacity to respond to severe impacts from natural and other hazards. Resilient cities are: Capable of withstanding severe shock without either immediate chaos or permanent deformation or rupture.

Designed to anticipate, weather, and recover from the impacts of natural or technological hazards, resilient cities are based on principles derived from past experience with disasters. While they may bend from hazard forces, they do not break. Composed of networked social communities

FIGURE 1 - Climate Explorer view of Wilmington area before sea level rise. Source: toolkit.climate.gov.

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FIGURE 2 - Climate Explorer view of Wilmington area after a 3-foot sea level rise. Source: toolkit.climate.gov.

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and lifeline systems, they are able to adapt and rebound to new levels of sustainability (Godschalk 2003).

A resilient city is a sustainable network of its physical systems and social and institutional organizations.

Traditional hazard mitigation programs focused on making physical systems resistant to disaster forces.

Future mitigation programs must also focus on enabling the city’s social communities and institutions to reduce hazard risks and respond effectively to disasters, since they will be the ones most responsible for building ultimate urban resilience.

Resilient cities are planned to be strong and flexible, rather than brittle and fragile. Lifeline systems of roads, utilities, and other support facilities are constructed to continue functioning in the face of rising water, high winds, and other impacts. New development is guided away from known high-hazard areas, and their vulnerable existing development is relocated to safe areas (for a basic safe growth “audit� method see Godschalk 2009). Their natural environmental protective systems are conserved to maintain valuable hazard mitigation functions. Finally, their governmental, non-governmental, and private sector organizations possess accurate information about hazard vulnerability and disaster resources, are linked with effective communication networks, and are experienced in working together.

Resilience can be developed, but to do so North Carolina must not downplay the risk. In order to prepare for the danger ahead, public officials should recognize the need for long-term sea level rise planning and begin now to adapt (Beatley 2009, Blakely and Carbonell 2012). Even relatively small sea level increases will increase the 100year floodplain on FEMA flood maps. Future land use plans and development regulations must account for the forecast changes. For suggested implementation methods, see the Climate explorer Adaptation Tool Kit (toolkit.climate.gov/ tool/adaptation-tool-kit-sea-level-rise-and-coastal-landuse).

An effective way to build community resilience is through scenario planning. Scenario planning is a process of 76

integrating technical hazard analysis and public workshops, leading to a resilience strategy (for a scenario model approach see Placeways 2016). Scenarios compare the pros and cons of planned action versus denial and business as usual. The U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit recommends a five step process to resilience, shown in the following table.

ST EP 1:

Explore Climate Threats Build a team, explore your regional climate trends and projections, and consider if things you value are threatened by climate.

ST EP 2:

Assess Vulnerability & Risks Determine which of your assets are most likely to be damaged or lost to climate impacts. Decide if you can tolerate the risk.

ST EP 3:

Investigate Options Brainstorm possible solutions and explore what other groups have done. Narrow your options to a list of actions stakeholders are willing to support.

ST EP 4: Prioritize Actions Consolidate actions and determine the best sequence to protect your full range of assets. Align your resources to focus on your largest risks.

ST EP 5:

Take Action Implement your plan and monitor your results. Modify your approach as needed To prepare for sea level rise, coastal areas must recognize that the future will be very different than the past. A relatively stable coastline and an unchanging sea level are now history. Current North Carolina Science Panel projections of minimal sea level rise will likely prove understated, and their schedule of five-year updates will likely lag behind the actual atmospheric changes. It will be critical to carefully monitor climate change and to develop forward looking plans and policies based on the latest evidence, rather than on wishful thinking.

WORKS CITED

Blakely, Edward J., and Armando Carbonell. 2012. Resilient Coastal City Regions: Planning for Climate Change in the United States and Australia.

Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

N.C. Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel. 2015. North Carolina Sea Level Rise Assessment Report: 2015 Update to the 2010 Report and 201 Addendum. Draft. North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Division of Coastal Management.

Peach, Sara. 2014. “Rising Seas: Will the Outer Banks Survive?” National Geographic, July 24. Accessed September 11, 2016. Retrieved from

Butler, William H., Robert E. Deyle, and Cassidy Mutnansky. 2016. “LowRegrets Incrementalism: Land Use Planning Adaptation to Accelerating Sea Level Rise in Florida’s Coastal Communities,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 36:3, 319-332.

Peach, Sara. 2014. “Rising Seas: Will the Outer Banks Survive?” National Geographic, July 24. Accessed September 11, 2016. Retrieved from http:// news.nationalgeographic.com/news/special-features/2014/07/140725outer-banks-north-carolina-sea-level-rise-climate/.

Dennis, Brady, and Chris Mooney. “Scientists nearly double sea level rise projections for 2100, because of Antarctica.” Washington Post, March 30, 2016.

Placeways (with Orion Planning + Design) and UCSD. 2016. Innovations in Planning and Public Engagement for Community Resilience. “Task 3- Scenario Planning Model Report.” Accessed 7 November 2016.

Retrieved from https://www.planning.org/media/document/9109463/.

Beatley, Timothy. 2009. Planning for Coastal Resilience: Best Practices for Calamitous Times. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Fox News. 2016. “Hurricane Matthew estimated to have caused more than $1B in damages in North Carolina” FoxNews.com, October 17, 2016.

Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/10/17/hurricanematthew-estimated-to-have-caused-more-than-1b-in-damages.html Gillis, Justin, 2016. “Flooding of coast, caused by global warming, has already begun.” New York Times, September 3, 2016. Retrieved from http:// www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-byglobal-warming-has-already-begun.html?_r=0 Godschalk, David R. 2003. “Urban Hazard Mitigation: Creating Resilient Cities,” Natural Hazards Review 4:3, 136-143, August 2003. ________________. 2009. “Safe Growth Audits” Zoning Practice.

American Planning Association, October 2009)

New Hanover County, North Carolina. 2016. Plan NHC: Charting the Course.

Accessed 24 October 2016. Retrieved from http://planningdevelopment. nhcgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FULL-COMP-PLAN-LOWRES_0.pdf.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Climate Explorer. Accessed 17 June, 2016. Retrieved from http://toolkit.climate. gov/tools/climate-explorer.

Riggs, S. R., Ames, D. V., Culver, S. J., & Mallinson, D. J. 2011. The Battle for North Carolina’s Coasts: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACA). 2016. Reducing Coastal Risk on the East and Gulf Coasts. National Academy of Sciences. Accessed 3-25-2016. Retrieved from http://dl-home.com/reducing-coastal-riskon-the-east-and-gulf-coasts/. ____________________. 2014. Technical Letter No. 1100-2-1. Accessed 23 October 2016. Retrieved from http://www.publications.usace.army. mil/Portals/76/Publications/EngineerTechnicalLetters/ETL_1100-2-1. pdf.

U.S. Geological Service (USGS). National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise: U.S. Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico Coasts. Accessed 6-9-2016. Retrieved from http://woodshole. er.usgs.gov/project-pages/cvi/.

U.S. Global Change Research Program. 2009. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Wilmington, City of, North Carolina. 2016. Create Wilmington Comprehensive Plan. Accessed 24 October 2016. Retrieved from http://www.wilmingtonnc.gov/departments/planning-developmentand-transportation/comprehensive-plan.

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Hammar-Klose, Erika, and Robert Thieler. 2001.. National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Future Sea-Level Rise: Preliminary Results for the US Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico Coasts. US Reports 99– 593, 00-178, and 00-179 (487b04ce).

Riggs, Stanley, et al. 2008. “North Carolina’s Coasts in Crisis: A Vision for the Future.” A White paper. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University.

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F RO M H AZ ARD M I TI G AT ION TO CO M M U N I TY SUSTAI NA BILITY Resilience Planning in Asheville, North Carolina JAMES FOX James (Jim) Fox is the Director for UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC). In that position, he serves as the team leader and principal

investigator for several major collaborations, including partnerships with the U.S. Forest Service, NOAA, and state, county, municipal, and regional governments in the Southeastern United States.

MATT HUTCHINS Matt Hutchins is a Research Scientist and Environmental Change Project Lead with UNC Asheville’s NEMAC. Hutchins has worked with federal partners, local and state governments, and communities to support them in making informed decisions on issues

related to the impacts from climate change and extreme weather, wildfire, and other environmental threats.

NINA HALL Nina Hall is NEMAC’s Lead Science Editor and a Research Scientist. As such, she is responsible for overall editorial management and for synthesizing and coordinating the

content of scientific and technical decision-making tools and visualizations produced by NEMAC. Hall also oversees the development and implementation of NEMAC’s digital storytelling products.

KARIN ROGERS Karin Rogers is Director of Operations and a Research Scientist at NEMAC. She works with NEMAC’s federal, local, and state partners to effectively deliver and communicate their science for more informed decision making. She has focused on various technology

transfer methodologies, including group facilitation and training, scientific graphic design, and statistical applications used in decision support.

In 2004, Asheville and the surrounding region experienced a series of heavy rainfall events that caused severe flooding and landslides, resulting in a tragic loss of life, a large amount of damaged property, and significant loss of economic revenue due to business interruption.

Following these events, local planners and officials recognized the need for multiple municipalities and stakeholder groups to work together to become better prepared for similar future hazard events. The City of 78

Asheville rose to the challenge and, along with several other local government entities, universities, businesses, and non-profit organizations, formed a working group to establish a regional approach for hazard mitigation (City of Asheville 2016). As a university partner, UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) served as technical lead for the group, providing maps and visualizations to help the group—and the public—understand how extreme weather events can cause climate-related hazards. In conjunction with this work, in 2009 NEMAC also created a digital, GIS-based hazard information and mapping tool for Buncombe County to support the generation of FEMA reports and provide information for local planning efforts (National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center n.d.).

As a boundary organization working with both science producers (such as federal, state, and local science agencies) and science users (including municipal and county decision makers and engaged members of the public), NEMAC has an interest in moving the climate resilience discussion out of the theoretical and research arenas into practical application. A combination of local, state, and national efforts over the past several years has contributed to the information sources, best practices, and tools that are now available for communities to use to build resilience.

Below, we describe the process NEMAC used to complete a Climate Resilience Plan for the City of Asheville. Building on the foundation of work begun after the 2004 flooding, NEMAC worked with the City over the course of six months in 2016 to assess key vulnerabilities and risks to climate-related threats and to develop a set of actions to build resilience. Using the City of Asheville work as a case study, we highlight some of the main components of a structured resilience planning process—one that allows for the integration of results into municipal or regional hazard mitigation, sustainability, and comprehensive plans.

THE FIVE STEPS TO RESILIENCE Resilience is defined as the capacity of a community, business, or natural system to prevent, withstand, respond to, and recover from a disruption (Melillo et al. 2014, Field et al. 2014). The U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit provides this iterative, step-by-step process for 79

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Around the same time, the conversation around climate resilience was beginning to grow at both state and national levels. A workshop entitled “Planning for North Carolina’s Future: Ask the Climate Question” was held in Raleigh in March 2010, where over 400 community planners, climate experts, and researchers joined together to address the growing issue of climate resiliency (North Carolina Interagency Leadership Team n.d.). Participants examined how the state’s three distinct regions (mountains, piedmont, and coastal plain) have different climate conditions and experience different climate-related hazards. From this effort, NEMAC was chosen to provide support to technical teams at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)—our nation’s center for weather and climate data—to help create the third National Climate Assessment and the nation’s Climate Indicators (Melillo et al. 2014). In 2014, NEMAC was asked to work with NOAA’s Climate Program Office to design, develop, and implement the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit for the White House (toolkit.climate.gov). The U.S. Climate

Resilience Toolkit is a website that provides a catalogue of federal agency climate resilience tools, presents case studies of climate resilience from across the nation, and describes a five-step process dubbed the “Steps to Resilience” that communities can use for building resilience (U.S. Federal Government 2014).

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communities to follow: 1. Explore Climate Threats 2. Assess Vulnerability and Risks 3. Investigate Options 4. Prioritize Actions 5. Take Action During a six-month period in 2016, NEMAC worked with a 20-member team of City of Asheville staff representing fourteen city departments to apply this process. Over that time, we facilitated six workshops and several working group sessions that moved the group from Steps One through Four.

FIGURE 1 - Basic conceptual model showing the relationship

between stressors (climate and non-climate), threats and hazards, and assets affected.

STE P O N E : Explore Climate Threats.

There is a large difference between people wanting to know more about extreme weather or the potential impacts of climate change and people planning to build climate resilience for their community. It’s important that the community have multiple, substantive internal conversations to acknowledge that a problem is actually occurring, and community representatives must gather enough stakeholders to start addressing the problem. This is usually an iterative process that takes months, if not years. However, more communities across our state, and indeed our nation, are beginning to recognize the impacts of a changing climate—which is encouraging them to move toward resilience at a faster pace to address this challenge.

The first part of Step One asks a community to research their past experiences with climate and weather events and to explore regional climate trends and projections to understand how assets (people, infrastructure, services, or resources) may be threatened. Another part of this process is identifying the stressors (climate and non-climate) that cause or contribute to a threat or hazard event.

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FIGURE 2 - Map of commercial properties exposed to the 500-

year floodplain.

FIGURE 3 - Maps of commercial properties showing levels of potential impact (left) and adaptive capacity (right).

We worked with city staff to examine key assets (and the services they provide) that are potentially affected by each stressor or threat. These assets were considered

• Heavy precipitation events that lead to major flooding, nuisance flooding, and landslides,

We at NEMAC have found that an effective way to communicate the relationships between climate stressors, hazards, and assets is to use a simple mental model, often called a conceptual model (Figure 1) (Dobson et al. 2010, Hutchins and Pollock 2015). Conceptual models help distill a complex system into discrete pieces that can be analyzed and communicated to other team members. They are also useful for communicating findings to decision makers or other stakeholders.

• Drought that leads to water shortages and wildfire, • Temperature variability that leads to the potential for extreme heat events, and • Events that lead to supply chain interruptions.

exposed if they were potentially affected by this threat.

Key assets included residents, residential properties, commercial properties, industrial properties, critical infrastructure, water supply and distribution, roads, bridges, and many more.

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For the City of Asheville, climate-related threats were identified by exploring its institutional knowledge of past events (such as the flood events of 2004), NCEI’s storm events database (National Centers for Environmental Information n.d.), and the National Climate Assessment’s regional climate trends and projections (Melillo et al. 2014, Karl et al. 2009). Based on that research, the primary stressors and threats considered were:

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medium, or low ranking for potential impact. Based on the types of commercial properties exposed, those that were most critical for commercial purposes were determined to have a higher potential impact and were assigned a “high” value (Figure 3).

Adaptive capacity is the ability to cope with identified impacts with minimal disruption or cost. For the City of Asheville, adaptive capacity was determined by looking at (i) base floor elevation, (ii) flood-proofing, and (iii) the age and construction of the building. As for potential impact, values for adaptive capacity were also assigned a high, medium, or low ranking (Figure 3).

FIGURE 4 - Map of commercial properties showing levels of

vulnerability. Properties with structures in the floodplain that have less ability to cope with floodwaters were associated with higher vulnerability.

Step One concluded with determining which key assets were exposed to each threat using available data sources.

For example, commercial properties within the 500-year floodplain were identified as exposed (Figure 2).

STE P T WO :

Assess Vulnerability and Risks. Step Two starts with a vulnerability analysis. The purpose of this step is to understand how a community’s assets are likely to be impacted by the climate threats identified during Step One. This assessment then becomes the foundation for developing options to build resilience later in Step Three.

Vulnerability is defined as the susceptibility of societal assets to be impacted due to both physical and social factors. To define vulnerability, the analysis must first use the exposure assessment from Step One to examine both potential impact and adaptive capacity. This can be thought of simply as vulnerability = potential impact − adaptive capacity (Melillo et al. 2014, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014, Frazier et al. 2013).

Potential impact includes evaluating sensitivity, or the degree to which exposed assets are potentially affected. In the City of Asheville work, properties were assigned a high, 82

A good example of adaptive capacity arose after the floods of 2004 in Biltmore Village, a historic Asheville neighborhood adjacent to the Biltmore Estate. New buildings had been constructed to replace damaged or destroyed structures that had proven to be very sensitive to flooding. These new buildings were constructed in the same locations as those damaged or destroyed, so they are still exposed to flooding. However, the new buildings added adaptive capacity by raising the base floor elevation at least two feet above historic flood levels.

Parking garages are located beneath the buildings, allowing for vehicle relocation prior to a flood event.

This practice has greatly reduced the new buildings’ vulnerability.

The resulting vulnerability is determined by considering both the potential impact and the adaptive capacity, with the most vulnerable having the highest potential impact and the lowest adaptive capacity (Figure 4).

For areas with high vulnerability, it is necessary to scope the level of risk. Risk depends on both probability and consequence—in other words, what is the chance of a loss? It is important to note that the scoping of risk at this stage is not the same as undertaking a detailed risk assessment, which can be a time- and costintensive process. Instead, risk scoping is an initial broad quantification of risk that can be used to compare general probabilities and consequences of certain threats occurring. For example, for the same commercial

FIGURE 5 - Example of four different assets showing the total amount and proportion (percent) of each asset exposed to flooding city-wide,

properties in Biltmore Village mentioned above, many of the properties may have a high vulnerability, but they may hold a lower risk because either the value of the property, or the probability of them being flooded, is low.

For the City of Asheville, the assessment in Step Two showed how some assets are more vulnerable than others (Figure 5). By the end of Step Two, Asheville city staff were able to begin asking questions related to their tolerance of risk and vulnerability, and were also able to identify specific assets and areas with higher risk or vulnerability as potential areas to build resilience.

ST E P T H R E E :

Investigate Options.

The ultimate goal of Step Three is to have actionable options to build resilience for the assets that are most

vulnerable and at risk. To be actionable, an option should have the potential of building resilience by (1) reducing exposure (removing assets from harm’s way), (2) increasing adaptive capacity (increasing the asset’s ability to cope with impacts), or (3) supporting response and recovery.

Staff from the City of Asheville considered these questions, among others, while investigating options: • What are the key vulnerabilities and risks that need to be addressed?

• What are the future changes that need to be considered? (These are not only climaterelated changes, but also non-climate changes, such as change, economic projections, etc.)

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along with their levels of vulnerability. Residential properties had the highest number of parcels exposed, whereas community services (utilities, health-care facilities, police/fire, etc.) had the highest percentage exposed, and commercial properties had the highest proportion of high vulnerability (dark red).

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FIGURE 6 - xxxx

FIGURE 6 - NEMAC’s Jim Fox (standing) leads staff from the City of Asheville through prioritizing options for action toward building climate

resilience during a facilitated workshop.

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• What have other communities done to address similar issues?

• Are there vulnerabilities and risks that cannot be addressed?

• The ability to increase resilience, • Economic feasibility, • Low environmental impact,

• For a given option, what is the expected benefit?

• Ability to implement,

In working with staff from the City of Asheville, NEMAC used facilitated group brainstorming exercises to help them identify possible solutions and explore what other, similar groups have done. Once a list had been created, staff narrowed their options to a list of actions that stakeholders were willing to support.

• Social responsibility (considering high-risk or disadvantaged populations),

A good question to ask at the end of Step Three is: “Are the current stakeholders committed to implementing the group’s favored solutions?” If not, then the group must either recruit additional stakeholders—stakeholders who are willing to accept responsibility and assign resources—or remove the option from the list. Options that positively answer this question become possible actions to consider in Step Four.

• The ability to deal with future change.

Prioritize Actions.

Step Three often yields a large number of options, and it can be difficult to evaluate and compare them all. In our work with the City of Asheville, city staff looked at 14 key assets and six threats from Step Two and brainstormed over 100 possible options to build resilience.

Prioritization is a two-part process, the first of which involves looking at the action that will have the most impact. The vulnerability and risk assessment completed in Step Two can help in determining the amount of vulnerability or risk the action would target. Note that most action options will not be applicable city-wide, so it is important to examine the options at a smaller, neighborhood-level or similar scale.

The second part of the prioritization process is to determine criteria on which to rank the options. Some of the prioritization criteria considered by City of Asheville staff included:

• Synergy with existing plans (comprehensive, hazard mitigation, sustainability, etc.), and

On a practical note, it may be better for a community to choose only four or five criteria. Having too many criteria could make the job of prioritization much more difficult.

Once the criteria have been determined, we have found that the best approach is to conduct a facilitated workshop where all options are discussed, ranked, judged by their criteria, and then recommended (or not) to move on to Step Five (Figure 6).

Some of the top prioritized actions may require a more detailed risk analysis than the risk scoping that occurred during Step Two. The community may want to know if they will get a positive cost/benefit ratio from the options being considered. This is also called a “positive expected value,” where a community can determine if the investment will actually lower the risk sufficiently over the life of the investment to make it worthwhile.

ST EP F IVE:

Take Action. Step Five can be viewed as the most important, as it involves implementing the plan to build community resilience. This step can take years to fully implement, and it is critical for the community to monitor results as time passes; some of the assumptions made during the original analysis may have been faulty, or on-the-ground implementation

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ST E P FO U R:

• Regional responsibility,

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may not have been completed. This is to be expected, and the community should be open to modifying its approach as needed.

These modifications will sometimes require revisiting some of the earlier steps, re-examining options associated with key assets and threats, and keeping up with some of the non-climate stressors, as well. Only through careful planning and monitoring will continued progress be made.

IMPLICATIONS AND SUMMARY In Western North Carolina, NEMAC has facilitated processes and built tools that expanded stakeholder involvement and improved the region’s resilience planning. An additional key to this success has been the ability to demonstrate how resilience is influenced by both climate and non-climate stressors (e.g., population growth, land-use conversion, and/or economic shifts), all of which present an ever-changing challenge to regional and local planners. In the Asheville area, the target audience began with an initial emphasis on hazard mitigation and emergency managers but quickly grew to include emergency responders from local fire departments and city engineers. The tools are now used by sustainability directors, city and regional planners, and land managers interested not only in community resilience, but also in natural systems and landscape resilience. This expansion and growth shows direct application and acceptance of regional responsibility.

The State of North Carolina has also invested in preparing for change and is better positioned to become more resilient to a variable and changing climate. The state has developed

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a large data clearinghouse to support resilience efforts, including high-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) datasets for detailed elevation modeling and a collection of statewide parcel and structure data, which can greatly help with vulnerability and risk assessments.

This capacity has positioned the State of North Carolina to be a national leader in developing resilience plans.

The application of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit’s “Steps to Resilience” in Asheville has provided the ability to integrate elements of the climate resilience plan with other planning efforts, such as hazard mitigation and emergency management, sustainability, and comprehensive plans. This work has also demonstrated how the process can be replicated across North Carolina—and the nation—at a low cost and in a short time frame to rapidly build local capacity and move beyond problem recognition to planning for the future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The NEMAC team gratefully acknowledges the guidance and support of Amber Weaver (City of Asheville Director of Sustainability) and Stacy Merten (City of Asheville Historic Resources Commission Director), and all participating City of Asheville staff for their time, energy, and focus in this planning process.

Many thanks also to The Collider, Asheville’s premier innovation center focused on catalyzing marketdriven solutions to climate programs. The Collider was instrumental in providing a venue for the work and collaboration needed for this project.

WORKS CITED City of Asheville. “Asheville/Buncombe Flood Damage Reduction Task Force.” Flood Information. 2016. http://www.ashevillenc.gov/ D epa r t ment s/Stor mwaterSer v ice sUt i l it y/FloodIn for mat ion. aspx#Flood Damage Reduction Task Force.

Dobson, J. Greg, James Fox, Matthew Hutchins, and Karin P. Lichtenstein.

“Engaging Stakeholders for Conducting Regional Climate Assessments.”

Proceedings from the 35th Annual NOAA Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop, October 4–7, 2010, Raleigh, North Carolina; Climate Prediction Science and Technology Digest, 35th NOAA Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop Special Issue (2010): 153–156.

Frazier, Tim G., Courtney M. Thompson, Ray J. Dezzani, and Danielle Butsick. “Spatial and Temporal Quantification of Resilience at the Community Scale.” Applied Geography 42 (August 2013): 95–107.

Hutchins, Matthew, and J. Pollock. “Partnerships for Resilience and Empowered Planning, Community Resilience Planning Handbook.”

Southeast Sustainability Directors Network. 2015. http://www.southeastsdn. org/portfolio/partnership-for-resilience.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Summary for Policymakers.” In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Edited by Field, C. B., V. R. Barros, D. J. Dokken, K. J. Mach, M. D. Mastrandrea, T. E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K. L. Ebi, Y. O. Estrada, R. C. Genova, B. Girma, E. S. Kissel, A. N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P. R. Mastrandrea, and L. L. White. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/ uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf.

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Karl, Thomas R., Jerry M. Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson, Editors.

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States: A State of Knowledge Report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Melillo, Jerry M., Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and Gary W. Yohe, Editors.

Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2014. doi:10.7930/ J0Z31WJ2. http://nca2014.globalchange.gov.

National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center. Buncombe County Multi-Hazard Risk Tool. University of North Carolina at Asheville. n.d. https://nemac.unca.edu/buncombe-county-multi-hazard-risk-tool.

National Centers for Environmental Information. Storm Events Database.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. n.d. https://www. ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents.

North Carolina Interagency Leadership Team. Climate Ready North Carolina: Building a Resilient Future. n.d. http://climateadaptationnc. nemac.org.

U.S. Federal Government. U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. 2014. http:// toolkit.climate.gov.

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I N CO R PO R ATIN G R E SI LI ENC E Incorporating Resilience: How Local Planning To o l s A d v a n c e R e s i l i e n c e i n N o r t h C a r o l i n a SCOTT SHUFORD, AICP Scott Shuford is a certified planner with over 30 years of professional service in senior planning positions for local governments in North Carolina and Florida and as a private

sector planning consultant. As a consultant, Mr. Shuford co-authored a 2010 American Planning Association PAS report titled “Planning for a New Energy and Climate Future.” He

is also a co-author of the American Planning Association’s Climate Change Policy Guide.

He is a 1981 graduate of the DCRP Master’s program.

Resiliency planning is becoming much more common in local government planning. Often, it is addressed in a standalone manner, through vehicles including climate adaptation plans or hazard mitigation plans. There are structural and practical limitations with such monochromatic approaches, including political controversies associated with climate change, the tendency for hazard mitigation plans to be dominated by traditional emergency response considerations, and how a broader treatment opens more funding opportunities for post-disaster mitigation. Finally, resilience has many facets, a fact that makes using a single approach difficult. Consequently, in this paper I will make the argument that incorporating resiliency into a variety of planning documents is preferable to attempting to capture the concept in just a single plan.

A number of resiliency approaches exist that communities can incorporate into planning efforts. A partial list includes: • Comprehensive Plans • Sustainability Plans • Climate Adaptation/Resiliency Plans • Hazard Mitigation Plans • Continuity of Operations Plans • Development Standards • Community Design • Private Environmental Governance • Infrastructure Planning and Design • Economic Resiliency Plans 88

“

To effectively include resiliency in the comprehensive planning process, it is essential for planners to realize that the future may be significantly different than what a straight-line projection of past trends may suggest.”

Before this paper examines how some of these approaches can be applied to community resiliency planning through case studies and resource links, it is important to establish a common definition of resiliency, and to briefly discuss three particular categories of resiliency challenges faced by North Carolina communities.

favor of the planning objectives, engaging the target population in activities that produce tangible, beneficial results, establishing advisory networks of existing neighborhood organizations, and utilizing participatory data collection and analysis to fully understand and address neighborhood or community needs in an open and transparent fashion.

WHAT IS RESILIENCY? Resiliency is generally defined as a physical or emotional property or state, such as the ability of an object to return to its original shape after deformation or the ability of a person to recover from a significant personal challenge.

Both of these definitions are certainly relevant to what is meant by community resiliency in this paper. Combining these definitions results in: the ability of a community to recover quickly from an external challenge such as a natural disaster or an impact on the local economy.

To do all this, community resilience must address physical, economic, and social states. Consequently, for the purposes of this paper, I will define resiliency as the ability of a community to recover quickly, fairly and transparently from an internal or external challenge affecting public safety, economic well-being, or social equity.

However, the above definition of resiliency fails to reflect a key societal element that must be incorporated into resiliency planning. By this I mean that for resiliency to be a truly effective community planning strategy, it must also be perceived by all citizens as being applied fairly and successfully. The most socially vulnerable populations (e.g., lower income, minority, elderly, or immigrant populations) are often located in areas where natural hazards and economic disruptions are more likely to occur. Additionally, these populations may experience institutionalized bias, blighted neighborhoods, and public disinvestment; the threats they perceive may therefore be internal as well as external. Consequently, there may exist an understandable skepticism on the part of these populations with regard to the ability of any planning process to positively affect their lives, protect their property, or ensure their safety. Resiliency planning must account for this skepticism in both response and mitigation actions. Tactics for achieving this may include enlisting people trusted in the community to speak in

North Carolina’s geographic location and characteristics combined with regionally-prevailing weather systems make the state vulnerable to a wide range of natural hazards. In 2016 alone, North Carolina experienced extreme drought and major wildfires in the western part of the state, along with torrential downpours from both tropical and nontropical systems, including Hurricane Matthew, in the eastern part of the state.

NATUR AL HA Z ARDS (PHYSICAL) CHALLENGES TO RESILIENCY

• Decreasing water availability, exacerbated by population growth and land use change, will continue to increase competition for water and affect the region’s economy and unique ecosystems.

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Our state’s range of natural hazards will be impacted by future climate change according to the Third National Climate Assessment in 2014. The Assessment identified three primary climate change impacts affecting the Southeastern United States:

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• Increasing temperatures and the associated increase in frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme heat events will affect public health, natural and built environments, energy, agriculture, and forestry.

• Sea-level rise poses widespread and continuing threats to both natural and built environments and to the region’s economy.

(MELILLO, RICHMOND, AND YOHE, THIRD NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT)

Droughts can affect water supplies and the operations of nuclear and hydroelectric power plants. During the extreme drought of 2007-2008, there were concerns that many nuclear power plants across the South would have to suspend operations due to a reduced supply of water for reactor cooling (Weiss, “Drought Could Force Nuclear Plants to Shut Down”). Such an event could have negative effects on a variety of industries that depend on continuous availability of affordable electric power for their operations.

Consequently, in North Carolina, we can expect current natural hazards—extreme storms, drought, flooding, heat waves, wildfires, storm surge, and tidal flooding—to worsen in the future, resulting in the need for greater resilience to these hazards. In the case of sea-level rise, resilience may not be possible for many low-lying coastal areas. The effect of even a two-food increase would inundate much of the state’s coast, making long-term resilience impossible.

In another example, the March 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan exposed a major vulnerability for that country’s auto manufacturers. Suddenly, the industry was faced with a major shortage of parts as supply chains were disrupted across the country by the disaster. This harsh lesson was taken to heart by Japanese car makers, resulting in double-sourcing supply chains, relocating or reinforcing facilities, and increasing inventories (Zeppos, “People-Shaped Hole.”).

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES TO RESILIENCY

SOCIAL CHALLENGES TO RESILIENCY

North Carolina faces a variety of challenges to economic resilience. Corporate decisions to automate production or utilize offshore labor have weakened historically strong manufacturing operations, resulting in a substantial reduction in manufacturing jobs as a percent of total employment. Agriculture across the state has the potential to be affected by extreme weather events and climate change in general. Self-driving vehicles may make employment in the transportation industry vulnerable. Some regions of the state have economies which are highly dependent upon major military installations making them susceptible to the effects of deployment or reduction decisions over which they have no control.

Physical and economic threats will affect different populations in different ways. For example, persons working outdoors or participating in sports will be more susceptible to illness associated with heat waves than will office workers or the sedentary. Figure 2 illustrates the effect of different types of weather events on different populations.

Projected sea-level rise, in particular, has the potential to dramatically disrupt the economies of coastal counties, especially in the northeastern part of the state where inundation or frequent flooding will negatively affect tourism, infrastructure, real estate values, and tax base.

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These differences need to be clearly acknowledged and specifically addressed in planning efforts in order to develop meaningful response and mitigation strategies.

For instance, persons living in high crime neighborhoods need assurance that local law enforcement will protect their homes and belongings in the event they are evacuated during a heat wave or flood event; otherwise, they may choose to shelter in place with potentially disastrous consequences. It is extremely important to social resiliency that local institutions and “trusted voices” are utilized to bridge trust and transparency gaps that may exist between local planners and the constituency they serve.

COMPREHENSIVE PL ANS

To effectively include resiliency in the comprehensive planning process, it is essential for planners to realize that the future may be significantly different than what a straight-line projection of past trends may suggest.

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In September, 2014, I had the honor of presenting with UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Emeritus Dave Godschalk in a session on climate change mitigation and adaptation at the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association’s Annual Conference. Dr. Godschalk made a critically important point about the impact of climate change in the development of comprehensive plans. His point was that, traditionally, comprehensive plans utilize past trends to project future scenarios which are then addressed in plans. Climate change turns this approach on its head—the past is no longer a reliable predictor of the future for planning issues affected by climate change.

Dr. Godschalk noted that the City of Norfolk, Virginia had effectively used its 2013 general (comprehensive) plan,“plaNorfolk2030,” to identify natural hazards resiliency threats expected to be exacerbated by future sea-level rise. They used these identified threats, such as storm surge and tidal street flooding, to develop measurable and sustainable goals and strategies to minimize future vulnerability. (Norfolk. “plaNorfolk.”)

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CLIMATE ADAPTATION/RESILIENCY PL ANS These plan types confront the challenges of natural hazards resiliency that will result from coming climate change. I will briefly examine two older adaptation plans in order to illustrate how this type of plan can be categorized.

King County, Washington’s 2007 Climate Plan (updated extensively in 2015) addresses mitigation and adaptation actions for both urban and rural areas in the Seattle region.

The overarching goal of the plan is to embed climate awareness and action into all decisions made by King County. The plan includes a questionnaire given to all King County employees to assess the current knowledge level of County staff with regard to climate impacts on each employee’s area of responsibility and to reinforce the organizational expectation that climate planning and response will be a focal point for all employees (King County, “2007 Climate Plan”). I characterize this as a “whole organization” plan because it focuses on institutionalizing climate awareness and action. In continuing the process of institutionalizing resiliency to climate impacts, the 2015 update used an “Equity Impact Review Tool,” which includes Process Equity, Distributional Equity, and Crossgenerational Equity considerations that address influence, income, and age issues (King County, “Strategic Climate Action Plan”).

Chicago adopted its “Climate Action Plan” in 2008. Unlike the comprehensive approaches taken by King County, the adaptation component of the Chicago plan focused primarily on two climate impacts that will affect the city— heat and precipitation—allowing its adaptation planning to be categorized as a “specific hazards” type, with strategies like urban heat island reduction through cool roofs and aggressive “greening” of the City with landscaping.

Precipitation increases are handled through a “Green Alleys” program incorporating low-impact development designs and other green infrastructure. This highlyfocused approach included some public outreach strategies to promote participation and enhance social equity. These

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outreach strategies included a “Sustainable Backyards” program that encourages citizens to retain stormwater on site and partnering with a Chicago Conservation Corps (C3) nonprofit effort to engage citizens in improving quality of life in their neighborhoods through environmental service projects (Chicago, “Climate Action Plan”).

PRIVATE ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE According to Dr. Michael P. Vandenbergh, an environmental law professor at Vanderbilt University, “[p]rivate environmental governance occurs when nongovernmental entities take actions that achieve traditionally governmental ends.”

An example of private environmental governance: the City of Baltimore utilizes its new “Resiliency Hubs” program to increase neighborhood resilience to a variety of hazards. Part of the City’s “Disaster Preparedness Project and Plan” implementation strategy, this program utilizes existing neighborhood resources and facilities to build capacity to address resilience at the neighborhood scale. Neighborhood centers become shelters stocked with emergency food and supplies, as well as places where people come together for a variety of other purposes, including building awareness of the vulnerability of one’s own neighbor so that appropriate assistance can be provided during hazard events (Baja, Resiliency Hubs).

Another example of this type of private governance is the Chicago Conservation Corps program discussed in the climate adaptation/resiliency plans section above.

These sorts of community building initiatives directly address the social resiliency question by providing opportunities for self-sufficiency in which trusted local institutions, separate from government, promote equity and transparency in preparing neighborhoods and individuals for natural hazards resilience. Additionally, private environmental governance maximizes the resources of local governments by substituting private action for public action.

COMMUNIT Y DESIGN

Between 2006 and 2008, The Planning Center, a planning consulting firm, helped the City of Desert Hot Springs prepare a downtown plan using “bioclimatic design principles.” Extreme summer temperatures, often exceeding 107° Fahrenheit, and strong seasonal prevailing winds, create significant resiliency challenges for this Coachella Valley community. The adopted community design plan, called the “Vortex Downtown Specific Plan,” orients buildings at 45% angles to the existing street network to minimize the effects of sun and wind by providing shade and shielding entrances from strong winds (see figure 3). This approach is consistent with the City’s Vision Statement: “Desert Hot Springs is committed to becoming a truly world-class health

INFR ASTRUCTURE PL ANNING AND DESIGN Infrastructure planning and design can also enhance community resilience. The Confederation Bridge which connects the Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick spans eight miles of icecovered water, making it the longest such bridge in the world. Planning for this bridge began in the mid-1980s and construction was complete in 1997. Bridge designers anticipated a one-meter rise in sea level and spaced the support structures sufficiently far apart to allow large ice blocks that traverse the Northumberland Strait to pass safely through. As the design life of the bridge is over 100 years, planners recognized the importance of accounting for anticipated climate change impacts over that timeframe (Gregg, “Confederation Bridge”).

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Community design decisions, which take into account physical vulnerabilities associated with geographic or climate conditions, can have a significant impact on enhancing resilience. An example of planning with a design mindset can be found in a plan adopted by the City of Desert Hot Springs, California.

and wellness destination based on its famous miracle waters, unique desert ecosystem, spectacular mountain views, and natural environment,” (Desert Hot Springs, “Vortex”).

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Adaptive infrastructure design is not solely limited to large structures like the Confederation Bridge.

Figure 4 illustrates a very elegant design solution for the problem of heavy rains that flood into at-grade subway ventilation grates in New York City, affecting subway operation and maintenance. The Metropolitan Transit Authority teamed with design professionals, including the Municipal Art Society, to create a beautiful, multifunctional grate design.

• EPA’s “Planning Framework for a ClimateResilient Economy” outlines a traditional planning process to address climate change impacts on local economies and includes some case studies.

• The National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) has a large number of community, sector, and region specific reports accessible on the organization’s website.

ECONOMIC RESILIENCY PL ANS

While San Francisco’s current initiative is highly focused on financial resilience, the City also has a natural hazards and social equity resilience plan, called “Resilient San Francisco,” that can be used to inform the implementation of the Economic Resiliency Plan. Such plans should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but each can allow a community to address specific resiliency needs at a level of detail required by the circumstances.

Economic resiliency plans are more commonly geared towards recovery from natural disasters or potential climate change impacts. Some excellent resources in these areas include the following publications (links provided in the Works Cited section):

• The International Economic Development Council produced an extensive publication, called “Leadership in Times of Crisis: a Toolkit for Economic Recovery and Resiliency,” that provides a broad perspective on enhancing economic resiliency, including an extensive list of resources, case studies, and practical business perspectives that can help planners better understand the complexities of getting local economies back on their feet after a disaster.

INTEGR ATING RESILIENCY AND PL ANNING At the outset of this paper, I noted that there were many ways to introduce community resiliency into local planning processes. In the sections above, there are examples of and resources on various planning approaches from climate adaptation plans to economic resiliency plans. These resources and best practices could help localities minimize impacts from natural disasters and economic disruptions while integrating community and neighborhood needs in a process that acknowledges and addresses existing social conditions and public perceptions.

However, simply including resiliency components in various planning approaches does not ensure a comprehensive integration of the concept into public policy and regulation. This is a problem that hazards managers and climate change planners have struggled with over an even narrower range of resiliency elements, such as how do you reconcile adaptation and mitigation?

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San Francisco has created a “buzz” in the planning world by announcing in June 2016 that it will commission its first economic resiliency plan. The Great Recession had a dramatic effect on employment in San Francisco, creating a nearly double-digit unemployment rate in 2009-2010. That rate has since fallen to around three percent, but the City Office of Economic and Workforce Development is not taking the current situation for granted. According to the Office’s director, Todd Rufo, “The Economic Resiliency Plan reflects our commitment to the people of San Francisco to have an action plan in place to address any potential downturn in the City’s economy,” (San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development).

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For land use planners, this is similar to the creative tension between long-range and current planning.

One way to promote integration is to build planning efforts on one another. In Cumberland County, North Carolina, initial research on local climate impacts in the 2016 Cumberland County Climate Resiliency Plan informed the Cumberland-Hoke Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan. The Climate Resiliency Plan is currently being incorporated into the Resiliency Element of the Fayetteville Comprehensive Plan Update.

FEMA has made an attempt to facilitate integration in “Plan Integration: Linking Local Planning Efforts.� This document contains an appendix with a list of questions that are organized into five categories: land-use, transportation and infrastructure, emergency management, environment and open space, and plan implementation. Admittedly, these questions only cover hazards integration, but it and the King County Climate Adaptation Plan offer a methodology for us to consider as we plan for community resiliency: a thoughtful, comprehensive questioning of nearly every planning activity to determine its relevance to resiliency.

CONCLUSIONS Due to climate change, changing technology, and new economic development challenges, planners must use a wide range of planning approaches to effectively promote community resiliency. Our future will almost certainly not look like the past; consequently, successful future community planning will not resemble past plans.

Because of its complexity, a variety of planning subcategories must consider resiliency planning; when taken as a whole, they address the full range of resiliency challenges faced by each community. This layered approach will allow planners to inculcate resiliency into all planning initiatives which, in turn, will enhance the likelihood of success toward establishing a truly resilient community.

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WORKS CITED Baja, Kristin. Baltimore Resiliency Hubs Proposal for Partners for Places, Fall 2015, accessed on December 18, 2016. Available at: http:// www.fundersnetwork.org/files/idea_bank/Baltimore_P4P_Proposal_ Narrative_(Ideabank)1.docx City of Chicago. “Climate Action Plan,” 2008. Adaptation Section available at: http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org/pages/adaptation/11. php. Chicago Conservation Corps website is available at http:// chicagoconservationcorps.org/.

City of Desert Hot Springs. “Vortex Specific Downtown Plan,” August, 2008, pp. 2 and 21. Available at: http://www.cityofdhs.org/getdoc. cfm?id=1667 City of Norfolk. “planNorfolk2030,” March 26, 2013. Available at: http:// www.norfolk.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2483 City of San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

“Office of Economic and Workforce Development Launches Economic Resiliency Efforts to Ensure Long-Term Success for San Francisco,” press release dated June 9, 2016. Available at: http://oewd.org/sites/default/ files/News/Press%20Release/6.9.2016%20OEWD%20Launches%20 Economic%20Resiliency%20Plan%20for%20SF-%20Press%20Release. pdf City of San Francisco. “Resilient San Francisco: Stronger Today, Stronger Tomorrow,” April 18, 2016. Available at: SFgov.org/ResilientSF.

Ham, C., Hoban, T., Love, J., Pfau, L. & Polonkey, A. (2016).

Cumberland County Climate Resiliency Plan. Edited by: Griffith, G., Thaler, T., Kleinman, D., Phillips, S., Perry, J.A., & Hall, M. Model Forest Policy Program in association with Sustainable Sandhills, City of Fayetteville, Fayetteville, NC, and Cumberland River Compact: Sagle, ID. Available at: http://media.wix.com/ ugd/685cf6_6ee0be2a0e4b45a29a782de2605d3b73.pdf Gregg, R. M. (2010). Sea Level Rise and the Construction of the Confederation Bridge in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence [Case study on a project of Strait Crossing Bridge Limited]. Product of EcoAdapt’s State of Adaptation Program. Retrieved from CAKE: www.cakex.org/case-studies/sealevel-rise-and-construction-confederation... (Last updated April 2010)

King County, Washington. Strategic Climate Action Plan,” November, 2015. Available at: http://www.kingcounty.gov/services/environment/ climate/strategies/strategic-climate-action-plan.aspx

Melillo, Jerry M., Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and Gary W. Yohe, Eds., 2014: Highlights of Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, p 71.

National Association of Development Organizations economic resilience publications. Available at https://www.nado.org/category/ publications/.

Shuford, Scott, Rynne, Suzanne, Mueller, Jan. “PAS Report #558: Planning for a New Energy and Climate Future,” February, 2010, p. 37.

The International Economic Development Council. “Leadership in Times of Crisis: A Toolkit for Economic Recovery and Resiliency,” March 2015. Available at www.iedconline.org.

United States Environmental Protection Agency. “Planning Framework for a Climate-Resilient Economy,” April 2016. Available at https:// www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/planning-framework-climate-resilienteconomy.

United States Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Plan Integration: Linking Local Planning Efforts,” July, 2015. Available at: https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/108893.

Vandenbergh, Michael P. “The Emergence of Private Environmental Governance,” February, 2014. Environmental Law Reporter, 44ELR, p. 10126.

Available at: https://www.eli.org/sites/default/files/ docs/44_10125.pdf.

Weiss, Mitch, “Drought Could Force Nuclear Plants to Shut Down,” January 23, 2008. The Associated Press.

Zeppos , John. “Do Your Contingency Plans Have a People-Shaped Hole?” March 2015. Resilience Guard GmbH. Available at: http://www. bcifiles.com/ResilienceGuard_BCAW2015_CaseStudy1.pdf.

Works Cited

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Cumberland-Hoke Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan; January 11, 2016.

Available at: http://www.co.cumberland.nc.us/emergency_mgmt/ downloads/Cumberland-Hoke_Regional_Hazard_Mitigation_ Plan__01-11-2016.pdf

King County, Washington. “2007 King County Climate Plan,” February, 2007.

Available at: http://your.kingcounty.gov/dnrp/climate/ documents/2007_King_County_Climate_Plan.pdf

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R E SH AP I N G TH E DE VELOPMENT DIS C US S ION Connecting Elected Officials and Resilience Experts in Coastal Louisiana

TRACI BIRCH Traci Birch, PhD, AICP is an Assistant Research Professor with the Coastal Sustainability Studio at

Louisiana State University. Traci’s research and work focuses on strengthening coastal and inland communities through coordinated land use and environmental planning.

JEFF CARNEY Jeff Carney, AIA, AICP is the Director of the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, and an Associate Professor in the LSU School of Architecture. He takes a design-led research and a systems-oriented approach to structural innovation and community design.

Forty-seven percent of Louisiana’s population lives in the coastal zone, which is also a major locus of seafood, oil and gas, maritime, and petrochemical industries for the nation— what Laska et al. (2005) refer to as “immovable industries.”

These people and economies reside in major cities, suburban communities, and linear villages along the region’s rivers and bayous. Threats to these communities are well-documented.

Louisiana has lost nearly 1,900 square miles of coastal wetlands since the 1930s, and is currently experiencing a land loss rate of more than 16 square miles annually (CPRA 2012).

As sea levels rise and shorelines erode, coastal communities face increased risks of flooding, storm surge, and inundation.

However, the immovability of industry coupled with deep place attachment cultivated through intimate knowledge of the local environment, require adaptation for survival in the face of coastal disturbances (Burley et al. 2007). Louisiana coastal communities are not going away; instead, they are learning to live with risks and build more safely and resiliently through planning and improved community design.

While the need for climate adaptation is widely recognized by academics and many public officials in at-risk communities, relatively few communities have begun to take action. Climate change and its impacts fall in the category of “wicked problems”: having no definite formulation and no clear resolution (Rittel 98

Climate change is a global phenomenon, but the impacts are experienced most acutely in place – to people’s homes, communities, resources, and wellbeing. It is in these places—big cities and small towns—that elected officials make a variety of policy decisions that have significant impact on local environmental conditions and resiliency (McBeth and Bennett 2001, Zwald et al. 2016, Lee and Koski 2012). To overcome obstacles to resilient community decision-making, there is a need to enhance resources and capacity for decisionmakers. In particular, Beatley (2009: 71) emphasizes the importance of working with elected officials to nurture forward-looking leadership, noting “strong leaders have the potential to form coalitions, build bridges, and work to overcome the usual objections and political impediments that exist to thinking and acting.”

There is a need, particularly at the local level where information is lacking, for processes that bring experts,

decision-makers, and community members together in meaningful negotiations that incorporate scientific information, local knowledge, and relevant values and interests (Karl et al. 2007, NCR 2009). Further, there is a need to enhance adaptive capacity through building horizontal and vertical networks capable of addressing complex issues of risk and resilience (Adger 2003, Walker and Salt 2006).

In light of these capacity needs, adaptation efforts require coordination and collaboration among national, state and local government agencies (including universities), and a variety of sectors (Susskind 2010, NCR 2009). To begin addressing these needs, the Louisiana State University (LSU) Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS) developed the Louisiana Community Resilience Institute (LCRI), which brings researchers and students together with elected officials, and public and private sector experts to undertake projectbased planning and urban design focused on building community resilience. The following provides an overview of the LCRI, how this work dovetails with other research and planning processes, and a concrete framework and recommendations to guide researchers and communities in cultivating similar efforts.

THEORETICAL FR AMEWORK Community resilience has become a ubiquitous term in urban planning and design related to enhancing capacity to cope with environmental change and disturbance. While a recent addition to this lexicon, it 99

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and Webber 1973). Deitz and Stern (1998) note several reasons for the lack of action on the part of public officials, including the complex and multi-dimensional nature of the issues; uncertainty in the science and understanding of climate dynamics; the long-term nature of the problem and pressure to maintain the status quo; and challenges with coordinating stakeholders. In Louisiana, a lack of action may also be attributed to uncertainty surrounding potential impacts of large-scale restoration projects that promise to stabilize the coast, but provide few details about what restoration projects may mean for coastal communities.

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“

Louisiana coastal communities are not going away; instead, they are learning to live with risks and build more safely and resiliently through planning and improved community design.”

is not a new concept. Coming from the Latin root resilire, meaning to spring or bounce back, it was first used by physical scientists to describe the stability of non-living materials and resistance to external shocks. The concept was adapted by Holling (1973) as a descriptive ecological concept characterizing the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbance and persist without qualitative structural change. Since then, resilience has been redefined and extended to encompass ecological, socio-ecological, and economic systems (Folke 2006, Holling 2001, Walker and Salt 2006). From the planning and urban design perspective, resilience has become the new way of talking about hazard mitigation, emphasizing adaptation and developing underlying capacity (Beatley 2009: 6). While reconceptualization broadens the potential for resilience science and policy across disciplines, some argue clarity and practical relevance have suffered (Brand and Jax 2007, Cutter 2016a, Davoudi 2012). The intent and ecological foundation of resilience has given way to a blending of descriptive aspects that make definition, operationalization, and assessment difficult—what Markusen (2003) refers to as ”fuzzy conceptualization.” Cutter (2016b: 110) observes “such vagueness has its merits, especially in the policy world where the goals and motivations of proponents are highly variable and politicized.” However, Markusen (2003) points out that fuzzy conceptualization also makes implementation challenging. Matyas and Pelling (2014: S1) note the ambiguousness surrounding resilience means “it is a concept caught between the abstract and the operational.”

Nevertheless, others note this malleability creates flexibility and opportunity to foster communication between science and planning practice (Brand and Jax 2007, Davoudi 2012).

Communities, however, face a number of challenging economic, social, and environmental changes requiring attention. There is a growing need for effective ways to support adaptation-related decision making due to slow10 0

onset and rapid environmental change. Government agencies, businesses, and individuals increasingly find themselves fundamentally unprepared for meeting the challenges of climate change. Typically, local decision making—such as infrastructure construction and the types of zoning and development regulations implemented—assume environmental stability. Yet there is increasing awareness of uncertainty and vulnerability associated with environmental change.

Local governments also have core regulatory powers in the land use, transportation, and waste sectors critical to comprehensive climate change responses (Trisolini 2010). Building flexibility, adaptability, and durability into local decision making is key to building resilience (Beatley 2009, Godschalk 2003, Vale and Campanella 2005). In particular, there is a need to bring science to decision-makers, and distill it into usable information to guide policy. Researchers and academics can play an important role in linking scientific knowledge to action to encourage collaboration and enhance resilience and adaptive capacity (Ostrander and Portney 2007).

Community-university partnerships can produce knowledge that is more relevant, legitimate, and useful for local decision-making (Maurasse 2001). In the following we provide an overview of one such community-university partnership and illustrate efforts to build resilience capacity for Louisiana coastal communities. We explain key lessons learned about capacity- and network-building, and how others may apply these lessons.

CASE STUDY: LOUISIANA COMMUNIT Y RESILIENCE INSTITUTE With landfall of Hurricane Gustav and Ike in September 2008, Louisiana suffered damage from two devastating storms. This came on the heels of the 2005 hurricane season, which saw two of the strongest and most damaging hurricanes in history hit the State. In

response, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Louisiana Office of Community Development, Disaster Recovery Unit (OCD-DRU) designated $10 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to enhance community resilience through innovative planning. The funds were allocated in 2010 to two programs: 1) the Community Resiliency Pilot Program (CRPP), and 2) the Louisiana Resiliency Assistance Program (LRAP). CRPP was a competitive grant program providing funding to communities in support of locally-driven measures addressing risk, mitigation, and sustainability. Thirty impacted communities received funding, which ranged from comprehensive planning and zoning, to housing strategies and water resource management. In addition, OCD-DRU awarded LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS) funds through the same source to establish LRAP in support and assistance to the CRPP grantees for a period of two years.

In partnership with Louisiana Sea Grant, Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), and the Kresge Foundation, CSS expanded LRAP in 2014 to further address these issues. From the start, CSS recognized the need to work with elected officials to tackle community-specific problems through the lens of resilience. Few elected officials of small- to medium-sized communities in Louisiana are career public servants. Rather, they come into office with business acumen, lifelong connections, and a strong desire to “do right” by their community. They have a deep understanding of the vulnerability and risk their constituents and economies face, but less knowledge of what resilience and adaptation planning means, or how tools such as planning or zoning might make their communities safer. To meet this need, CSS built upon LRAP to develop and implement the Louisiana Community Resilience Institute (LCRI). Modeled on the format for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, LCRI is a three-part program focused on translating planning and design into improved community resilience.

CSS works closely with elected officials and staff to identify issues and opportunities, develop projects, and provide resources before, during, and after an intensive workshop. This carefully constructed agenda is intended to apply resilience thinking to community challenges, operationalize resilience locally, build networks of local officials and professionals, and engage university students in community-based learning.

The LCRI team included academics, government officials, and practitioners. In addition to CSS faculty and students, participants included elected officials (i.e. mayor or parish president) from each community engaged, municipal staff (e.g. planners and floodplain 101

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CSS is a trans-disciplinary institute bringing together scientists, engineers, designers, and planners to research and respond to issues of resettlement, coastal restoration, flood protection, and socio-economic sustainability. The impetus for LRAP was to reduce risk and develop strategies to guide local resilience planning and project implementation. LRAP is a statewide effort to collect, develop, and disseminate data and resources on planning and best practices to build more resilient networks in Louisiana. Developed in concert with CRPP, LRAP collected information on grantees’ planning efforts and provided open access through the program’s website. Funding was provided to develop resilience and adaptation webinars and workshops for government staff, practitioners, and researchers. Funding was also provided for focused research on local capacity for, and barriers to, resilience and adaptation. This research was primarily qualitative in nature, including literature reviews, local and regional conditions assessments, planning document analyses, and stakeholder observations and interviews.

Priority needs and concerns of local communities were identified, as well as possible strategies for addressing those needs. Key issues identified include: disconnects

between land use, hazard mitigation, and coastal restoration planning; a lack of tools, funds, and capacity to effectively implement resilience measures at the local level; federal and state policies, such as NFIP and the Biggert-Waters Act, pushing local elected officials away from nonstructural strategies (Manning-Broome et al. 2015); and, information overload stalling decisionmaking (Nelson et al. 2007).

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managers), subject matter experts (SMEs), and CPRA coastal scientists. LCRI was supported by the CSS 2015 Summer Internship Program, which employed full-time graduate students from across the country. The interns compiled demographic and planning profiles for all smallto medium-sized coastal communities. Communities were chosen based on the following criteria: 1) a 2010 population of 2,500 or more to avoid skewing toward very small communities who rely on other government agencies to make development decisions (Berke and French 1994); and, 2) large cities such as New Orleans and Baton Rouge were excluded because they have significant capacity and may serve as SMEs for smaller communities. This resulted in approximately thirty coastal cities and towns, and twenty parishes (counties) as potential participants. In addition to US Census data, interns examined adopted planning documents, and current and proposed 2012 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan projects to determine how regional coastal restoration may be considered within the local planning framework. Interns also developed political snapshots, including governing structure and election cycles, to better understand community capacity and when participation may yield the most success.

LCRI Phase I started in December 2015 with faculty and graduate students engaging six Louisiana communities.

Initially, CSS faculty worked closely with elected officials and staff to discuss pressing issues, priorities, and decide on a project-based challenge to present at the workshop. Projects generally fell into some combination of three categories: corridor redevelopment, waterfront redevelopment, and/ or retrofitting for mitigation and adaptation. For example, one project looked at a one-mile section of a state highway where several large vacant properties (i.e. car dealerships and warehouses) have both reduced the potential for new investment and caused localized flooding. Another corridor project examined the need for increased stormwater management, pedestrian and bicycle access, and design overlays encouraging redevelopment of big box retail sites before they become nuisance properties. In this case, the community recognized the need to encourage high-quality investment in a “new downtown,� as the historic waterfront downtown is threatened by short- and long-term climate change. Projects developed were varied, but resonated with 10 2

all elected officials because they face similar challenges.

To prepare elected officials and SMEs for the workshop, each received a briefing book with demographic, SWOT, and project-specific information in advance to familiarize and generate questions and ideas.

Phase II consisted of an intensive two-day workshop, held in Baton Rouge in April 2016, providing elected officials access to six nationally-recognized SMEs for candid discussions on their identified projects.

SMEs represented fields such as applied ecology, land conservation, sustainable urban design, green real estate development, disaster recovery planning, and hazard mitigation. The workshop was divided into six distinct sessions, each starting with a SME presentation about their work (e.g. green infrastructure, blight reduction, creative placemaking) relevant to the proposed project.

Then each elected official was given twenty minutes to present their challenge, before the group began an abbreviated charrette process. The group brainstormed community issues (both specific and general), with SMEs and political peers sharing ideas for problemsolving and building community resilience. Discussions and conceptual designs focused on specific risks facing the site, the community, and the region, and reflected ecosystem limitations as well as local and state political dynamics. CSS faculty led the discussion and recorded all oral, written, and visual aspects of the work for synopsis. After the workshop, the mayors returned home with a repertoire of ideas and implementation recommendations tailored to their community challenges. In the weeks following the event, CSS produced a final report with specific project details, best practices, and practical examples for each participant.

Finally, Phase III, which is ongoing, provides opportunities for CSS to build strategic partnerships with individual communities to assist with implementing projects developed and vetted at the workshop. These opportunities include providing additional research through project support or design studios, and seeking financial support through grant funding or gifts. For example, CSS landscape architecture faculty engaged third-year studio students in a site planning effort

that built on an LCRI project. The class worked closely with the mayor and staff to understand the needs and priorities of the community, presenting their final design projects at the end of the semester. This work was augmented with policy and funding recommendations provided by faculty experts. Another partnership between CSS and a community has led to the award of an EPA STAR grant that will begin in the spring of 2017. This grant will enable CSS faculty and students to work with the Mayor and city staff to consider ecosystem services in the design of community infrastructure. These efforts have improved local planning capacity and provided a unique community-based learning opportunity for students in architecture and landscape architecture.

DISCUSSION

Invest time in relationship building: Collaborative community initiatives of any type require relationship building as part of planning and implementation—and relationship building takes time. In this case, building relationships and trust were required before elected officials showed willingness to participate. Building on pre-existing relationships was helpful, but faceto-face meetings and reassurances that peers were also participating was necessary. Further, including communities often overlooked due to geography or size helped build trust in the inclusiveness of the process and secure commitments. Our challenge was knowing 1) what kind of relationship building was necessary for varied communities, and 2) how long it would take

Explicit goals and objectives: Funders and administrators require clear evidence that funds are being used effectively to accomplish explicit goals.

From the onset, university goals and objectives were well-defined. Less well-defined were explicit goals, objectives, and expectations for each partner community. While ambiguity made way for clarity over time, clearly documenting specific goals at the beginning is essential. This helps to build trust and measure success throughout the process. It also helps identify well-suited SMEs early in the process. Further, clear goals are important for Phase III implementation, when responsibilities may shift from the core team to other faculty and/or result in time lags related to external funding requests.

Incrementalism versus paradigm shifting: Two primary goals of this project were to enhance resources and capacity for community resilience, and to create networks of similarly versed elected officials and experts. We worked with each community to operationalize the concept of resilience that will be useful in future development decision-making. The small scale was manageable for students, officials, SMEs, and the overall workshop format. However, the scale and condensed timeframe meant that the work can be better described as incremental rather than paradigmaltering. The process planted a seed for some, or watered an already rooted concept. Establishing communityuniversity partnerships opened lines of communication and negotiation crucial to any planning process. More collaboration and relationship-building is necessary to develop goals and objectives that enhance resilience policy and adaptive capacity. Universities have a unique opportunity to take the long-range view a process 103

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The intent of the LCRI was fourfold, to: 1) enhance resources and capacity for building resilience in Louisiana’s threatened coastal communities; 2) enhance adaptive capacity through building both horizontal and vertical networks; 3) create a workable model for university-community partnerships, and 4) provide community-based learning opportunities for LSU students. In each case, university and community partners were pleased with the results, based on feedback from LCRI participants. However, LCRI was not without its challenges, which are shaping future efforts. The following focuses on three key challenges, and provides recommendations for this and similar efforts.

to build relationships focused on capacity building.

It helped that there was a specific challenge for discussion, but strict timelines meant there was less time than desired for relationship-building and project development before the workshop. Including this step into the process is critical for building rapport and place-specific knowledge for faculty, and ownership in the process for elected officials.

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like this requires, to establish relationships, and to distill science into usable information.

CONCLUSION By many accounts, this inaugural effort was successful and provided opportunities for CSS to engage with coastal communities in new ways. One particularly valuable aspect (identified by the mayors themselves) was the opportunity for mayors to meet and have candid discussions, sharing ideas and experiences—and CSS continues to work to foster these connections. Moving forward, CSS is preparing for the second LCRI, which will focus on Louisiana communities impacted by riverine flooding in 2016. For the next iteration, CSS is partnering with FEMA and OCDDRU to provide additional resources to mayors and staff to build relationships and adaptive capacity in the wake of disaster. Scaling up this type of work depends heavily on the continuity CSS can provide, and the availability of funding to support communities and nascent resilience networks. Undertaking this type of community-university partnership is not without its challenges. However, overcoming roadblocks and establishing communityuniversity partnerships can help at-risk communities

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WORKS CITED Adger, W. N. 2003. “Social capital, collective action, and adaptation to climate change.” Economic Geography 79 (4):387-404.

Beatley, T. 2009. Planning for Coastal Resilience: Best Practices for Calamitous Times. Washington DC: Island Press.

Berke, P., and S. P. French. 1994. “The Influence of State Planning Mandates on Local Plan Quality.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 13 (4):237-250.

Brand, F., and K. Jax. 2007. “Focusing the Meaning(s) of Resilience: Resilience as a Descriptive Concept and a Boundary Object.” Ecology and Society 12 (1):23.

Burley, D., P. Jenkins, S. Laska, and T. Davis. 2007. “Place Attachment and Environmental Change in Coastal LouisianaP.” Organization and Environment 20 (3):347-366.

CPRA, LA. 2012. Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Cutter, S. 2016a. “The landscape of disaster resilience indicators in the USA.” Natural Hazards 80:741-758.

Cutter, S. 2016b. “Resilience to What? Resilience for Whom?” The Geographical Journal 182 (2):110-113.

Davoudi, S. 2012. “Resilience: A Bridging Concept or a Dead End?” Planning Theory & Practice 13 (2):299-333.

Folke, C. 2006. “Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for socialecological systems analyses.” Global Environmental Change 16:253-267.

Godschalk, D.R. 2003. “Urban Hazard Mitigation: Creating Resilient Communities.” Natural Hazards Review 4 (3):136-143.

Holling, C.S. 1973. “Resilience and stability of ecological systems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:1–23.

Holling, C.S. 2001. “Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological, and social systems.” Ecosystems 4:390-405.

Karl, H., L. Susskind, and K. Wallace. 2007. “A Dialogue, Not a Diatribe.”

Environment 49 (1):20-34.

Laska, S., G. Wooddell, R. Hagelman, R. Gramling, and M. T. Farris.

2005. “At Risk: the Human, Community and Infrastructure Resources of Coastal Louisiana.” Journal of Coastal Research 44 (90-111).

Markusen, A. 2003. “Fuzzy Concepts, Scanty Evidence, Policy Distance: The Case for Rigour and Policy Relevance in Critical Regional Studies.”

Regional Studies 37:701-717.

Matyas, D., and M. Pelling. 2014. “Positioning resilience for 2015: the role of resistance, incremental adjustment and transformation in disaster risk management policy.” Disasters 39:S1-S18.

Maurasse, D. 2001. Beyond the Campus: How Colleges and Universities Form Partnerships with their Communities. New York: Routledge.

McBeth, M. , and K. Bennett. 2001. “Rural Elected Officials, Environmental Policy, and Economic Composition.” Policy Studies Journal 29 (1):118-127.

NCR. 2009. Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate. In Panel on Strategies and Methods for Climate-Related Decision Support, Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. National Resource Council: Washington DC Nelson, M., R. Ehrenfeucht, and S. Laska. 2007. “Planning, Plans, and People: Professional Expertise, Local Knowledge, and Governmental Action in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.” Cityscape 9 (3):23-52.

Ostrander, S., and K. Portney. 2007. Acting Civicall: From Urban Neighborhoods to Higher Education. Medford, MA: Tufts University Press.

Rittel, H., and M. Webber. 1973. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4:155-169.

Susskind, L. . 2010. “Responding to the risks posed by Climate Change: Cities Have No Choice but to Adapt.” Town Planning Review 81 (3):217-235.

Trisolini, K. 2010. “All Hands On Deck: Local Governments and the Potential for Bi-Directional Climate Change Regulation.” Stanford Law Review 62 (3):669-746.

Vale, L., and T. Campanella. 2005. The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Walker, B., and D. Salt. 2006. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington DC: Island Press.

Zwald, M., A. Eyler, K. Goins, and S. Lemon. 2016. “Multilevel Analysis of Municipal Officials’ Participation in Land Use Policies Supportive of

Lee, T., and C. Koski. 2012. “Building Green: Local Political Leadership Addressing Climate Change.” Review of Policy Research 29 (5):605-624.

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Deitz, T., and P. Stern. 1998. “Science, Values, and Biodiversity.” Policy Forum 48 (6):441-444.

Manning-Broome, C., J. Dubinin, and P. Jenkins. 2015. The View from the Coast: Local Perspectives and Policy Recommendations on FloodRisk reduction in South Louisiana. Center for Planning Excellence: Baton Rouge, LA.

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ST E P S TO WARD RE COVERY A To o l f o r D i s a s t e r R e c o v e r y P l a n n i n g , M a n a g e m e n t , a n d Tr a c k i n g KATIE KIRSCH Katie Kirsch, MS, is a research associate in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health. She is the project manager ofor the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool at trackyourrecovery.org.

JENNIFER HORNEY Jennifer Horney, PHD, MPH, is an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the

public health impacts of disasters and linkages between plan quality and post-disaster outcomes.

The persistent movement of people and economic development to highly vulnerable regions, such as the U.S. Southeastern Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, has dominated growth in disaster losses for the past 50 years (Pielke et al. 2008). The escalation of economic losses resulting from natural disasters in the U.S. —- rising faster than either overall population or gross national product —- highlights the critical need for more effective, and resilience building, strategies for disaster recovery (Gall et al. 2011). While the inherent geographic vulnerabilities of a coastal community cannot be modified, pre-disaster recovery planning has been shown to significantly improve post-event recovery outcomes (Zukowski 2014). After a disaster and during a time of high stress and uncertainty, pressure to make decisions and allocate funds to quicken recovery results in decisions that may be made with little time for deliberation or data gathering (Olshansky and Johnson 2010). In the absence of pre-disaster planning for recovery, insufficient recovery management can result in a failure to restore or improve upon pre-disaster conditions (Smith and Wenger 2006).

At the federal level, the Disaster Mitigation Act requires state and local governments to adopt hazard mitigation plans as a condition of receiving certain forms of federal disaster assistance (Disaster Mitigation Act 2000). Despite the 10 6

clear standards, and strong oversight have generally resulted in either low levels of compliance or low quality plans.

A core set of plan quality principles provide a measurable, adaptable, and sufficient way to form a holistic evaluation of a community (Berke et al. 2014).

Since established plan quality principles may not be fully suited for the development and evaluation of recovery plans, researchers have sought to define indicators or metrics to measure and better understand recovery trajectory in disaster affected communities (Chang 2010; Cutter, Burton, and Emrich 2010; Dwyer and Horney 2014; Horney et al. 2016; Jordan and Javernick-Will 2014; Norris et al. 2008).

Federal guidance has been offered as well. The National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF) was developed to guide local, state, and federal planning activities, core capabilities, and operational structures in preparation for and in the aftermath of disaster

TABLE 1 - Counties and Cities with a Population Over 10,000 on the U.S. Southeast Atlantic and Gulf Coasts

with Recovery Plans

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recognized benefits of pre-disaster recovery planning, no such federal requirement exists for recovery plans.

For this and other reasons, the development of high quality disaster recovery plans has lagged at both the state and local levels with some notable exceptions (Table 1)(U.S. Government Accountability Office 2016; Berke et al. 2014). The City of Los Angeles, California, created a Recovery and Reconstruction plan in 1987, several years before the 1994 Northridge Earthquake (City of Los Angeles 1994). Florida enacted legislation in 2008 requiring all local governments to adopt predisaster recovery plans either as a component of the local comprehensive plan or as a stand-alone document.

The North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act has required the adoption of recovery elements in land use plans in coastal counties since the late 1990s, and community-engaged post-disaster recovery planning processes in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina led to the adoption of a regional recovery plan (Norton 2005; Louisiana Speaks 2007). However, mandates for recovery planning that are put in place without funding support,

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events (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2016). The core capabilities described in the NDRF include planning, public information and warning, operational coordination, economic recovery, health and social services, housing, infrastructure systems, and natural and cultural resources (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2016). Continuous monitoring and evaluation is required to determine the progress of a community in becoming proficient in these capabilities. However, capacity of local governments to monitor the multiple domains of a community may be impeded given that disaster recovery is subject to the compression of multiple types of redevelopment and recovery activities into a shortened post-disaster time period (Olshansky, Hopkins, and Johnson 2012). Therefore, resources that streamline the process of data collection and analysis are needed to eliminate this burden and allow decision-makers to more efficiently allocate their time to the benefit of the whole community.

THE DISASTER RECOVERY TR ACKING TOOL Recovery from disasters is a core responsibility for federal, state, and local governments. Systematic means of measuring the disaster recovery process across events and over time are needed to plan for and recover from disasters.

FIGURE 1- Example of Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool Metric Chart

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Developed as part of the former Coastal Hazards Center of Excellence (now known as the Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool (www.trackyourrecovery.org) was created to provide a free, secure, web-based disaster recovery management platform for local governments and decision-makers.

METRIC DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION The monitoring function of the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool consists of eighty-four metrics, organized within four themes (financial, process, public sector, and social) and ten focus areas derived from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Recovery Support Functions (RSFs) and core capabilities (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2016). These metrics include both user-entered data (n=49) and data that are automatically populated from publically available sources (e.g., the American Community Survey, County Business Patterns, Disaster Declarations Summaries) across multiple years (n=35). These metrics were developed through a process that included: 1) a systematic review of the literature; 2) a content review of eighty-

“

all communities should have a high-quality, community-wide disaster recovery plan that reflects their own jurisdiction’s culture and practice of recovery planning.”

seven pre-disaster recovery plans developed by U.S. Gulf Coast and U.S. Atlantic counties and municipalities; 3) case studies of disaster affected communities including Hoboken, New Jersey and New Hanover County, North Carolina; 4) twenty-one key informant interviews; 5) two focus groups with ten experts; and 6) a case study of six disaster-affected communities located in Texas (Dwyer and Honey 2014; Horney and Smith 2015; Horney et al.

2016).

One case study of the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool’s functionality focused on New Hanover County’s recovery from Hurricane Irene in 2011. Hurricane Irene made

The metrics included in the current Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool were developed to capture a concise snapshot of community recovery functions at the local level and are applicable throughout the recovery continuum, defined by FEMA as a “sequence of interdependent and often concurrent activities that progressively advance a community towards a successful recovery” (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2016). When leveraged in advance of a disruptive event, the metrics provided can guide preparedness and mitigation efforts by enabling users (e.g., planners, emergency managers, and longterm recovery committees) to readily identify and better understand existing vulnerabilities within the community, such as households without access to a vehicle. For example, practitioners populating the tool with baseline data from existing planning documents 109

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These activities provided validation of the proposed metrics identified in the systematic review. For example, during the content review of disaster recovery plans, a total of 204 potential metrics were identified in plans and categorized by RSF or core capability. All planbased metrics were categorized into one of the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool’s metrics, indicating that planbased metrics validated the literature review-based metrics (Horney et al. 2016). Key informant interview and focus group participants also supported the validity of the proposed metrics, pointing out that they “capture the complexities of community disaster recovery and provide potential opportunities for linkages to the development of disaster recovery plans and other activities that could increase community resilience in the future,” and also suggested changes mostly with the organization of the metrics (Dwyer and Horney 2014).

A retrospective review of two case study communities undergoing recovery provided additional validation.

The case studies were an attempt to use a community’s actual recovery experiences to collect data on the metrics and demonstrate how local recovery activities could be documented and shown to fulfill national recovery priorities.

landfall several times along the east coast of the United States in late August 2011, causing over $16 billion in damages. The storm’s first landfall in the United States was on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, just north of New Hanover County. New Hanover County, located in southeastern North Carolina and bordering the Atlantic Ocean, has approximately 200,000 residents (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Findings from the case study indicated that nearly half (forty-six percent) of the proposed metrics were represented in the Hurricane Irene recovery, both within community planning documents such as the County’s Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan Update in 2010 and in media reports and other documentation such as the New Hanover County Emergency Management Center’s Facebook page, Tweets, and YouTube videos that were created to inform residents about recovery issues (Covi 2012). Both baseline and current status data were most widely available for metrics related to economy, housing, and infrastructure. Fewer data were available for metrics in natural and cultural resources.

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can compare pre- and post-disaster status using baseline data and updated current status data to identify disparate patterns of recovery in different focus areas such as housing or economic development. Quantitative data collected about ongoing recovery needs can serve as a means of promoting transparency and fostering public confidence in the actions of the local governing body. Reports generated by the tool can provide users a way to prioritize recovery goals and activities, potentially making recovery more effective and efficient and communities more resilient.

MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS The management functions of the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool enable local users to maintain records of public outreach activities and meetings; store and access essential information for community organizations and other stakeholders; log, prioritize, and track the progress of recovery-oriented tasks; and capture resource inventories and expenditures for grant eligibility and reporting.

TR ACKING AND REPORTING Effective management of recovery operations necessitates rapid and reliable record keeping. In the aftermath of a disaster, decision-makers are challenged by resource limitations and time constraints. Therefore, the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool also functions as a disaster recovery management platform, enabling users to maintain accessible records of public outreach activities and local contacts, log and monitor the status of recovery-oriented tasks, and capture resource expenditure data required for grant eligibility and reporting (Figure 1). To streamline

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the process of required reporting, FEMA summary record forms may be automatically populated following data entry. The ability to generate forms from existing records saves critically needed time following a disaster.

FUTURE WORK Ultimately, all communities should have a highquality, community-wide disaster recovery plan that reflects their own jurisdiction’s culture and practice of recovery planning and focuses on the inclusion of a network of stakeholders who share responsibility in rebuilding efforts. A holistic perspective on the progress of disaster recovery is essential for the development of well-informed disaster recovery plans that are actionable, feasible, and effective. For example, one of the primary indicators of a high-quality plan is a strong community fact base that accurately characterizes local conditions, such as identified hazards and existing resources available to reduce risk. It is often difficult for smaller communities with limited capacity for recovery planning to develop a robust fact base focused on highpriority issues. In this case, data collected to populate the metrics in the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool can guide the development of specific recovery plan elements, such as the fact base, as part of a larger plan, or the development of a stand-alone recovery plan. In the near future, the Disaster Recovery Tracking Tool will provide a plan building template to give users an opportunity to leverage their time, effort, and resources by using the data entered into the Tool to develop a pre-disaster recovery plan for their jurisdiction.

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U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 2016. National Disaster Recovery Framework. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Second edition. https://www.fema.gov/media-librarydata/1466014998123-4bec8550930f774269e0c5968b120ba2/National_ Disaster_Recovery_Framework2nd.pdf.

Horney, Jennifer, and Gavin Smith. 2015. Measuring Successful Disaster Recovery. A Case Study of Six Communities in Texas, United States. Tysons, VA: LMI Research Institute.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. 2016. Disaster Recovery. FEMA Needs to Assess Its Effectiveness in Implementing the National Disaster Recovery Framework. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office. http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677511.pdf.

Jordan, Elizabeth, and Amy Javernick-Will. 2014. “Determining the Causal Factors of Community Recovery.” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 32:405-27.

Zukowski, Rebecca S. 2014. “The Impact of Adaptive Capacity on Disaster Response and Recovery: Evidence Supporting Core Community Capabilities.” Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 29:380-7.

Louisiana Speaks. 2007. Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan. Vision and Strategies for Recovery and Growth in South Louisiana. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana Recovery Authority. http://www.cpex.org/louisiana-speaks/.

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Dwyer, Caroline, and Jennifer Horney. 2014. “Validating Indicators of Disaster Recovery with Qualitative Research.” PLOS Current Disasters 6:ecurrents.dis.ec60859ff436919e096d51ef7d50736f. doi:10.1371/ currents.dis.ec60859ff436919e096d51ef7d50736f.

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R E I M AGI NI NG CO M M UNITY RES ILIENC E The Coastal Dynamics Design Lab

ANDREW FOX Andrew Fox, PLA, ASLA, is a landscape architect and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture in the North Carolina State University College of Design and co-director of the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab. His teaching and research focus on public landscapes with

specialization in design for coastal regions, low-impact development tools and techniques, and community involvement.

DAVID HILL David Hill, AIA, is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture in the North Carolina State University College of Design and co-director of the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab. His teaching and research focus on design for coastal regions, integrative digital simulation processes, and architectural prototype design and production in contemporary practice.

The mission of the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab (CDDL) is to organize and lead transdisciplinary research and design teams to address critical ecological and community development challenges in vulnerable coastal regions, with a concentrated focus on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. Operating from within the North Carolina State University College of Design, the CDDL integrates design, research, teaching, and outreach to address a broad spectrum of scales, ranging from regional plans to individual sites and buildings.

Coastal research and design is often separated into discrete scientific, academic, and professional fields. The CDDL transforms this siloed approach by coupling designers— architects, landscape architects, graphic designers, and engineers—with scientists and local stakeholders to create innovative, sustainable, adaptable, and resilient design scenarios that address the environmental and human needs of coastal communities. The lab relies on the latest scientific data to inform its work, and it has built strategic partnerships with experts in the North Carolina State Colleges of Engineering, Natural Resources, and Sciences as well as the University of 11 2

North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute (UNC-CSI).

Additional collaborators include planning experts from the University of North Carolina Coast Resilience Center of Excellence and numerous professional design firms.

Working with partners and students, the lab produces new ways of dealing with challenges associated with long-term sea level variations and powerful Atlantic storm forces. The collaborative project teams at the CDDL seek greater understanding of the dynamic natural forces and human-made developments that shape the coastal region’s physical environments as well as its socio-cultural and economic conditions.

OUTER BANKS REGIONAL STUDY The Outer Banks are a unique geographical feature that distinguishes North Carolina’s coast in comparison to other shorelines of the Eastern U.S. The narrow strand of barrier islands stretches 200 miles north-tosouth along the coast and, at points, separates from the mainland shoreline by up to 30 miles. The islands’ eastwest dimensions range in width from a few hundred feet to three miles. In spite of the spatial limitations, towns

FIGURE 1 - The CDDL works collaboratively and interactively

to connect designers, researchers, students, and the lay public. Image: Jared Kaelin

along the Outer Banks have developed dense urban and residential patterns that place residents, buildings, and infrastructure at risk in flood- and wind-prone areas.

For many people in these towns, the temperate climate and expansive coastline views compensate for the risks associated with oceanic storms and global sea-level rise.

The population in the Outer Banks counties of Dare and Currituck increased by 13.2% and 29.5%, respectively, from 2000 to 2010. While permanent residents number approximately 34,000 in Dare County, another six million tourists visit the county each year (Sturza et al.

2010). Like other communities in the Outer Banks, Dare County’s largest economic generator is tourism.

Dare County relies on the dynamic interplay between economy, ecology, society, and climate. The county contains more water surface than land area within its borders and it supports diverse ecosystems that include marshes, estuarine sounds, beaches, and maritime forests—each vulnerable to storm forces and urban 113

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The CDDL’s participatory process informs its activities across the realms of teaching, research, and engagement.

Participatory design processes embedded within communities offer the greatest potential to understand the people and places that resilient infrastructure is meant to serve (Figure 1). Coupling data collection activities with computational procedures enables the teams to accurately model a broad range of community and landscape design scenarios based on potential longand short-term environmental variables. To illustrate its organization, operations, and outcomes, this article presents four speculative projects that demonstrate the various scales at which the CDDL works and highlight a range of unique design issues and opportunities specific to North Carolina’s coastal communities.

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development. In its disaster mitigation report, the Dare County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) outlines current best practices to sustaining the natural and built environment; it states that recurring flood damage affects “as much as fifty percent of the county in terms of buildings damaged or destroyed” (Sturza et al. 2010, 8). Flood maps show that even flooding in a Category 1 hurricane would submerge significant portions of developed areas in Dare County towns. Data from the North Carolina Bathymetry/ Topography Sea Level Rise Project reports trends that “range from 1.79 millimeter per year at Yaupon Beach to 4.27 millimeter per year at Duck” (Zervas, 2004). This data underscores the need for scientists, planners, and designers to develop alternative approaches to coastal design and natural resource management.

CDDL’s Outer Banks Regional Study catalogs and presents research that addresses many of these critical socioenvironmental challenges. It also visualizes data and provides initial metrics for designers and community stakeholders. The final document is a catalog of synthetic diagrams and infographics illustrating various topics including: Drivers of Change, Potential Future Brownfields, North Carolina Hurricanes, Seasonal Shifts, and Coastal Fisheries. The study preceded and informed a series of design proposals for Dare County that are discussed in the following section.

environments across a spectrum of social, economic, and ecological organizations.

Working with local officials, agencies, and stakeholders, the PARCS projects were developed over a two-year period in Dare (2014) and Carteret (2015) Counties, North Carolina. Each was undertaken as the focus of a North Carolina State College of Design course entitled Coastal Dynamics Studio. This course organized architecture and landscape architecture students to address acute and chronic coastal community issues via collaborative and comprehensive design processes. The course relied on numerous partnerships, including the UNC-CSI, the Dare County OEM, and the Town of Beaufort.

PARCS FOR THE OUTER BANKS (DARE COUNT Y, NORTH CAROLINA) Delivered in two phases, the first PARCS project took place in the 2014 fall semester and used the research generated through the development of the Outer Banks Regional Study. The project also relied on the experience and expertise of the Dare County OEM.

PRO-ACTIVE RECOVERY COMMUNIT Y STRUCTURES (PARCS)

The studio operated from both the North Carolina State University campus and the UNC-CSI, located on Roanoke Island. In developing their proposals, students used innovative analysis methods including remote-controlled quad-copter site reconnaissance and a Tangible Geo-spatial (TanGeo) Modeling System that links physical modeling to GIS software in real time.

The CDDL initiated the concept of Pro-Active Recovery Community Structures (PARCS) to describe a design approach that creates civic amenities and housing for dayto-day use that can rapidly transform into post-disaster staging and recovery sites. This proactive approach to adaptive site development has the ability to bring about recovery more rapidly. The principal question that guides the development of PARCS is, “How can communities proactively develop underutilized and/or damaged sites into resilient, multi-use community facilities that are capable of adapting to short- and long-term climatically and anthropogenically induced change?” This line of questioning examines the roles that design and planning play in creating, promoting, and maintaining resilient built

During the first phase (five weeks), students collaborated with stakeholders and community leaders in Dare County to conduct a needs assessment and develop regional plans that identified vulnerable areas and sites across the county. In the second phase (eleven weeks), students worked independently and in teams to design landscape and architectural components that addressed various vulnerabilities and community needs (i.e., economic development, recreation, water quality) of the regional plan. The design schemes were based on resilient and adaptive design strategies and provided innovative solutions for disaster mitigation and postdisaster recovery. The projects reimagined emergency

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FIGURE 2 - Small and adaptive, the Woodser Huts draw on local craft and trade traditions to reimagine the look, feel, and function

of coastal structures. Image: Meredith Smith

house construction draws on traditional local wood building methods while also translating fiberglass fabrication techniques commonly used in contemporary boatbuilding (Figure 2).

LIVING SHORELINES

RODANTHE FERRY TERMINAL

Living shorelines afford greater recreational access to the soundside of the Outer Banks and provide increased resilience at the water’s edge. Engineered substructures, vegetation, and oyster colonies augment the shore and support natural habitats and ecologies while mitigating the effects of wave attack and storm surge.

This project proposes to replace the existing, lowvolume emergency ferry ramp at Blackmar Gut, a small soundside inlet located across North Carolina Highway 12 from the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station near Rodanthe’s northern edge. The new terminal houses a community center, recreational boathouse, pier and boardwalk, and exhibition space for cultural and historical artifacts. Each of these programmed spaces can rapidly convert in response to storms and other crises. For example, the boardwalk is designed to transform into emergency housing (Figure 3).

LIFEHOUSE

The Lifehouse concept is inspired by lighthouses and life-saving stations—iconic Outer Banks structures that ensure community safety. This project provides a new, updated model for community safety and emergency services buildings. In the Lifehouse, an EMS and first responder station doubles as a community center and temporary post-disaster housing and relief site. Similar to historic lighthouses and lifesaving stations, a network of Lifehouses would be distributed throughout the Outer Banks.

WOODSER HUTS SE ASONAL HOUSING

These raised soundside cottages provide seasonal tourist housing with features that make them more durable than typical coastal houses. This prototype housing serves as both a base for recreational activities and accommodations for secondary responders and volunteers in post-disaster recovery situations. The

PARCSV2.0: THE BEAUFORT STUDIO The context for the 2015 edition of the Coastal Dynamics Studio was North Carolina’s Crystal Coast. This coastline is a narrow strand of barrier islands that protect the mainland from oceanic forces. A series of estuarine sounds lie in and between these sandy ribbons and the mainland. For centuries, the region has supported large-scale commercial fishing and maritime industries. Like other parts of the North Carolina coast, the Crystal Coast experiences frequent Atlantic storms, including nor’easters and hurricanes.

The 2015 projects were specifically focused on the historic Town of Beaufort. Beaufort is located adjacent 115

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infrastructure by expressly giving it dual purpose. The following examples illustrate design scenarios that address both disaster recovery and cultural/recreational needs.

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to Morehead City and—as the third oldest town in North Carolina (founded 1709)—holds significant cultural, historical, and ecological value for the region and state.

These assets include a National Historic District, the nearby Fort Macon State Park (a Civil War fortification), Rachel Carson Coastal Reserve, and the Bogue and Shackleford Banks.

Students worked closely with Town of Beaufort staff, town council members, and residents who offered guidance and critical feedback. Similar to the 2014 project, the studio was split into two phases—research and design. During the first phase (six weeks), students interviewed residents, business owners, and community leaders to produce a series of analytical videos that examined Beaufort’s social systems, cultural characteristics, local economy, built environment, and natural systems. In the second phase (ten weeks), students worked independently and in teams to define a town-wide network of projects. Four of the eighteen projects are described below.

TOWN CREEK WATERFRONT PL AN

Town Creek is a large wetland area within the town limits that is currently inaccessible to residents. The goal of this subarea plan was to develop cultural amenities that invite visitors to engage with and learn about the importance of coastal wetlands. The proposal for this area of town included a fishing co-op and education center (Figure 4), living shoreline, greenway trails, wetland education center, and environmental art activated via stormwater overflows.

HARBOR PARK

Harbor Park is a new community green space that occupies the small peninsula where the old North Carolina Highway 70 Bridge once delivered high-speed traffic into Beaufort. Providing direct water access on three sides, the park is designed to connect residents and tourists to the local aquaculture and fishing industries.

The design includes commercial and recreational docks, fish market, shallow water beach, and a series of rental cabins. All associated structures are adaptive; the fish market converts to a distribution center and the cabins transform into temporary housing for first and second responders.

LENNOXBERRY DISTRIC T CAMPUS

The master plan for the new Lennoxberry District Campus focuses on balancing the town’s need for economic development with protecting its natural resources. The plan is comprised of three primary components: Water Tower Park, Hedrick Street retrofit, and the Lennoxberry Light Industrial Center. The goals of the design are to educate the community through passive design strategies and strengthen community resilience through job training, economic development, and communal open space.

STREET STORMWATER RETROFIT TING AND FLOOD MITIGATION PROJEC TS

Numerous streetscapes were evaluated during the semester. Each street project was comprised of seven “complete street” components: street furnishings, traffic

FIGURE 3 - Integrated features such as electrical and potable water hook-ups allow for the structure to transition from community center to

temporary disaster housing. Image: Andrew McCall

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FIGURE 4- A venue for public outreach, the center provides a space where marine science researchers, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) staff, and local fisher-persons can demonstrate sustainable fishing and aquaculture best practices. Image: Joseph Burkett

calming measures, sidewalks, stormwater treatment, street trees, bike lanes, and on-street parking. Many of these projects were also focused on flood mitigation.

These specific projects explored a series of street retrofitting scenarios that proposed and evaluated strategies for dealing with chronic, first-flush flooding events within existing street rights-of-way.

COASTAL HOUSING STUDIO

Designing for UNC-CSI’s campus on the Croatan Sound, students considered the challenges of coastal conditions—particularly storms, seasonal shifts in weather, adjacent sensitive wildlife habitats, and

The CSI Housing is intended to provide short-term living quarters and social spaces for a range of visitors: semester-long researchers, college students on field trips, and younger students in summer educational programs. While accommodating simple functions such as sleeping, eating, studying, relaxing, and socializing, the houses balance hazard mitigation strategies with desires for panoramic views and building enclosure systems capable of opening to take in daylight and operable to allow natural ventilation. Safety, building energy performance, and experience are often at odds in coastal houses. A house with large windows may be ideal for views but susceptible to increased energy loads and potential breakage in storms. In each design scheme, the students measured the costs and benefits of their designs from the standpoints of performance, experience, and resilience. They developed metrics and technical reports to analyze the appropriateness of their 117

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Ecological imperatives are redefining the way that architects, landscape architects, and engineers collaborate to solve building and site design challenges.

Holistic approaches to design require teams of specialists from multiple professional disciplines to solve complex problems that integrate regional, local site, building, and infrastructural systems. In a course that models integrative professional practice, students from the North Carolina State Colleges of Design and Engineering have collaborated on a project to design new short-term housing for the UNC-CSI campus. Students investigated sustainable and resilient design strategies, and then worked in teams to test these strategies through design.

The studio served as a testing ground for building simulation and design that explored innovative site, mechanical, electrical, structural, and cladding systems.

protected water and landscapes. Students researched Outer Banks vernacular building methods. They documented techniques that local residents have used for centuries to construct and maintain buildings in harsh coastal environments that degrade even the most durable materials and structures, including high winds, heavy rains, flooding, and salty air. Student teams translated basic traditional approaches and merged them with new, innovative design and construction concepts to create housing that appears at once indigenous and inventive (Figures 5-6).

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decisions and documented decisions in an iterative design process that optimized design outcomes. Several themes emerged: adaptability, resiliency, combined natural and passive systems, transformable facades, sunlight and wind harnessed for energy generation, floors elevated above freeboard, and innovative structural systems and building forms to deal with severe lateral wind loads and potential storm surge. Teams also developed low-impact schemes that preserve ecosystems while allowing guests to experience the site’s natural features. These elements included pedestrian pathways, boardwalks, stormwater retention devices, production and test gardens, and water access points to improve site connectivity, encourage physical activities, and foster community among the residents.

DEPLOYABLE UNIT FOR MOBILE RESEARCH (DUMORE)

FIGURE 5 - UNC-CSI building energy performance analysis (Home

Energy Rating Systems index). Image: Adam Dunn, Abhilash Margabandu, Courtney Richeson, and Carlos Vega

FIGURE 6 - View of UNC-CSI housing units bridging stormwater

bioretention devices. Image: Forrest Britton, Max Martin, Peter Galan, and Rama Krishna

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Because the CDDL undertakes projects throughout North Carolina’s coastal region, operations are highly variable across geographic scale, context, and accessibility. To address this unique and adaptive support need, the CDDL is presently developing a Deployable Unit for Mobile Research (DUMoRe, pronounced “do more”).

Mobility and connectivity are essential to effectivelyconducted research, teaching, and design in situ, over longer periods of time, and in remote locations. This requires specialized equipment, materials, and supplies that can travel with the lab’s researchers, students, and partners. In a multi-faceted approach to site analysis and design, the CDDL deploys quad-copters to capture aerial images, kayaks to observe and document shoreline environments, and GIS systems that log critical data for use in design exercises. The equipment is cumbersome to transport and sensitive to environmental conditions.

The goal of the DUMoRe is to consolidate field operations and extend the lab’s research and community engagement capabilities. The unit will become a mobile

hub for engaging collaborators, collecting data, and presenting work in locations that are currently out of range, targeting communities normally missed by standard public meeting processes. When fully designed and outfitted, the DUMoRe will generate its own onsite electricity; house computer design and prototyping workstations; facilitate group design and presentation sessions with marker, pin-up, and projection boards; and store materials and supplies. Additionally, racks on the unit will hold bikes and kayaks, and may offer the potential to house researchers for short periods of time (Figure 7).

that leverage local experience and expertise across many disciplines. Through immersive engagement processes and consultation with researchers and design professionals, the lab and its students continue to develop multi-scenario, holistic, and context-driven design proposals that assist communities in planning for more resilient futures.

CONCLUSION The North Carolina coast is not unique in the environmental and anthropogenic challenges that it faces. The issues are wide-reaching and common to other developed coastlines in the U.S. and the world. While the research and design presented within this article focuses on North Carolina locations, the lessons are transferable to coastal communities worldwide.

“Freeboard,“ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), accessed January 16, 2017, https://www.fema.gov/freeboard.

Sturza, R., J. Meads, G. Skeen, E. Mann, J. Jones, N.H. Sanderson, M. Johnson, and J. Phillips. “Dare County Hazard Mitigation Plan.” County of Dare, North Carolina: Dare County Board of Commissioners, 2010.

Zervas, C. North Carolina Bathymetry/Topography Sea Level Rise Project: Determination of Sea Level Trends, NOAA Technical Report NOS CO_OPS 041.

Silver Spring: United States of America Department of Commerce, 2004. Accessed January 16, 2017. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ publications/techrpt41.pdf.

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The successful development of highly adaptable, resilient infrastructure requires contextual sensitivity, transdisciplinary expertise, and community-engaged design processes. The CDDL and its partners seek transformational participatory design processes

WORKS CITED

FIGURE 7 - The DUMoRe will expand access to isolated sites by allowing us to travel with equipment (kayaks, bikes, quad-copters,

communication devices, computers, printers, etc.). Image: Joseph Burkett

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R E VI E W | P RE CARI O US C LA IMS Th e Pro m i s e a n d Fa i l u re o f Wo r k p l a c e Pro t e c t i o n s i n t h e United States by Shannon Gleeson

AUTHOR | SHANNON GLEESON Review by Darien Alexander Williams

Pressure for legislative solutions to issues involving immigration, labor standards, minimum wage, and employment discrimination continues to build. Sharon Gleeson’s timely work, Precarious Claims, reveals glaring gaps in labor standards enforcement, veering clear of headline labor court cases, instead honing in on the manner in which most of the population combats workplace violations: careful but persistent navigation of a labyrinth of lawyers, state agencies, and insurance companies. Gleeson contends that current labor standards legislation sets an inadequately low bar to protect workers from employer abuse, and the institutions designed to protect workers actually often serve as barriers to justice.

This thorny path to restitution calls into question the actual reach and effectiveness of workplace standards and labor legislation. Precarious Claims features accessible, real-life personal narratives paired with expert analysis of institutional organization and bureaucratic structure.

Shannon Gleeson joined the faculty of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 2014, focusing research efforts on low-wage workers and immigration. Her experience illuminating issues relating to implementation of law that disproportionately affects Latinx immigrant populations in the United States, in conjunction with her work examining state institutions at all levels of operation, aided in clearly framing the narratives of marginalized workers in Precarious Claims.

Gleeson’s work attempts to take the reader through the historical background of labor legislation, before exploring the step-by-step journey of filing an abuse claim. This approach is supplemented with numerous personal accounts, elicited from workers in the midst of navigating state enforcement agencies.

The book details entire chains of bureaucratic processes, in tandem with framing workers’ struggle to pursue a claim with ongoing related hardships at home and in the workplace.

University of California Press, 2016.

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Gleeson’s assertion is three-pronged. First, even localities that boast expanding protections for workers host systems of enforcement that are convoluted, time-consuming, and not always effective. She accomplishes this by showcasing the struggles of Californian workers required to maintain contact with state agencies for multiple years, long after they have

Precarious Claims implores the reader to shift focus from the outcomes of high-profile labor abuse cases to how the majority of workers engage the system: spending months, sometimes years in doctors’ offices, filing insurance paperwork, and dealing with lawyers.

Methodologically, Gleeson’s approach is balanced.

California law is used as a case-study, with special note that the jurisdiction is one of the most progressive legislative environments in the United States. This added detail is used to underscore the severity of worker precarity in other, less-protected parts of the country.

Several hundred claimants were collected through the California Division of Workers’ Compensation, given surveys, and contacted over an extended period of time.

About 90 individuals maintained correspondence for over a year, leading to multilingual, in-depth interviews that provided the personal narratives framing the text’s argument. The book’s periodic shift between macro-level policy analysis, sub-macro survey data, and subjective experience amounts to a rich, varied exploration of U.S. workplace standards enforcement. In one example, the story of Julián, a worker in a tortilla factory, is explored and contextualized. Julián weathered abuses such as unpaid overtime, verbal harassment, and uncompensated workplace injuries with full knowledge of the extant system of protection. Rather than question the logic of the individual actor, Gleeson expertly zooms out to capture a wide set of experiences, citing the precarity of being undocumented and hesitation in attempting

enforcement mechanisms that may backfire, exposing a worker to detainment and deportation.

The text’s strengths are numerous. Particularly outstanding is the natural synthesis of classics like Weber, critical race theorists such as Bonilla-Silva, and legal scholars such as Epp. Both the style and dominant narrative structure are accessible: relaying the stories of workers, detailing each individual’s intersection of identities, personal life constraints, and connecting with more complex depictions of state organizational structure. In city and regional planning contexts, Precarious Claims reinforces the reality that the creation of an institution aimed at aiding a jurisdiction’s economic development must be carefully scrutinized from the perspective of those meant to navigate it.

Areas of further focus could include the examination of labor abuse issues from an employer’s perspective.

While it is clear that the text is not sympathetic to the constraints of employers in labor disputes, it purportedly attempts to represent the dynamic experiences of all involved actors. The scope of the text would benefit from the inclusion of detailed analyses of the tactics used by employers to avoid lawsuits, workers’ compensation, disability claims, and deal with enforcement agencies.

The book is a robust, nuanced look at the state of both historic and emerging labor issues in the United States. It gently pulls away from the well-worn path of sensationalized narratives, detailing abuses across large swaths of vulnerable populations, and instead breaks ground for further inquiry into the subtle but impactful experiences of individuals mired in bureaucratic processes. Gleeson carefully crafts a work that draws on demography, legal scholarship, and critical race theory, thoughtfully connected with unfolding struggles such as the Fight for 15 movement and coalescing promises made by the Trump administration. Precarious Claims engages political science, sociology, and city & regional planning by cautioning the reader against putting their full faith in the power of state institutions to reach all segments of the population. The book challenges the reader to rework their understanding of how legislation protects vulnerable populations, daring planners and policymakers to put careful thought into how their ideas manifest in the lives of the people they serve.

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lost the job in question and moved on. Second, the act of seeking restitution through proper, legal bureaucratic channels places already-vulnerable workers in even more precarious positions. Gleeson’s thoughtful inclusion of narratives ranging from employers’ retaliatory firing to instances of colleagues turning their backs on the aggrieved highlighted the plurality of challenges to endure. Lastly, all involved actors, including employers, workers, government agencies, lawyers, medical officials, and nonprofit organizations, experiences this enforcement system in dynamic, context-specific ways.

Through exploring procedural obstacles at all levels of operation – claims getting lost in law firm filing cabinets, hearings requiring aligned schedules, witnesses going back on testimony, revolving doors between companies and state agencies - the text tacitly builds a case for reform.

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R E VI E W | TH E WE LL-TEMPERED C ITY What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature T e a c h U s A b o u t t h e F u t u r e o f U r b a n L i f e b y J o n a t h a n F . P. R o s e AUTHOR | JONATHAN F. P. ROSE Review by Jonathan Peterson

HarperCollins Publishers, 2016.

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Great music inspires a feeling of awe and is a source of healing and refuge, but can it help heal our cities? Is there hidden wisdom within a masterclass composition that can lead to a more equitable, resilient urban environment? Affordable housing developer Jonathan F. P. Rose thinks so. In his book, The Well-Tempered City, Rose uses the metaphor of Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition of The Well-Tempered Clavier to explore how various planners, developers, civic leaders, and business leaders, when joined in concert, can produce urban solutions that improve a city’s capacity to handle stress. Rose’s book provides an overview of various urban solutions that can potentially transform a city’s power and ability to confront tough societal challenges–including growing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, referred to throughout the book as VUCA. Using examples of current city planning and real estate development projects, Rose argues that urban environments should benefit all. Ultimately, Rose is successful in creating a vision for cities that is more spiritual than the typical writing on city planning and real estate development.

Jonathan Rose is a social entrepreneur whose interests lie at the intersection of social equity, the environment, and real estate. After earning a master’s degree in regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania, Rose went on to develop real estate projects, facilitated through public-private partnerships, that include both mixed-use and mixed-income developments. These developments use sustainable building techniques in dense urban areas. His real estate, planning, and investment firm, Jonathan Rose Companies LLC., has spurred over $1.5 billion worth of development. One of his company’s projects, as discussed in The Well-Tempered City, is Via Verde, which opened in 2012 and is one of his most wellknown real estate achievements. Located in the South Bronx, Via Verde features 151 affordable apartments and 71 co-op apartments. It is complete with a green roof that provides for a community garden, wellness facilities, an onsite health clinic, and a comprehensive rainwater collection system. Rose sees this development as a part of a larger ecosystem that serves as

BOOK REVIEW

a solution to Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber’s wicked problems, which Rose calls ‘complicated problems.’

Rose envisions five key qualities, or temperaments, that help create an empowered city: coherence, circularity, resilience, community, and compassion. Coherence refers to “the long-range beauty” of a system, resulting from successful plan visioning and implementation. The section on circularity visits the ecology of urban systems and their metabolisms. The section on resilience focuses on solutions that a well-tempered city would use to deal with climate change and natural hazards. In the section on community, Rose articulates the importance of diverse social networks for all segments of society. In the final section, Rose explores a compassion built on trust and the power of collective action.

The strengths and weaknesses of Rose’s book lie in its relationship to idealism and the degree of idealism present within the potential reader. The Well-Tempered City appeals to a united vision for the future of urbanity.

Through countless examples shown under the five sections, readers are given a vivid picture of both what is possible and what is doable within cities. This optimism is only countered by the fact that some examples used to explore Rose’s temperaments have been implemented in isolation and are not applicable to all cities. This makes it difficult for the reader to determine whether or not the temperament in question is effective, especially when considering an uncertain future.

Rose’s tone borders on the spiritual as he discusses the need to reconcile two world views: the systemic view, “an understanding that nature is deeply intertwined,” and the view of the “evolutionary fitness of altruism.”

Rose’s spirituality is further explored in a section titled “The Well-Tempered City Infuses its Power with Love.”

For some practitioners and scholars, any mention of the “power of love” in urban environments may be a turn off. But the reader will find that Rose is actually pointing toward the need to acknowledge and strengthen a form of interdependence that presently exist between citizens in our cities.

The Well-Tempered City is a book for both the idealist and realist seeking high-impact urban solutions at the city or regional level. Rose encourages the creation of big plans and urban problem-solving strategies. To this end, his book gives plenty of examples of strategies from across the world that are being implemented at various civic levels to deal with pressing, dynamic challenges.

When finishing Rose’s book, a famous Daniel Burnham quote comes to mind: “Make no little plans.

They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.” Rose’s book produces an ambitious vision of local leaders in both the public and private sector coming together to draft ambitious plans for the future. These plans are all tempered by a sense of harmony that is capable of healing lives and transforming the urban environment.

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R E VI E W | E VI CTE D Po v e r t y a n d Pr o f i t i n t h e A m e r i c a n C i t y b y M a t t h e w D e s m o n d

AUTHOR | MATTHEW DESMOND Review by Sadie Nott

A more descriptive title for Matthew Desmond’s Evicted might have been The Nation’s Endorsement of Pointless Suffering.

This alternative title captures the message of the book and borrows a phrase that Desmond himself uses. Though by all standards a page-turner, the topic at hand is indeed far from light. The author presents a thorough examination of the housing crisis in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, specifically within the lowincome private rental market. Evicted profiles eight families in Milwaukee who are severely affected by the housing crisis. In order to best understand their stories, Desmond spent part of the year in Milwaukee in a trailer park on the city’s predominantly white South Side, followed by a period of time living in a boarding house on the North Side, a majority-black area. Seven of the families Desmond selects reside in one of these two areas; the eighth family, a couple, are the landlords of many of the North Side groups that are profiled. (Though they are far from being blameless, we quickly see that such landlords are not the cause of the crisis.) As we learn, the city is severely segregated. One family, having been evicted from multiple homes on the North Side, applies for an apartment in the Latino neighborhood of Near South Side. They are unsuccessful, and it is clear that racial discrimination is responsible. Desmond collected scenes through an ever-present tape recorder and typed up his thousands of pages of notes every evening.

As Desmond follows these families, a sort of instability and suffering follows them that simply devastates the reader, not to mention the lives of these individuals, and notably, their children.

Desmond’s portrayal of these events can be split into two parts: the purely descriptive and the explanatory. This descriptive piece is nothing short of shocking (both via anecdote and statistic), but it is perhaps the explanatory element that is more harrowing.

Here, the emphasis is on the fact that eviction is tied to, and better yet responsible for, so many other forms of disadvantage that these families encounter. As Desmond notes, “People who have the greatest need for housing assistance—the rent-burdened and evicted—are systematically denied it.”

Crown Publishing Group, 2016.

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Over the course of a year spent living in Milwaukee, Desmond comes to the realization that the often insurmountable disadvantages that go along with being severely housingburdened could be addressed by a gap that our forefathers missed:

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the right to housing. He writes, “The pursuit of happiness undeniably includes the pursuit of material well-being: minimally, being able to secure basic necessities.”

Desmond argues that the ability to procure these “basic necessities” becomes impossible when shelter is not on the list of available resources. A home, he says, is the common denominator in achieving any sort of stability.

Desmond presents these stories in order to make the broader point that we, as a country, have both the responsibility and financial ability to address the issue of housing with a universal housing voucher program.

Matthew Desmond, currently a faculty member at Harvard University, is a sociologist whose passion for understanding poverty and the way that it affects our country is evident not only through Evicted but also through accolades such as his recent award of the MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2015. Educated at Arizona State University and University of Wisconsin at Madison, Desmond began the research necessary for this ethnography while working on his dissertation in sociology. Already the coauthor of two books on race, the editor of a collection, and author of On the Frontline, Evicted leaves the reader eager to see what element of poverty Desmond will choose to examine next. And Desmond’s talents go beyond ethnographies: after realizing that there was a severe lack of data on evictions in Milwaukee, Desmond created the Milwaukee Area Renters Study (MARS), successfully interviewing about 1,100 tenants over a two-year period.

In a country where much of our population questions whether our systems of welfare are in fact necessary, there is perhaps no better book to firmly address how flawed this argument is. Desmond uses the Epilogue as a plea for better policy. Specifically, Desmond contends that a universal housing voucher program would help to solve the housing crisis by providing every family below a certain income level with a voucher usable in the vast majority of housing options (he defines this as anything

between luxurious and substandard). Once at the Epilogue, I found myself wondering why more of this forceful thinking and writing about our responsibility to end such suffering had not made it into earlier chapters.

And then, ironically, the reason becomes obvious: what better way to convince the reader than through these heart wrenching and all too frequent stories?

This is perhaps both the greatest strength and weakness of Evicted. Desmond’s method of storytelling is thorough yet simple, exposing the bones of systemic racism and oppression that form the skeleton for our country’s housing crisis. In a concluding chapter on his methods, the author explains his reasoning for steering clear of the classic “I” used by so many ethnographers. This is a wise choice; it feels as if the reader is seeing these stories unravel before her eyes. But one chapter hardly feels long enough to address the policy inadequacies that Desmond witnessed (such as lacking legal services for the poor, an impenetrable public housing waitlist, and the government’s role in exploitation of the private housing market). Desmond, with his perhaps unusually profound knowledge of the inner workings of Milwaukee’s housing crisis, not only through his research but through MARS, devotes mere pages to his suggestions on providing this “basic right” through a universal housing program and publicly funded legal aid for low-income families in housing court.

This shortcoming is a small one in the grand scheme of Desmond’s book, however. A terrifying but important read, Evicted successfully alarms so that we might actually move forward on the issues of housing access that have been worsening for a century, and have existed much longer. While they may be familiar with the gist of the situation, city planners and policymakers should take note. Yet Desmond also manages to pivot and direct his message at those who need to hear it most: anyone who still looks for bootstraps on the feet of the housingburdened.

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R E VI E W | E TH I CS I N T HE REA L WORLD 8 2 B r i e f E s s a y s o n T h i n g s t h a t M a t t e r b y Pe t e r S i n g e r

AUTHOR | PETER SINGER Review by Chris Bendix

Peter Singer’s most recent book, Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter, is a collection of threeto-four-page essays on a broad range of subjects that remind the reader that there are no simple answers, even to simple questions. The bite-sized essays challenge the reader to think deeply about the assumptions each of us makes everyday. The food we eat, the God we do or do not believe in, and our basic understanding of concepts like fairness, suffering, and value each influence the work and choices we make. Any curious reader will enjoy the focused and accessible way Singer articulates wildly complex topics in a few pages of text.

Singer is a well-known Ethicist and professor at Princeton University. He has authored numerous books and has published dozens of essays in major publications. His analytical, utilitarian philosophical bent is clear and easy to understand: each person should strive to do the most good and the least harm. This utilitarian perspective rings out loud and clear throughout this collection of essays, all of which were written in the last ten years. His arguments are simple and always logical. For example, given the choice between buying a larger house and donating $50,000 to a charity dedicated to providing essential healthcare to people in developing countries that would extend the lifespan of twenty people by ten years each, the only ethical choice, in Singer’s meticulously constructed ethical framework, is to donate the money.

Anyone interested in spending ten minutes leaning into the ethical implications inherent, but buried, in everyday decisions will find this collection of essays a fun and thought-provoking read. Flip open to an essay about the sticky, ethical issues surrounding free speech, food, lying, or selling human organs.

Or try an essay about charitable giving: is there an ethical obligation for those with means to give money or time to help those with less? Who should receive that help? And how much should we give? Is there really a right and wrong charity to give to? Singer believes that there is—and his arguments are as air-tight as one would expect from an Ivy-League philosophy professor.

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Further, a number of Singer’s arguments live up to his pledge to present ethics applicable to the real world. His discussions of charitable giving are particularly thoughtprovoking and easily actionable. Giving to charities is often an emotional decision, but, Singer argues, it should perhaps be more carefully and logically considered.

Singer’s justification for being a vegetarian is similarly clear and easily adopted should his arguments prove compelling enough for the carnivorous reader.

Many of Singer’s essays, however, are interesting thought experiments with few real-world applications— particularly those dwelling on big concepts like trust, honor, poverty and prosperity, and good and bad. Each of these concepts is certainly worth unpacking and Singer is successful in using firmly rooted real-world examples even if the implications of his brief essays are ultimately unactionable for the vast majority of readers.

The questions we often grapple with as planners tend to touch on these big concepts and have no simple solutions. Instead, we are usually tasked with evaluating choices between many solutions, each with its own unique advantages and disadvantages. Singer’s pointedly idealistic philosophical perspective is hard to reconcile with this reality. To live within Singer’s ethical framework means there is always an unobjectionable, ethically “right” answer. Unfortunately, the world is not so simple, and the ethically “right” answer may not be feasible given the constraints within which planners operate. Still, the precision and internal consistency that Singer is able to express throughout his short essays is remarkable. In addition, revisiting 30,000 foot concepts like happiness, generosity, and the role of the government could provide a refreshing perspective to sticky real-world challenges. If nothing else, this book is a lesson in how to write short, precisely argued, and compelling responses to contentious issues—a skill that any planner should strive to possess.

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R E VI E W | I N VI SI BLE NAT ION H o m e l e s s Fa m i l e s i n A m e r i c a b y R i c h a rd S c h w e i d

AUTHOR | RICHARD SCHWEID Review by Stephanie Watkins-Cruz

Every day it is more than likely that we take our homes for granted. Our beds, our own bathrooms, our kitchens, our roof. And for many, picturing life without any of those things is nearly impossible. For others, it’s reality—whether past or present As planners and public servants we are tasked with the responsibility to understand the spaces in which we live. We are charged with being aware of the complex social issues that face others within these same spaces. We are taught to recognize the historical significance behind different planning philosophies and approaches to the design of cities.

Additionally, we learn about the impact of policies from decades before us on the world we see today. That said, how is it that we have an “Invisible Nation” of families and individuals struggling to get by, existing in some of the very same spaces and places we examine?

Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America by Richard Schweid explores this question. Through policy analysis and personal accounts, he builds the case that “...today we have the capacity to eradicate this twenty-first century plague of family homelessness; we know how to do it; we need only to commit to doing so” (p.xvii).

Schweid’s tone and choice of language make for easily understood text, creating a platform for a wider audience that is inclusive of academics, practitioners, and citizens alike. He combines an analysis of historic and contemporary policy with in-depth stories of families and individuals in five U.S cities: Nashville, Tennessee; Boston, Massachusetts; Fairfax, Virginia; Portland, Oregon; and Trenton, New Jersey. He takes the reader through the history of child labor in the form of apprenticeships, the history of almshouses, congregate housing, indoor relief versus outdoor relief, and the fundamental philosophies behind several programs operating today.

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In each city, he talks about the lives of the children and parents that live in motels and hotels. Kids play inside, running up and down motel hallways because it’s too cold to play outside.

The parents scrape together enough money for rent each week and enough to eat each day or stock up on what little

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the hotel mini-fridge can hold. This environment, often comparable to substandard living conditions, has direct impacts on kids’ performances in school as well as their mental health. Children and parents alike are scared that the Department of Social Services will take them away from their family if the child seeks help; this is the first of many obstacles to getting assistance or access to resources. Even in homeless shelters, in which shelter itself is not a guarantee, family members are separated from one another.

In his discussion of various programs, Schweid describes the perception of poverty and its associated stereotypes as another obstacle to a stable living situation for many families. By juxtaposing the stories of real families with histories of programs and policies for dealing with poverty in the United States, Schweid provides the context necessary to show how pieces of programs were constructed on political ideology rather than need. His confrontation of the widespread belief that the poor are responsible for their own plight is a theme throughout the book. He also writes that this belief—that the poor are to blame for their situation—annuls public responsibility to help those in need. He recognizes that there is still a substantial part of our society that believes providing more than the minimum amount of assistance to homeless families encourages shiftlessness and discourages improvement of quality of life.

basis not far from where you and I live comfortable lives.

Children in the United States should not have to grow up this way. We must do everything possible to make the invisible nation visible so that we can deal with it and put it right for the sake of our children, and our nation,” (p185).

So why does this book matter to planners? Historically, planners have been instrumental in creating the housing affordability problem. And we must work to solidify a comprehensive and effective solution. This book provides planners with the context and history behind why many of us go into this profession and reminds us that we are responsible to a greater public good. After all, how far will we have come if we are all capacity and no will?

With all its merits, Invisible Nation does not provide tangible recommendations for moving forward. What would a plan to eradicate homelessness look like? How can we do more to “see” the previously invisible? Who is going to lead this movement?

The answer is ultimately unknown but this excerpt conveys the urgency to find one: “While policy choices often reflect political affiliations, this is not really a political issue. Millions of children in our country are unnecessarily suffering hardships, difficulties, and levels of toxic stress that should not be borne by kids. They are going through this on a daily 129

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CL A S S O F 2 0 16 M ASTE RS PROJ E CT T I T LE S

PASCAL BUGGS ASHLEY BUSH MIA CANDY RUI CHEN RACHEL EBERHARD CHRISTINA GALARDI IAN HAMILTON STEPHEN HEINY

(non) Accessible Atlanta: A View of Travel Independence for People with Disabilities Dream up Downtown: Building Community Through Walking Tours of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC Transit-Oriented Development and Station Area Typology in Durham-Orange County Light Rail Corporate & Anchor Institution Influence on Neighborhood Revitalization Connecting Health Care and Transportation Through a Prenatal Care Lens Indicators of Pedestrian Safety on North Carolina Road Corridors Safe Routes to School Projects as Pilot Opportunities

MICHAEL HOGAN

Building Economic Resilience in the Appalachian Coal Region: Case Studies from Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia

YEYING HUANG

Understanding the Determinants of Public Transportation Use of Immigrants in California

LAUREN JOYNER

Structuring the Public-Private Partnership: A Case Study of DFI’s work in Kannapolis, NC

ALEXANDER KADO

Helping America Become More Walk-Friendly: Impacts of the Walk Friendly Communities Program

CHARLA HODGES IRA KAPLAN SOPHIE KELMENSON SARAH KERNS

AMANDA KLEPPER

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Different Shades of Choice: Examination of Whether the Housing Choice Voucher Program Truly Leads to Positive Neighborhood Outcomes

Implementing Grocery Cooperatives in Low-Income Communities Feasibility of Redeveloping a Historic Property in Downtown Atlanta Coordinating Intermediated Supply Chains for Local Meat Combatting Vacant Space in the Urban Environment: Best Practices for Addressing Rising Urban Vacancies during Revitalization Efforts An Exploration of Mode Share Modeling Based on Multimodal Accessibility

STUDENT WORK

BENJAMIN LESHER

Micro-Apartment Feasibility in Small Cities

ALLEN LUM

The Rockaway Connection: A First Step in Solving Transit Needs for Outerborough Commuting

BEN LYKINS

Bryant Arkansas Small Area Plan: Bryant Reimagined

MIEKE LYNCH

MEISHA MCDANIEL

WILLIAM MOOSE TIM J. QUINN BRADFORD SHERMAN

SI SHI MICHAEL SUDOL YUANQI SUN

Including the Needs of Urban Neighborhoods in Downtown Revitalization Strategies Unmerited: Reframing the Contemporary Debate Concerning Diversity in Tech Evaluating Electric Bicycle Use in a Public Bike Share System: User Characteristics, Travel Patterns, Successes and Shortcomings Inclusive Innovation Districts: A Case Study Report Stretching the Belt: A Comparative Analysis of the Development and Roles of Urban Service Areas Usefulness of RPAT: A Smart Growth Policy Evaluation Tool Downtown Chapel Hill Design Guidelines Value Capture in Light Rail and TOD Infrastructure Financing

LUIS EDUARDO TAFUR HERRERA

Before and after BRT: Using remote sensing to measure impacts on urban growth patterns in Quito (Ecuador) and Cali (Colombia)

ANDREW TRUMP

Determining the Feasibility of Redeveloping Historic Hospital Campuses: A Case Study of Broughton Hospital in Morganton, North Carolina

SARA VANLEAR

The Women of Ahmedabad's Informal Economy

LIBBIE WEIMER

Environmental Justice Policy Recommendations for Managing Coal Ash Waste in North Carolina

YANG YANG

ELIZABETH YARNALL

Vibrancy Characteristics in Large U.S. Employment Centers: Which kind of city will be attractive to high-tech employers?

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Y EA R I N R E V I E W An Update From New East LISA FIEDLER AND NATE SEESKIN

What a year it’s been at the Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP). From conferences to publications to awards, DCRP has been incredibly busy, with thirty-eight Master’s and five PhD students graduating in May.

election in the fall, Plan for All offered an open space for discussion, healing, and group meditation on the future of the planning profession in the United States.

CONFERENCES Under our new department chair Noreen Mcdonald, in August of 2016 we welcomed fifty-three new Master’s candidates and four new PhD students. Our students and faculty have continued to make a difference on campus and in the community, building on DCRP’s legacy as a leading planning school.

LEADERSHIP Planners’ Forum, chaired by Stephanie Watkins Cruz and Ellis Johnson II had a busy year, from weekly happy hours to resume workshops, their extracurricular events, activities, and lectures have proven to once again serve as a valuable addition to traditional coursework. In October, Planner’s Forum organized a fall break trip to Nashville, where students met with planning professionals and had an opportunity to explore the city of country music.

This year, under the leadership of Sarah Parkins, Gar Yeung, and Kyrsten French, the Placemakers committee was revitalized and has been consistent in designing improvements across New East. From reorganizing the lounge and reading room bookshelves to creating and maintaining a community coffee station and calendar, Placemakers has made New East a more enjoyable space for all our students and faculty.

Plan for All, co-facilitated by Darien Williams and Hilary Pollan, helped shape department-wide improvements this year as well. By offering both brown bags and film screenings to the department, they allowed us to explore planning-related topics and issues through community experts. After a consequential presidential

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Many students took the opportunity to attend this year’s North Carolina American Planning Association Annual Conference, held in Asheville, North Carolina in September 2016. Among the sessions held, secondyear Master’s student Rachel Wexler, first-year student Carly Hoffmann, and 2016 MCRP grad Julia Barnard led the Carolina Planning Journal’s panel focused on last year’s edition, “Just Creativity”. Later that week, two first-year Master’s, Ally Clonch and Nate Seeskin, were funded by Oaks & Spokes to attend the North Carolina Bike Summit, hosted by BikeWalk NC. In January, many students and faculty attended the annual Transportation Research Board conference (TRB) in Washington, DC. At TRB, students and faculty alike presented their research in poster sessions and panel discussions. Second-year Master’s student Joe Seymour, as an Eisenhower Fellowship recipient, presented his poster on “Evaluation of the Effectiveness of State-Based Moped Licensing Requirements in Reducing Rider Collision and Fatality Rates”. Professor Noreen McDonald led a session on “Understanding Transportation-Land Use Relationships: Links to Policy” while presenting her research in different sessions regarding transportation in the UK.

HONORS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS Doctoral Student Mary Wolfe published her research titled “Association Between Neighborhood Social Environment and Children’s Independent Mobility” in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. She also was appointed as a student representative to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

A Fall 2016 Plan for All meeting

Professor Meenu Tewari completed a major project ‘Better Cities, Better Growth’ that she presented across India and at UNC. She also was invited to teach a week-long course on ‘Institutions, Economic Development, and Upgrading’ to faculty and students at the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal, India, won an Institute of the Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship for her current book project Ecologies of Risk and Stories of Adaptation, and published her co-edited book, Labor in Global Value Chains in Asia, through Cambridge University Press.

Jennifer Rangel helped program UNC Women of Worth’s spring welcome event, which encouraged selfidentified women of color to set goals for their future and create lifelong connections.

Professor Gavin Smith won the College’s Distinguished Teaching Award, recognizing him for his work on making hazard mitigation and disaster recovery control central to planning.

Alyson West and Katy Lang helped plan Carrboro Open Streets, which took place Sunday, April 9th, and proved again to be a town favorite.

Rachel Wexler launched an artist in residency program at Revolution Mill in Greensboro, NC (AirRev) and presented at Cross Currents at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. Sarah Parkins, Katy Lang, Chris Bendix, Sen Wang, Jenna Shouse, and Margaret Tartala, along with two UNC undergraduates, competed in the Urban Land Institute competition for Charlotte and received an honorable mention for their project.

Ashton Rohmer presented at the Carolinas Climate Resilience Conference in Charlotte in September 2016 on “Buy-In for Buyouts: Buyout Best Practices and Their Implications for Hazard Mitigation and Climate Change Adaptation”.

Mai Nguyen, Michael Webb, William M. Rohe, and Estefany Noria published their research “Beyond Neighborhood Quality: The Role of Residential Instability, Employment Access, and Location Affordability in Shaping Work Outcomes for HOPE VI Participants.” Rohe and Nguyen also co-authored a study titled “Mobilizing Social Capital: Which Informal and Formal Supports Affect Employment Outcome for HOPE VI Residents?”

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AN N UAL NC-A PA CONF ERENC E

2017

Featuring concurrent sessions, lightning rounds, networking opportunities, and vendor displays.

SAVE THE DAT E! September 26-29 , 2017 Greenville, North Carolina

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CA R O LI N A P LANNI NG JO U RN AL

VO LUME 4 3 CALL FO R PAP E RS The Carolina Planning Journal is now accepting abstracts for case studies, practical applications, criticism, research, and analysis related to the following planning techniques: PL A N N I N G FO R U N C E R TA I N T Y

We live in an uncertain time. How should we plan for the unknowns ahead, whether related to politics, climate change, funding, technology, or beyond?

TOPICS MIGHT INCLUDE, BUT SHOULD NOT BE LIMITED TO:

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Creative financing for affordable housing, transit, etc.

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Planning for population decline

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Sanctuary cities and planning for immigration

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The future of robots and economic development strategies

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

By August 15, 2017 authors should submit a one to two page proposal for their articles. Proposals should include the title, a short description of the topic or case, the background and significance, preliminary implications, citations, and, if an academic proposal, a summary of existing literature on the subject including the title and thesis statement of a maximum of five relevant papers. Final papers will not exceed 3,000 words. Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com.

By September 15, 2017, the Committee will make a decision on all proposals. The Committee will contact authors regarding their proposals. Authors will work with the editors to monitor the paper’s progress and provide general guidance in completing the paper within the specified timelines. Authors should expect to work through two or three drafts with the editors.

The print volume will be published in the Spring of 2018. Carolina Planning editors reserve the right to edit articles accepted for publication, subject to the author’s approval, for both length and content considerations.

Transportation planning for self-driving vehicles

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Police militarization and brutality

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Smart city planning

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CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL | R E ( ANY THING )

VOLUME 42 / 2017