Volume 45: Hazards in the Southeastern US

HAZARDS IN THE SOUTHEASTERN U N I T E D S TAT E S

Vol ume 45 / 20 20

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

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 2020, Carolina Planning Journal. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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A Better Image Durham, North Carolina ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Funding for this publication was generously provided by the Nancy Grden Graduate Student Excellence Fund, which supports graduate students working directly with the department’s Carolina Planning Journal, the John A. Parker Endowment Fund, the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association, the Graduate and Professional Student Federation 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 www.carolinaangles.com

carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

CONTRIBUTORS

SPECIAL THANKS

Natalie Swanson

Doug Bright Jacob Becker Luke Lowry Evan King Alicia Peterson Amy Sechrist Brandon Tubby

The Carolina Planning Journal would also like to thank the many people who have helped us all year long.

These people and organizations include Ben Howell and Bonnie Estes from the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association; our faculty advisor Andrew Whittemore; DCRP Chair Noreen McDonald; Mike Celeste and the entire team at A Better Image Printing; former Carolina Planning Journal Editor-inChief Margaret Keener; Planners’ Forum student leaders Frank Muraca, Lara Seltzer, David Dixon, and Amy Sechrist; the Appropriations Committee of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation; and, of course, all of our subscribers.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Leah Campbell Molly Auten Veronica Brown Olivia Corriere Will Curran-Groome Ben Ellis Jo Kwon Siobhan Nelson Anna Patterson Eli Powell

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GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Audrie Fitzsimons COVER PHOTOGRAPHER

Joseph Hoffheimer

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

HAZARDS IN THE SOUTHEASTERN U N I T E D S TAT E S

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

BAC K I S SU E T I TLE S

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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

R E ( ANY THING )

2017

V42

PLANNING FOR UNCERTAINTY

2018

V43

CHANGING WAYS, MAKING CHANGE

2019

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

CON T E N T S 0 0 8 FROM THE EDITOR 0 1 0 EDITORIAL BOARD

FE AT URE S 0 1 2 CLIMATE RESILIENCY, EQUITY, AND BURBY’S PARADOXES:

FUNDING ADAPTATION WITHOUT INCREASING VULNERABILITY Matthew Stern 0 2 0 EVALUATION OF NETWORKS OF PLANS

TO HAZARDS AND CLIMATE CHANGE: APPLICATION OF PLAN INTEGRATION FOR RESILIE NCE SCORE CARD IN NORFOLK, VIRGINIA Philip R. Berke, Jaimie Hicks Masterson, Matthew Malecha, & Siyu Yu 0 3 2 NEW COLLABORATIONS HELP LOCAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT IN

NORTH CAROLINA ADVANCE COASTAL COMMUNITY RESILIENCE PLANNING Christian Kamrath & Holly White 0 4 0 WORKING TOGETHER TO REACH RESILIENCE: HOW

COLLABORATION WAS CRITICAL IN PLANNING A SUCCESSFUL RECOVERY FOR THE CITY OF PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA April Geruso, Kayla Slater, & Michelle Bohrson 0 4 8 PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE THROUGH

PARTICIPATORY DISASTER RESEARCH: HURRICANE RECOVERY IN ROBESON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA Laura A. Bray, Olivia Vilá, Bethany B. Cutts, Margaret Crites, Hannah Goins, Sallie McLean, Nathan McMenamin, David Shane Lowry, Mac Legerton, Angela Harris 0 5 8 BOUNCE BACK TOGETHER: ENHANCING RESILIENCY

WITH AN EXPANDED VIEW OF COLLABORATION Shaleen Miller 0 6 4 THE IMPACT OF NATURAL DISASTERS ON MILITARY INSTALLATIONS

Ryan Scott

0 7 2 REHABILITATION OR EXPLOITATION? INCARCERATED

FIREFIGHTERS IN NORTH CAROLINA J. Carlee Purdum

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BOOK REVIEWS 080 THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH: LIFE AFTER WARMING

Book Review by Nora Schwaller

082 THE DIVIDED CITY: POVERTY AND PROSPERITY IN URBAN AMERICA

Book Review by Will Curran-Gnoome

0 84 SOFT CITY: BUILDING DENSITY FOR EVERYDAY LIFE

Book Review by Amy Sechrist

0 8 6 STRONG TOWNS: A BOTTOM-UP REVOLUTION TO REBUILD AMERICAN PROSPERITY

Book Review by Luke Lowry

088 SUPERPOWER: ONE MAN’S QUEST TO TRANSFORM AMERICAN ENERGY

Book Review by Olivia Corriere

090 RACE FOR PROFIT: HOW BANKS AND THE REAL ESTATE

INDUSTRY UNDERMINED BLACK HOMEOWNERSHIP Book Review by Veronica Brown 092 EVERYTHING MUST GO

Book Review by Doug Bright

ST UDENT WORK 094 BEST MASTER’S PROJECTS 096 MASTER’S PROJECT TITLES

Class of 2019

98 YEAR-IN-REVIEW: AN UPDATE FROM NEW EAST 100 NC-APA CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

VOLUME 46 CA LL F OR PA PERS

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

F RO M T H E E D I TO R

NATALIE SWANSON is the Editor-in-Chief of the

Carolina Planning Journal and a second-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, concentrating in housing and community development.

She is pursuing a career in affordable housing inspired by her research on high eviction rates. She received a B.A. in English from Rice University in Houston, Texas.

NATALIE SWANSON

DE AR RE ADERS , Volume 45 of the Carolina Planning Journal, titled Hazards in the Southeastern United States, considers how planners can prepare for natural disasters in the near and distant future. The topic is timely given the significant impacts and costs of recent natural hazard events in our backyard following Hurricanes Florence and a devastating 2017 hurricane season.

Environmental scientists and climate change specialists project that instances of million dollar natural disasters will increase over the next decade. As their communities face greater human and financial impacts from climate change and natural disasters, planners are considering how to respond in terms of preparedness, recovery, and long-term resilience. Authors in this volume discuss the challenges and best practices surrounding public participation, collaboration, equitable response, and available tools within the natural disasters context.

This edition begins by exploring existing tools to support adaptation and resilience.

Matt Stern, MCRP ‘19, considers the equitability and effectiveness of popular mechanisms to finance climate change adaptation and resilience. Outlining

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the shortcomings of existing options, he presents a new finance tool that aims to maximize equity and minimize vulnerability. Phil Berke, Jaimie Masterson, AICP, Matthew Malecha, and Siyu Yu, AICP, discuss the application of the Resilience Scorecard as a tool to measure whether mitigation plans are well integrated and actionable. The article turns to the program’s pilot community of Norfolk, Virginia as an example.

Many communities grapple with developing successful recovery and adaptation plans. Christian Kamrath, MCRP ‘18, CFM, and Holly White, AICP, CFM turn to the local case study of Nags Head, North Carolina to evaluate the role of public participation in local adaptation planning utilizing both local and state-initiated processes. Michelle Bohrson, April Geruso, and Kayla Slater offer the case study of private sector collaboration in Panama City. This case similarly identifies public engagement as essential to successful plan development.

Another set of articles also grapple with ideas of public engagement as a tool to build capacity. Laura Bray, Olivia Vilá, Bethany Cutts, Margaret Crites, Hannah Goins, Sallie McLean, Nathan McMenamin, David Lowry, Mac Legerton, and Angela Harris present a case study of public engagement in Robeson County, post-Hurricane Matthew, as a method of increasing community capacity and environmental justice as participants come to better understand personal risks that result from flooding. Shaleen Miller discusses global collaborations between organizations like botanical gardens in the wake of Hurricane Maria as examples of unconventional knowledge sharing.

The final articles consider the vulnerability and equity of response networks. Ryan Scott purports that military bases are vulnerable to sea level rise. Given that they are essential to emergency response during disaster events, he provides recommendations to protect both installations themselves and the people associated with them. Carlee Purdum discusses the exploitative nature of using incarcerated people, receiving insufficient compensation, as a cheap alternative to wildland firefighters.

As always, this volume includes an overview of Master’s Projects from 2019, a year-in-review newsletter from the halls of New East, and book reviews by current students.

The cover image by photographer Joseph Hoffheimer, MCRP ‘20, captures the Mile High Swinging Bridge on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. Much like the bridge, this volume offers guidance to help us navigate what can feel like an uncertain, frightening future. The era of climate change presents a plethora of new planning challenges, and these authors remind us not only of the necessity to change but also of our remarkable capacity to adapt.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the journal! Thank you very much for reading.

Natalie

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ED ITO R I A L B OARD The following people are integral to the success of the Journal and its online platform, CarolinaAngles.com: LEAH CAMPBELL / Managing Editor of Carolina Angles

EVAN KING / Online Content Editor

Leah Campbell is a second-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where she focuses on environmental justice and equity issues at the nexus of infrastructure planning and urban flood management.

Prior to UNC, she worked in the environmental nonprofit sector in California advocating for progressive water quality and coastal resilience policies.

Evan King is a first year Master’s student in city and regional planning.

MOLLY AUTEN / Content Editor and Incoming Molly is a senior undergraduate studying environmental sustainability and urban planning. She also works as an administrative coordinator at a land use consulting firm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her professional interests include placemaking and housing equity, but in her spare time, she enjoys singing, drinking chai lattes, and browsing New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens.

DOUG BRIGHT / Online Content Editor Doug Bright is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, specializing in transportation and pursuing the design track. He is interested in youth planning literacy, urban food systems, the social power of place, and the intersection of technology and sustainable transportation systems. He received his undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College and is a proud Chicagoan.

VERONICA BROWNR / Content Editor Veronica Brown is a first-year student in the Master’s of City and Regional Planning program. She received her undergraduate degree from Smith College, where she studied the psychology of contemporary visual culture.

Before coming to UNC, Veronica worked in communications at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

OLIVIA CORRIERE / Content Editor Olivia Corriere is a senior undergraduate studying environmental sustainability, geography, and urban planning. She serves as Co-Chair of the UNC Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee, managing renewable energy projects on campus. She also works as Project Manager at Blue Dogwood Public Market in Chapel Hill, NC. She plans to work in renewable energy development when she graduates in May. In her free time, Olivia enjoys hiking, running, and cooking with people she loves.

WILL CURRAN-GROOME / Content

Editor and Incoming Editor-in-Chief

Will is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Prior to UNC, he worked in public health and social services research with a nonprofit in Philadelphia. Will’s academic interests include land use policy, affordable housing, and the relationship between the built environment and health.

BEN ELLIS / Content Editor Ben is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. His academic interests include environmental sustainability, transportation planning, and urban design. Before arriving at Carolina, Ben received his B.A. from the University of the South where he majored in the environment and sustainability. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and camping in the Appalachian Mountains.

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His interests include transportation policy in the developing world, light rail, and freight movement on inland waterways. He can be found in his free time trying to kayak long distances and making hand-drawn maps.

Evan hails from central Connecticut and completed an undergraduate degree in Maryland. Opinions are his own.

JO KWON / Content Editor Jo (Joungwon) Kwon is a first-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. She hopes to interweave various data sets and narratives of virtual and physical communities together with new digital technologies. With a background in Statistics and English Literature, she received her M.A. in Computational Media at Duke University. In her free time, she enjoys watching indie movies, going to live performances, and drinking good coffee.

LUKE LOWRY / Online Content Contributor Luke Lowry is a first-year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning with a specialization in transportation. He is particularly interested in pedestrian and bicycle planning as a means to increase equity and create vibrant communities. A lifelong resident of North Carolina, he enjoys spending time in the mountains near his hometown. He also enjoys reading, staying active, and finding new coffee shops to fuel his caffeine addiction. Luke received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from UNC Charlotte.

SIOBHAN NELSON / Content Editor and

Incoming Managing Editor of Carolina Angles Siobhan is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. She is specializing in transportation planning and is interested in public transportation as a way to promote equity and improve community vibrancy. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, with a major in the Growth and Structure of Cities and a minor in Environmental Studies. Before coming to UNC, Siobhan spent three years teaching English in Tokyo, Japan.

ANNA PATTERSON / Content Editor Anna is a third-year dual degree Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Department of Health Behavior.

Her scholarly interests include affordable housing, social determinants of health, and community development. Prior to coming to UNC, Anna worked as a program officer for a health foundation in Alamance County, NC.

ALICIA PETERSON / Online Content Contributor Alicia is a senior undergraduate studying biostatistics and urban planning.

Her academic interests include the relationship between urban policy and health, as well as equity and urban analytics. In her spare time, she enjoys film photography and curating her latest Spotify playlist.

ELI POWELL / Content Editor Eli is a first-year Master’s student specializing in transportation at the Department of City and Regional Planning. Prior to arriving at Carolina Planning, he earned a B.A. in Geography with minors in Urban Studies and GIS from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. His primary professional interests are non-automotive transportation and transportation equity. When he is not planning, he can be found running, listening to indie pop music, or watching anything that could possibly be considered a sport.

AMY SECHRIST / Online Content Contributor Amy Sechrist is a first-year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning focusing on housing and community development.

Her research interests include affordable housing, planning for equity,

and the intersection of gender and planning. Prior to UNC she worked as a Housing Advocate and Shelter Manager at a gender-based violence crisis center and as a federal project management consultant. Amy holds a certificate in Creative Placemaking from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and a bachelor’s degree in Political Communication from George Washington University.

BRANDON TUBBY / Online Content

Contributor and Media Manager

Brandon Tubby is a senior undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill majoring in public policy with a minor in urban studies and planning. He competes for the Tar Heels as a distance runner on the varsity cross country and track teams. Brandon’s running recently landed him in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he spent the summer training at 7000 feet elevation and interning with the city’s comprehensive planning department.

LEAH CAMPBELL

MOLLY AUTEN

SIOBHAN NELSON

DOUG BRIGHT

VERONICA BROWN

ANNA PATTERSON

OLIVIA CORRIERE

WILL CURRAN-GROOME

ALICIA PETERSON

BEN ELLIS

EVAN KING

ELI POWELL

JO KWON

LUKE LOWRY

AMY SECHRIST

BRANDON TUBBY 11

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

C LI M ATE RE SI LI E NCY, EQUITY, A ND B URBY’S PARADOX E S: Funding Adaptation Without Increasing Vulnerability

MATTHEW STERN Matthew Stern is a policy analyst at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. He holds

a Master’s in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Weiss Fellow for Urban Livability and was named Best Colleague by his

graduating class. He studies how systems created or enforced by governments succeed or fail at incentivizing decisions that increase equity, resiliency, and justice.

*This paper is an extension of research completed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and presented in 2019 at the Southeast and Caribbean Disaster Recovery Partnership Annual

Workshop. It does not represent the views of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

ABSTR ACT The resiliency literature focuses more on how to adapt to climate change and reduce hazard risk than on how these interventions should be paid for. However, funding mechanism design can have substantial impact on whether resiliency is actually achieved, and for whom. Raymond Burby’s safe development and local government paradoxes are well-known challenges to decreasing vulnerability that funding mechanism design can help address. Another challenge is insuring that resilience is equitably distributed, a concern fundamentally linked to the question of who should pay. Here, I critique three innovative resilience funding methods: risk-based special assessments, resilience bonding, and resilience tax increment financing.

Then, I suggest a new financing tool that could address all three concerns: the use of parametric triggers to capture real estate value that is maintained by vulnerability-reducing actions.

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

INTRODUCTION The need for climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) is critical and growing. Coastal regions are particularly vulnerable due to the combined threats of subsidence, sea level rise, and increased storm frequency and severity. American hazard mitigation practitioners are not currently equipped to respond to increasing risk, and academics and practitioners are actively exploring how to do better.1 Proposed reforms include prioritizing pre-event mitigation, engaging in risk-aware city planning, and better communicating uncertainty and risk. However, lost in the conversation about how to mitigate, whom to listen to, and when to act is a key unanswered question: who will pay?

The costs of adapting to sea level rise and other climaterelated hazards is difficult to predict but sure to count in the hundreds of billions of dollars—a price tag current funding mechanisms are woefully underprepared to handle. However, determining how CCA and DRR will be funded is not just a matter of better budgeting. The politics of selecting adaptation strategies are immensely personal and complex, but the menu of possibilities is inherently limited by financial feasibility. The structure of funding streams is a policy decision with the power to incentivize certain types of actions, assign key actors, and dictate which communities stand to benefit.

The availability of funding mechanisms that enable sustainable, equitable adaptation is therefore crucial to the consideration and adoption of innovative adaptation efforts at the local level. However, many existing and proposed funding tools are not only inadequate—they may also perpetuate vulnerability and inequality. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program’s subsidized premiums enables increased development in floodplains (Burby 2006), and recent research suggests that federal buy-out programs may not offer equitable access to resiliency (Siders 2019;

Mach et al. 2019). We must develop new ways to pay for CCA and DRR that are designed to enable sustainable and equitable adaptation.

I begin by reviewing three key challenges associated with funding resilience efforts: Burby’s safe development and local government paradoxes and resilience equity. Next, I review and critique three existing funding models in the context of these challenges: risk-based special assessments, resilience bonding, and resilience tax increment financing.

I end by suggesting a framework for a new adaptation financing strategy—parametric equity capture—that combines the principle of land value capture with aspects of existing and proposed funding vehicles to better address the challenges described herein.

CHALLENGES TO FUNDING CLIMATE ADAPTATION The total costs of climate adaptation—including labor and materials as well as loss of economic value such as coastal real estate—will be immense. Chronic flooding is already a reality in many communities, and hundreds of thousands of homes in the United States are expected to share this fate by mid-century (Union of Concerned Scientists 2018; Climate Central and Zillow 2018). The United Nations Framework on Climate Change estimates that global coastal engineering protections could cost between $4 and $11 billion per year over the next fifty years (Parry et al. 2009, 62). This estimate, though, may be low. A recent plan to protect the city of Norfolk, Virginia will cost at least $1.8 billion; protecting the entire United States coastal population at a similar per capita rate would cost around $600 billion.2 Finding the money needed to underwrite these efforts, which may include retreat, accommodation (e.g. raising homes and waterproofing basements), hard protection (e.g. levees and seawalls), and soft protection (e.g. beach and wetland renourishment), is a major political 13

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challenge (Colgan 2016; Hsiang et al. 2017). Financial feasibility limits residents’, communities’, and planners’ decisionmaking agency. New funding mechanisms could bring a range of new responses to vulnerability within reach.

Certain challenges to CCA and DRR in the United States are closely tied to how current funding mechanisms enable (or fail to enable) resilience. New funding mechanisms should be assessed against their ability to mitigate the following concerns: Safe development paradox:

Some attributes of place, such as geographic benefits (e.g. economic rents), culture, or history, increase development demand; other factors, such as physical vulnerability, attenuate it. Interventions that reduce vulnerability can actually create a “development stimulus” which results in greater densities of population and capital in high-risk areas (Burby 2006, 3–4). This is especially true when residents do not bear the financial costs associated with the protective action. Federally subsidized flood insurance is an oft-cited example of this paradox.3 One key challenge of funding resilience is that it frequently results in placing more people and capital at risk.

efforts target the most socially vulnerable, who are often low income and people of color (Cutter, Boruff, and Shirley 2003). However, new research is beginning to show that adaptation policies themselves can perpetuate inequality and vulnerability. For example, the cost-benefit analyses associated with federal post-disaster aid funding can encourage new protections in wealthy areas and buy-outs in poor areas (Siders 2019). In addition, addressing the safe development paradox by increasing the financial costs of living in vulnerable areas can place undue burden on lowincome groups, while subsidizing protective actions can perpetuate vulnerability and/or contribute to displacement pressure as land becomes safer. Funding adaptation in a manner that enables economic and racial equity is a third key challenge.

NEW FUNDING MECHANISMS In this section, I review three proposed tools for funding CCA and DRR in light of the challenges described above: risk-based special assessments, resilience bonds, and resilience tax increment financing.

Risk-Based Special Assessments

Robert Deyle and others have long advocated for the use of special assessment taxes on communities that are at

Local government paradox:

It is near certain that disasters will regularly cause substantial damage to American cities and towns. However, no such certainty exists at the local level, where a 100-year storm axiomatically has only a one percent chance of striking in any given year. Thus, it is relatively easy for local governments to “view natural hazards as a minor problem that can take a back seat to more pressing concerns” (Mileti 1999, quoted in Burby 2006, 9). Similarly, wide margins in climate change models create uncertainty at the local level about the onset and geography of climatic vulnerability. It is, therefore, politically difficult for local governments to commit funds to protect against uncertain future events when other spending choices can produce more tangible and immediate benefits.

Equity:

The inequitable distribution of the impacts of natural hazards and climate change are well known (e.g. Levy, Patz, and Francis 2015). Such a distribution demands that resiliency 14

FIGURE 1 - Risk-Based Special Assessment: Tax burden

distributed based on risk and property value.

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

FIGURE 2 - The resilience bond model. Adapted from Vajjhala and Rhodes 2015 and Polacek 2018.

high risk of experiencing hurricane damage (Deyle and Smith 2000; Deyle and Falconer 2003). They base their argument on the concept of tax benefit equity, which suggests that there should exist a logical relationship between those who bear the costs of a tax and those who receive its benefits (2000, 241). Based on this principle, Deyle and others propose that those who choose to live in risky coastal areas should bear the burden of paying for the disaster-related services that their choices demand, including planning, code enforcement, public safety, and emergency services.4 The applicability of such a model for funding adaptation measures is clear: local homeowners, residents, and businesses could be charged a property tax that specifically funds measures to protect against the vulnerability that they experience.

Special taxation districts are nothing new; sewer, fire protection, and levee districts have been used to raise funds for the provision of public goods for decades. The innovation proposed by Deyle and colleagues is that, within a given district, risk scoring mechanisms can be used to distribute costs so those who bear the greatest risk also pay the most (Deyle and Smith 2000, 426–28). A tax based on both risk and property value would allow high risk residents in highly valued homes to bear more costs than other groups (see Figure 1: the wealthy and vulnerable reside in sector 4).

A tax borne most substantially by those making the riskiest choices has many benefits. For one, it complies with the principle of tax benefit equity. Taxing risky locational choices also disincentivizes future vulnerable development, correcting for the safe development paradox.

Furthermore, if the risk score considers building-level features (such as home elevation or use of water-resistant drywall), it could incentivize individual resilience actions.

However, risk-based special assessments are only feasible in districts with a substantial tax base and a range of risk, and they are only equitable when risk and poverty are not highly correlated. In communities where the distribution of risk occurs along axes of oppression such as race or class, the burden of a risk-based tax will be experienced by the poor who often have little choice but to live in vulnerable areas (Figure 1, region 3), while the wealthy can afford relative safety (region 2). In this instance, the tax fails to fund resilience equitably or achieve the desired effect of penalizing risky choices. Thus, this solution may be most useful in high value downtowns or seaside towns where ocean-front properties fetch high prices. More generally, increased taxation is politically difficult, and, even if weighted away from lower income communities, may still primarily harm a community’s poorest residents.

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

Resilience Bonds

The resilience bond is a conceptual expansion of the catastrophe bond, a relatively new financial vehicle used primarily for reinsurance. Since 1997, insurance companies have sold catastrophe bonds to limit their liability in the event of substantial losses (Polacek 2018). Insurers pay premiums to investors, who set aside capital in exchange. If a certain set of circumstances occur (for example, if the insurer becomes obligated to pay out over $100 million of losses in a two-year period), the insurer gains access to the investors’ capital fund.

If the agreed-upon circumstances do not occur during the bond period, the entire principal is returned to the investor with interest (Polacek 2018). This pre-arranged circumstance is called a parametric trigger. Catastrophe bonds allow insurers to decrease risk for a fixed price while creating investment opportunities that are generally uncorrelated with global financial markets.

of public adaptation interventions are eclipsed by the even higher future costs of failing to act, the savings inherent in successful CCA and DRR should theoretically be able to finance the initial actions (Germán and Bernstein 2018).

However, there are several challenges to the implementation of resilience bonds. One is the difficulty of risk modeling. A successful resilience bond requires an accurate understanding of risk over time both with and without the planned intervention in order to correctly value the intervention’s impact (Vajjhala and Rhodes 2015, 7). Another challenge is bond duration. The risk reduction benefits of resilience-increasing actions often take many years to manifest, elongating the necessary period for a successful resilience bond (Vajjhala and Rhodes 2015, 41). Third, there is no certainty that capital markets will

Resilience bonds are modified catastrophe bonds designed to assetize actions that reduce vulnerability. Logically, less risky catastrophe bonds will demand lower premiums, so reduced risk creates a better deal for both parties. Essentially, “catastrophe bonds become more valuable investments when the probability of a triggering event and/or the estimate of its total financial loss to investors goes down” (Vajjhala and Rhodes 2015, 4). The premise of the resilience bond is that a portion of the savings associated with reduced risk could be extracted from the deal to fund that risk reduction (Kartez and Merrill 2016) (see Figure 2).

FIGURE 3 - Basic TIF structure. Adapted from Chicago

Resilience bonding has two distinct benefits. First, the conversion of resilience into an asset that can be traded in an existing insurance marketplace presents an innovative way to raise funds without the direct taxation of residents and businesses. The extraction of adaptation funding from a transaction in which local and state governments already participate resolves the local government paradox and decreases concerns that low-income residents will be burdened by high costs. Second, these bonds perform the critical service of funding public actions via the private value they create, a service known as value capture. Most commonly utilized in association with transportation infrastructure development, value capture is an important innovation in CCA and DRR. Because the high present costs 16

Metropolitan Agency for Planning 2013, 9.

sufficiently value the reduction of risk to make the complex arrangement worth the trouble.

Resilience Tax Increment Financing Scholars and practitioners are beginning to explore the use of tax increment financing (TIF) for resilience projects (Kartez and Merrill 2016; French et al. 2017; ICLEI 2011; GZA 2016; Brugmann 2012). TIFs capture the future increase in property tax revenues purportedly caused by a development project to fund that project. This revenue capture is accomplished by fixing current property values in a district for a time and then using the taxes generated

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

FIGURE 4 - Visual representation of Parametric Equity Capture.

from value above the baseline level (the increment) to pay back the costs of the project (see Figure 3).5 Increment funds are earmarked or placed in special accounts to differentiate them from taxes assessed on baseline values, which remain available for general governance. TIFs are used in cities across the country to finance district-level improvements.

paradox, as development intensity must increase in the TIF district to generate the increment that funds the intervention, placing more people and capital in vulnerable spaces. This is a fundamental concern with using TIFs to fund resiliency that few seem to be discussing.

Resilience TIFs are an extension of the premise that “land exposed to natural hazards can be [more] profitably used if steps are taken to make it safe for human occupancy” (Burby 2006, 3). Because risk reduction efforts should increase coastal property values—or at minimum allow for property values to continue their general upward trend— TIFs can be used to finance those measures. Resilience TIFs create a dedicated funding stream for adaptation, addressing the local government paradox.

A NEW PROPOSAL: PAR AMETRIC EQUIT Y CAPTURE

However, adaptation-based TIFs require a substantial increment to function and are, therefore, likely to work best where land values are or will soon be relatively high, a solution unlikely to work in poorer communities.6 Furthermore, they do nothing to address the safe development paradox because the financial burden of private development is not increased. If anything, resilience TIFs fundamentally rely on and reinforce the

Seeking to address the challenges and borrow from the tools described above, I suggest funding public accommodation and protection efforts using parametric triggers that lead to assessments against the private property protected by the intervention. For example, when a vegetative buffer or sea wall reduces flooding or holds back a major storm surge, assessments can be made against the properties that would have taken on water without it. As with risk-based taxation, assessments could be calculated in terms of total property value and vulnerability avoided. As a rough illustration, an assessment of $1 per flooded inch-day avoided per $10,000 of value would result in an event charge of $360 for a $300,000 home in the case of a three-day, four-inch surge event.

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Any intervention that lowers the risk of flooding is likely to increase land value. The principle of land value capture justifies leveraging a portion of this value to fund the actions that will protect the land (Germán and Bernstein 2018). Value capture-funded adaptation maintains a rational nexus between those who pay and those who benefit. It also addresses the local government paradox by funding longterm risk reduction directly from the savings that risk reduction produces. In addition, because legal payment obligations attached to property should put downward pressure on overall land values, value capture-based adaptation disincentivizes high-risk development to some degree, thereby addressing the safe development paradox.

Value capture is uniquely positioned as a resilience funding tool because hundreds of billions of dollars of private land value are at risk in the coming decades due to climate change (Union of Concerned Scientists 2018).

Unlike an annual or semi-annual tax, a parametric trigger assessment could be designed as an extraction of equity against the value of the property itself, such as a lien that would need to be resolved before any transfer or sale. This mechanism could be modeled on new property tax deferment programs designed to prevent rising property values from displacing low-income homeowners (e.g. Willets 2017; Williams 2014). Property owners could delay payment until sale or transfer, easing political pressures against increased taxation and concerns that cash-poor homeowners would struggle to meet regular payment burdens.

CONCLUSION The reality of the climate risk faced by coastal cities and towns demands new solutions. Innovation must occur in ecological and engineering design, in more comprehensive and inclusive planning processes, and in strategies to fund early and effective action. New financing mechanisms can leverage the potential economic impacts of theoretical inaction, overcome collective action impasses, and incentivize proactive adaptation. The best solutions will address the safe development paradox, motivate local leaders to pursue aggressive strategies, and promote equitable access to resilience without burdening the poor and socially vulnerable.

The concept of land value capture presents a promising 18

opportunity on which to model the necessary financial tools. The mechanisms described here are likely best equipped to fund public, non-rival accommodation and protection actions. Furthermore, they are technically complex and are, therefore, fundamentally more accessible to higher capacity communities that tend to be both larger and wealthier.

This proposal is inherently incomplete; we must grapple with some level of planned retreat, and many of the most vulnerable are and will be the poor. However, the great cities of America are unlikely to fully retreat. Through yetto-be-developed financing mechanisms, perhaps like the parametric equity capture proposal I suggest here, these regions can fund their next generation of resilience not with public dollars but by capturing a portion of the private value these actions create. This method is not only the most pragmatic way to fund major resilience projects—it may also be the most efficient and equitable.

END NOTES See for example Burby 2006; Smith and Wenger 2007; Ganapati and Ganapati 2009; Lyles, Berke, and Smith 2014; Berke 2014.

1

Estimate is based on author’s extrapolation of the cost of Norfolk’s plan (Kusnetz 2017) to the population of all coastal counties in the United States (Union of Concerned Scientists 2013).

2

The sub-actuarial rates offered through the National Flood Insurance Program make it more affordable to live in the floodplain, a benefit to existing residents of low-lying communities. However, by artificially decreasing the cost of insurance, NFIP decreases the risks associated with moving to and remaining in floodplains, placing an upward pressure on development demand and increasing overall risk (Burby 2006). More generally, all post-disaster aid contributes to the safe development paradox, as the promise of financial support to recovering individuals and families increases tolerance for risk.

3

Deyle and his colleagues estimate the costs of hurricane-risk-related services (2000), how a tax might be assessed (2000), and the legal avenues by which implementation of such a tax might be possible (2003).

4

Some suggest that TIFs are a form of value capture, because increased private values are taxed to pay for the public actions that generated the increases (e.g. ICLEI 2011). However, because TIFs simply earmark existing revenue streams for a specific purpose without altering tax rates, most do not consider TIFs to be value capture mechanisms (Germán and Bernstein 2018; Calavita and Wolfe 2014).

5

See (Woodruff, BenDor, and Strong 2018) for an in-depth exploration of why resiliency outcomes for denser, wealthier communities are likely to be different from less dense and poorer communities.

6

Berke, Philip. 2014. “Rising to the Challenge: Planning for Adaptation in the Age of Climate Change.” In Adapting to Climate Change, edited by Bruce Glavovic and Gavin Smith. Springer.

Kartez, J., and S. Merrill. 2016. “Climate Adaptation Finance Mechanisms : New Frontiers For Familiar Tools.” Journal of Ocean & Coastal Economics 3 (2).

Brugmann, Jeb. 2012. “Financing the Resilient City.” Environment and Urbanization 24 (1): 215–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247812437130.

Kusnetz, Nicholas. 2017. “Sea Level Rise Is Creeping into Coastal Cities.

Saving Them Won’t Be Cheap.” Inside Climate News. Accessed November 18, 2018. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28122017/sea-level-risecoastal-cities-flooding-2017-year-review-miami-norfolk-seawall-cost.

Burby, Raymond J. 2006. “Hurricane Katrina and the Paradoxes of Government Disaster Policy: Bringing About Wise Governmental Decisions for Hazardous Areas.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604 (1): 171–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716205284676.

Levy, Barry S, Jonathan A Patz, and Pope Francis. 2015. “Climate Change, Human Rights, and Social Justice.” Annals of Global Health 81 (3): 310–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2015.08.008.

Calavita, Nico, and Marian Wolfe. 2014. “White Paper on the Theory, Economics, and Practice of Public Benefit Zoning.” http://ebho.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/09/LVR-White-Paper-ExecSum_141113.compressed. pdf.

Lyles, Ward, Philip Berke, and Gavin Smith. 2014. “A Comparison of Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Quality in Six States, USA.” Landscape and Urban Planning 122. Accessed September 4, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. landurbplan.2013.11.010.

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. 2013. “Examination of Local Economic Development Incentives in Northeastern Illinios.” Chicago. https://www.cmap.illinois.gov/documents/10180/82875/FY14-0009 LOCAL ECONOMIC INCENTIVES REPORT.pdf.

Mach, Katharine J, Caroline M Kraan, Miyuki Hino, A R Siders, Erica M Johnston, and Christopher B Field. 2019. “Managed Retreat through Voluntary Buyouts of Flood-Prone Properties.” Science Advances 5 (10). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax8995.

Climate Central, and Zillow. 2018. “More than 386,000 Homes at Risk of Coastal Flooding by 2050.” Zillow Research. Accessed November 14, 2018. https://www.zillow.com/research/ocean-at-the-door-21931/.

Parry, Martin, Nigel Arnell, Samuel Fankhauser, Chris Hope, Sari Kovats, Robert Nicholls, David Satterthwaite, Richard Tiffin, and Tim Wheeler.

2009. “Assessing the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change: A Review of the UNFCCC and Other Recent Estimates.” Grantham Institute for Climate Change. London.

Colgan, Charles S. 2016. “The Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change in Coasts and Oceans : Literature Review, Policy Implications and Research Agenda.” Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics 3 (2). https:// doi.org/10.15351/2373-8456.1067.

Polacek, Andy. 2018. “Catastrophe Bonds: A Primer and Retrospective.”

Chicago Fed Letter, no. 405.

Cutter, Susan L, Bryan J Boruff, and W Lynn Shirley. 2003. “Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards.” Social Science Quarterly 84 (2): 242–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002.

Siders, A.R. 2019. “Social Justice Implications of US Managed Retreat Buyout Programs.” Climatic Change 152 (2): 239–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10584-018-2272-5.

Deyle, Robert E., and Mary K. Falconer. 2003. “Revenue Options for a RiskBased Assessment of Developed Property in Hurricane Hazard Zones.”

Land Use & Environmental Law 18 (2). https://doi.org/10.3366/ajicl.2011.0005.

Smith, Gavin, and Dennis Wenger. 2007. “Sustainable Disaster Recovery: Operationalizing an Existing Agenda.” Handbook of Disaster Research, 234–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32353-4_14.

Deyle, Robert E., and Richard A. Smith. 2000. “Risk-Based Taxation of Hazardous Land Development.” Journal of the American Planning Association 66 (4): 421–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360008976125.

Union of Concerned Scientists. 2013. “Overwhelming Risk.” https://www. ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/Overwhelming-Risk-Full-Report. pdf.

———. 2018. “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate.” https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/ default/files/attach/2018/06/underwater-analysis-full-report.pdf.

French, Rebecca A, Wayne W Cobleigh, Jessica H Leclair, and Yi Shi. 2017.

“Financing Resilience in Connecticut: Current Programs, National Models, and New Opportunities.” Sea Grant Law & Policy Journal 8 (1): 53–86.

Ganapati, N. Emel, and Sukumar Ganapati. 2009. “Enabling Participatory Planning after Disasters.” Journal of the American Planning Association 75 (1): 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360802546254.

Germán, Lourdes, and Allison Ehrich Bernstein. 2018. “Land Value Recapture Policy Brief.” https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/ pubfiles/land-value-capture-policy-brief.pdf.

GZA. 2016. “Financing Resilience: The Big Challenge.” https://www.gza.com/ sites/default/files/FINAL_Financing Resiliency The Big Challenge_1_31_17. pdf.

Hsiang, Solomon, Robert Kopp, Amir Jina, James Rising, Michael Delgado, Shashank Mohan, D J Rasmussen, et al. 2017. “Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change in the United States” 1369 (June): 1362–69. http:// www.impactlab.org/research/estimating-economic-damage-from-climatechange-in-the-united-states/.

Vajjhala, Shalini, and James Rhodes. 2015. “Leveraging Catastrophe Bonds: As a Mechanism for Resilient Infrastructure Project Finance,” 70. http://www.refocuspartners.com/reports/RE.bound-Program-ReportDecember-2015.pdf.

Willets, Sarah. 2017. “Durham Floats Tax Relief Program for Residents of Gentrifying Neighborhoods.” Indyweek, April 21, 2017. https://indyweek. com/news/archives/durham-floats-tax-relief-program-residentsgentrifying-neighborhoods/.

Williams, Timothy. 2014. “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification.” New York Times, March 3, 2014. https://www.nytimes. com/2014/03/04/us/cities-helping-residents-resist-the-new-gentry.html.

Woodruff, Sierra C., Todd K. BenDor, and Aaron L. Strong. 2018. “Fighting the Inevitable: Infrastructure Investment and Coastal Community Adaptation to Sea Level Rise.” System Dynamics Review 34 (1–2): 48–77. https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.1597.

ICLEI. 2011. “Financing the Resilient City: A Demand Driven Approach to Development, Disaster Reduction and Climate Adaptation.” http://resilientcities.iclei.org/fileadmin/sites/resilient-cities/files/Frontend_user/ReportFinancing_Resilient_City-Final.pdf.

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WORKS CITED

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

E VALUATI O N O F N E TWORK S OF PLA NS TO H AZ ARDS AND CL IMAT E C HA NGE: Application of Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard in Norfolk, Virginia PHILIP R. BERKE Philip R. Berke, PhD, is a Research Professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning at

the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work focuses on the relationship between

community resilience and urban planning with specific focus on theory, methods, and metrics of

local planning and outcomes. He is the lead co-author of Urban Land Use Planning (University

of Illinois Press, 5th edition), which focuses on integrating principles of sustainable communities into urban form.

JAIMIE HICKS MASTERSON Jaimie Hicks Masterson, AICP, is associate director of Texas Target Communities at Texas

A&M University, a high impact service-learning program that works alongside low capacity

communities to plan for resilience. She is the author of Planning for Community Resilience:

A Handbook for Reducing Vulnerabilities to Disasters (Island Press), which focuses on hazard mitigation strategies and tools for government officials, planners, and emergency managers that can be incorporated pre-disaster.

MATTHEW MALECHA Matthew Malecha, PhD, is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Landscape

Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on natural hazards and resilience planning, policy, and regulation.

SIYU YU, PHD, AICP Siyu Yu, PhD, AICP, is a lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban

Planning at Texas A&M University and postdoctoral researcher in the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, where she studies the effects of plans and policies on vulnerability to flooding in coastal communities.

ABSTR ACT Land use planning is key to reducing vulnerability to natural hazards and the effects of climate change. Communities adopt multiple plans that affect community vulnerability; integration of vulnerability reduction actions among plans can have a significant effect on future vulnerability.

We report on the experience of local planners in Norfolk, Virginia, a city vulnerable to coastal floods and projected sea level rise, in applying a Resilience Scorecard to evaluate the level of coordination among plans and the degree plans target geographic areas most vulnerable. Local planners formed a team to select, classify, and score actions in plans. Planners found that local plans are not fully consistent and do not always address areas most vulnerable to floods or sea level rise. They worked collaboratively with other city staff and the public to revise plans and development regulations in response to results of the evaluation.

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Over the past two decades the nation is moving from disasters to catastrophes (Rubin and Cutter 2019). The years 2016-2018 were historic, with the annual average number of billion-dollar disasters being more than double the longterm average, and the year 2017 was the most expensive in U.S. history for weather-related disasters ($306.2 billion) (NOAA 2019). Coastal tidal flooding from sea level rise produced more than $16 billion in property value losses between 2005 and 2017 (Kutnetz 2019). The prior four years (2015-2018) global average temperatures were the highest on record (Lindsey and Dahlman 2019). These trends are expected to increase the future vulnerability of climatesensitive hazards (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2019).

As a result, the demands placed on local government planning are rapidly changing. In addition to the wellestablished comprehensive plan (or master plan), many communities struggle to coordinate an increasing number of special purpose plans (e.g., plans for climate adaptation, hazard mitigation, transportation, and housing) that are often required by federal and state governments. Networks of community plans are cornerstones to resilience because they (1) represent a local vision of the future, (2) set goals, and (3) guide development, actions, and policy decisions that influence land use and development in hazard areas.

Communities often create these plans independently, each of which may address key issues associated with different types of hazards and climate change. The implications of poorly coordinated plans can have a significant adverse effect on community resilience to future losses. A city’s hazard mitigation plan may call for acquisitions and buyouts in high-hazard areas, while its comprehensive land use plan aims to achieve economic development goals by increasing density and infrastructure investments in the same locations. This type of conflict among plans is alarmingly common across communities and can actually increase vulnerability (Berke et al. 2018).

The Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard (“Resilience Scorecard�), developed by planning researchers and practitioners at Texas A&M University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Berke et al. 2015), helps communities meet the demands using spatial plan evaluation. The Resilience Scorecard walks users through (1) evaluating the level of coordination of vulnerability reduction among local and regional plans and identifying mismatches between level of attention by plans and level of need for mitigation; (2) developing a spatial database that reflects the connection between plans and vulnerable communities; and (3) developing a collaborative process for resolving conflicts across plans to reduce hazard vulnerability. All relevant resources are online and freely available for municipalities to access.1 In this paper, we present the Resilience Scorecard that evaluates the degree to which plans integrate mitigation practices in different geographic areas of a community at the neighborhood scale. Next, we review the experience of a pilot community, Norfolk, Virginia, in testing the validity of the Resilience Scorecard. Engagement with Norfolk involved development of a collaborative partnership between a team of city staff and university experts throughout the application process and in tracking local decisions and outcomes. We then offer a summary of how the application process and information generated by the Resilience Scorecard influences planning in Norfolk and prospects for future applications of the scorecard.

APPLICATION OF A PL AN INTEGR ATION FOR RESILIENCE SCORECARD: FOUR-PHASE PROCESS The Resilience Scorecard enables communities to determine coordination, conflict, and gaps in a local network of plans and to use that information to improve integration of mitigation across plans to more explicitly reduce vulnerability. The scorecard generates multiple 21

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TABLE 1 - Benefits of the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard. Source: Malecha et al. (2019)

community benefits that support resilience (Table 1). By using the scorecard, planners can ask questions that indicate priorities, goals, and needs, and ultimately improve integration of measures and policies that reduce risk across plans.

Such questions might include: Should policies in comprehensive plans that promote extensive waterfront development better integrate vulnerability reduction? Should policies in all plans be revised to give priority in districts with the highest physical and social vulnerability? Can the land acquisition program of the parks plan be coordinated with the buyout program of the hazard mitigation plan to produce co-benefits that reduce vulnerability and improve amenities?

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1 . Form

a team. An interdisciplinary team of staff from local government agencies charged with implementation of relevant plans should be established to oversee the scorecard evaluation process to ensure that plan evaluation is not conducted in silos. Core activities of the team are to evaluate agency plans, communicate across agencies to better understand the plan content, and foster consensus in

making adjustments based on results of the network of plan evaluation.

2 . Select plans. Plans adopted by local government that influence land use and development in current and future hazard areas should be selected for evaluation.

Table 2 shows a range of types of plans. Among these plans, the comprehensive plan represents the principal form of general governmental planning and is the primary planning policy instrument that coordinates land use and development across multiple

TABLE 2 - Examples of Types of Plans in a Community Network of Plans. Source: Malecha et al. (2019)

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Application of the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard requires community actions across four phases:

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urban sectors. Hazards mitigation practices can also be integrated into other, more specialized planning activities (e.g., parks, housing, transportation). Notably, the hazard mitigation plan is one of the most frequently adopted specialized plans. The Disaster Mitigation Act (DMA) enacted by Congress in 2000 requires all local governments to adopt a mitigation plan approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be eligible for federal preand post-disaster mitigation funds. Other specialized plans (e.g., transportation, open space, climate action, hazard mitigation) are sometimes prepared at the regional scale and have direct influence on local land use and development.

3. Delineate district hazard zones. The basic units of analysis for scoring the degree of integration of mitigation practices

FIGURE 1 - Scoring of Networks of Plans by District Hazard Zones. Note: Blue (dark and light) indicates positive scores that reduce risk; red (dark

and light) indicates low scores that increase vulnerability; and yellow indicates a neutral score.

among plans are district hazard zones. Most community planning efforts divide the community into planning districts based on geographic areas that encompass residential neighborhoods, downtowns, and commercial, industrial, and conservation places. To delineate the district hazard zones, intersect the planning districts with the hazard zones using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

4. Spatially evaluate the network of plans. Evaluation of plans includes a three-step procedure – Figure 1 visually illustrates the mapped data outputs of the scoring process: • Extract applicable policies in each plan that influence land use and development. Classify each policy based on different categories of land use policy instruments (e.g., zoning regulations, land acquisition, public investments programs for infrastructure, market incentives such as tax abatement and housing density bonuses) that influence the type, location, and amount of development.

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TABLE 3 - Examples of Plan Policy Classification and Scoring Method

• Score each policy based on the intended vulnerability outcome linked to the policy: that is, whether a policy has no effect on vulnerability (score = 0), increases vulnerability (score = –1) or decreases vulnerability (score = +1). Table 3 presents examples of how we apply the scoring method.

• Spatially assign each policy score to one or more district hazard zones, then sum the scores from all plans by vulnerability outcome for each zone.

Higher total scores indicate the use of more policies aimed at decreasing vulnerability, while lower scores indicate that use of more policies that actually increase vulnerability.

PILOT COMMUNIT Y: CIT Y OF NORFOLK, VIRGINIA We derived data for this pilot study from several sources.

We took notes during an on-site training session and monthly teleconference meetings that dealt with queries raised by city staff as they completed the phases of the Resilience Scorecard application process between December 2016 and September 2017. We supplemented notes with responses to interviews we conducted with three staff participants at the end of the process. Interview questions asked staff to assess their experience in applying the scorecard and identify actions taken by the city, civic groups, and the private sector resulting from information generated by the Resilience Scorecard.

Norfolk is a good fit to serve as a pilot community. A significant proportion of city’s population (estimated at

244,707 in 2017) is experiencing increasing frequency of floods due to coastal storm surge and sea level rise. Most low-lying areas of the city flood not just from heavy rains or hurricanes; flooding occurs during blue skies, at high tide, or when the winds come from the right direction.

Seas are rising at a rate twice the global average due to both climate change and subsidence caused by loss of coastal lands from sinking subsurface geology. About 16 percent (8.3 square miles) of the total geographic area (52 square miles) is within the 100-year (1 percent occurrence probability per year) floodplain boundaries as defined by the Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps (DFIRMs) of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). An additional 32 percent (16.6 square miles) of the city’s area could be exposed to the 100-year floodplain due to sea level rise by 2100 (City of Norfolk 2017a).

Norfolk has a longstanding leadership role in community resilience. According to Chief Planner Paula Shea, the city inspires to be a “model community on resilience.”

The city is a participant in the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program and, as a result, adopted a resilience city strategy. In 2016, Norfolk prepared a forward-looking Vision 2100, which responds to sea level rise and coastal storm hazards, and includes principles to guide the development of a new comprehensive plan during 2019-2020.

FORMING A TEAM

Norfolk planners created a team of six members – the planning director, two planning staff within the department of city planning, one emergency manager, the chief resilience officer (from the 100 Resilient Cities 25

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TABLE 4 - Selected Norfolk Plans

initiative), and a GIS analyst. All team members participated in collecting and evaluating Norfolk’s network of plans. The city’s Chief Planner, Paula Shea, served a leadership role for the team. Her prime responsibilities included coordinating the plan evaluation process, and communicating with municipal agencies and elected officials, as well as experts from Texas AM University.

Texas A&M provided technical assistance services to the city’s team throughout the Resilience Scorecard application process.

This process involves co-developing a shared understanding between city staff and the university experts about the city’s experience in applying the Resilience Scorecard. The key objective is to learn about what works and what needs improvement in all phases of the application process. Core activities included a kickoff webinar and a two-day on-site training visit (November 2016). City and university teams conducted monthly teleconference meetings throughout the process (between December 2016 and September 2017) to respond to queries by the city’s team members. The city’s team received copies of the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard Guidebook and a software tool for tracking evaluation results of networks of plans.

SELECTING PLANS

Norfolk has adopted a diverse network of plans that influence land use and development decisions in areas exposed to coastal flooding and sea level rise. Among the sixteen official plans adopted by the city and one adopted at the regional scale, the local team identified six plans (five citywide and one regional) to be included in the study, as they were considered to have the most significant influence on development decisions in the city (see Table 4). Plans excluded from the study did not intersect with the hazard zones, were out of date, or were already integrated in the city’s comprehensive plan, which incorporates several of the standalone small-area 26

and functional plans as chapters. Each of these plans is independently prepared by distinct government agencies and interest groups. The city staff felt that the combined impact of the selected plans had a strong effect on the level of vulnerability to community hazards.

The process of selection required that the team initiate cross-agency staff discussions about the presence and influence of different plans. Urban planning staff, for example, were unaware how the hazard mitigation plan reduced vulnerability of built and social environments.

The city’s emergency management department prepared the city’s element in the regional mitigation plan, but communication across agencies was limited. The Norfolk team thus included the city’s element in the regional mitigation plan in the evaluation when it might otherwise have been excluded if city’s urban planning staff had not collaborated with emergency management staff. Exclusion of the mitigation plan would create a significant lack of understanding about vulnerability reduction policies in the city.

DELINEATING DISTRICT HAZARD ZONES

The first step in identifying the district hazard zones was to identify the parts of the city subject to flooding. The Norfolk team decided to focus on the 100-year floodplain since it is used in formulating local hazard mitigation policy to administer and enforce NFIP policy goals. The team also prioritized sea level rise given the potentially catastrophic consequences of this hazard. Sea level rise forecasts were added to inundation surfaces indicated by the 100-year flood elevations on NFIP maps.2 Next, the Norfolk team debated the appropriateness of how to delineate planning districts. The team was concerned with the appearance of bias when presenting

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

FIGURE 2 - Composite Plan Policy Score by District Hazard Zone. Note: Current hazard is the 100-year floodplain; future hazard is sea level

rise added to the 100-year flood inundation surfaces (Footnote #1).

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the scorecard results to city decision-makers, and thus wanted to use districts that were more “objective” than the official neighborhoods (which are closely linked to city council districts). In the end, they chose to use the eighty U.S. Census Tracts located entirely or partially in the hazard areas to serve as the planning districts. Smaller-scale geographic units (e.g., Census Block Groups) would offer a more finegrained analysis of policy coordination, but the time and effort required to spatially evaluate policies in a greater number of districts were beyond available time and staff resources.

Finally, GIS was used to intersect the hazard zones with the locally defined planning districts.

SPATIALLY EVALUATING THE NETWORK OF PLANS

The Norfolk team followed the three-step procedure for spatially evaluating the plans: extracting policies in plans, scoring each policy based on vulnerability outcomes, and spatially assigning and summing policy scores to district hazard zones. The team created and mapped a composite index score for each hazard district zone in the city. Figure 2 shows the resulting district hazard zones (and composite plan policy scores from all plans) for the Norfolk Resilience Scorecard analysis.

The Norfolk team was surprised to find some weaknesses and inconsistencies in the city’s network plans. Examples include:

1. The city’s comprehensive plan contained a major gap in hazard mitigation policy, as the Norfolk planning staff had unintentionally excluded the hazard mitigation plan in all other prior plan-making efforts in the city.

2 . Plans are unjust in policy attention aimed at socially vulnerable neighborhoods; poor areas of the city received lower composite policy scores.

3. Prominent themes in the Vision 2100 to guide the city’s long-term response to sea level rise were not integrated into the current comprehensive plan.

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4 . Location criteria in several plans only focused on accessibility of city services and facilities to different population groups but did not factor in location and design criteria for community facilities in flood hazard areas.

5. The hazard mitigation plan lacked spatial specificity; notably, it did not specify strategies to mitigate vulnerability to existing development in areas exposed to sea level rise and the 100-year regulatory floodplain.

Results of the evaluation were shared with the city council at a public hearing and with staff across city agencies charged with preparation and implementation of different plans. Local planning staff pointed out that this action proved important for raising awareness about the threats posed by sea level rise and gaining support for better integration of vulnerability reduction policies throughout the city’s network of plans.

OUTCOMES: IMPROVING INTEGR ATION OF RESILIENCE IN PL ANS The mapped scores had a broad range of significant impacts. George Homewood (FAICP, CFM, Norfolk Planning Director) summed up the city’s overall experience with the process, indicating that the “Resilience Scorecard was a great tool to allow us to evaluate our existing plans and policies.”

Comments by city staff team members reveal the benefits of the Resilience Scorecard process. One member indicated that the “process offers an unbiased and impartial look at policies and plans…it helps reveal how we need to spread our energy to other areas of the community.” Another stated: “We were very intrigued by the spatiality of our policies and hadn’t thought about our policies spatially before.” Finally, team members universally agreed that the process strengthened social networking, communication, and coordination among staff from multiple local government agencies.

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FIGURE 3 - Norfolk, Virginia’s, Vision 2100 includes land use strategies to address long-term vulnerability to coastal hazards and sea level

rise. Source: City of Norfolk (2017a)

Specific outcomes are aimed at revising plans, development regulations, and infrastructure investment decisions.

With improved community support, planners were able to add new policies to improve weak areas. As noted, key policies and implementation actions in the hazard mitigation plan were incorporated into the city’s comprehensive plan. Resilience metrics were added to the location criteria for community facilities in the hazard mitigation plan and comprehensive plan. Prior versions of the plans only included conventional metrics based on accessibility of populations to community facilities.

FIGURE 4 - Norfolk Resilience Park under the Ohio Creek Watershed Project.

Source: City of Norfolk (2018)

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Information generated by the Resilience Scorecard helped create a new zoning ordinance to better account for the variations in the “geography of resilience.” Official notes from a public hearing initiated by the City Planning Commission indicated that the information generated will be used to update development regulations and building standards, to strengthen stormwater infrastructure requirements, and to serve as a component of the fact base for preparation of a new comprehensive plan in 2020 (City of Norfolk 2017b).

The current comprehensive plan was also amended to incorporate the Vision 2100 strategy that identifies major elements for a citywide resilience strategy. Figure 3 shows the key themes and a mapped illustration of Vision 2100: • Yellow low-elevation areas prone to flooding from sea level rise for gradual retreat by applying land acquisitions and limiting expansion of infrastructure; • Green high-elevation areas for new urban centers that increase densities, shifting single-use to mixeduse development, expand infrastructure investments; • Red low-elevation areas for major structural flood protection projects to protect significant economic assets essential to the city’s future (downtown, seaport); and • Purple high-elevation areas for establishing neighborhoods of the future.

Paula Shea observed that “when we go after grants for resilience…a fact base that demonstrates that plans are not at odds makes it clear that we know where we want to go in the future…we have our act together.” The city staff placed greater attention on social justice by improving coordination among plan policies for poor neighborhoods and using the results in developing an award-winning proposal. In 2018, the city received a $112 million award under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience Competition that targets the Ohio Creek watershed, known as the Chesterfield Heights area (Figure 4).

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Design work will be measured against several goals such as creating coastal resilience, improving economic vitality, and strengthening vulnerable neighborhoods.

FUTURE STEPS We envision that the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard will provide an opportunity to establish a widely applicable approach to promote resilience to hazards and climate change and support better planning across urban sectors. The results in Norfolk exemplify how the resilience scorecard framework can be applied at different stages of plan development, from evaluating an existing network of plans, to guiding the development of new plans to coordinate with existing plans, and to changing development ordinance tools to be consistent with revised networks of plans.

Planners should recognize the centrality of their roles in local government and use their unique talents to advance community resilience to hazards and climate change.

By applying the Resilience Scorecard, planners can play a key coordinating role in devising holistic solutions to rising threats and helping communities pose critical questions. Planners have a strong combination of skills for supporting the creation of coordinated integration of hazard vulnerability reduction efforts in local networks of plans. Within local governments, planners are best able to infuse new thinking about the holistic approach to plan integration.

FUNDING The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this article is based on work supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (Grant #0031369). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

1

http://mitigationguide.org/scorecard-guidebook/

We add sea level rise forecasts to inundation surfaces indicated by the 100year flood elevations on DFIRM maps, consistent with the method used to guide rebuilding of structures that received FEMA’s public assistance funds after Hurricane Katrina (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE], 2018a).

Our aim is to delineate the extent of flooding using the same 1 percent probability of occurrence as FEMA uses, to which we add the level of sea rise. Recent advances in downscaling the effects of global climate change on sea level rise have made it possible to delineate areas exposed to sea level rise (Climate Central, 2014). We use data derived from USACE’s sea level rise calculator, which provides alternative scenarios in ten-year increments up to 2100 for relative local sea level rise along the U.S. coast (USACE, 2018b).

The intermediate-high scenario for the year 2100 from a range of possible sea level rise scenarios (low, intermediate-low, intermediate, intermediatehigh, and high) generated by the USACE sea level rise calculator for the coastal region that includes Norfolk.

2

WORKS CITED Berke, Philip, Galen Newman, Jaekyung Lee, Tabitha Combs, Carl Kolosna, and David Salvesen. 2015. “Evaluation of Networks of Plans and Vulnerability to Hazards and Climate Change: A Resilience Scorecard.”

Journal of the American Planning Association 81 (4): 287 302. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01944363.2015.1093954 Berke, P.R., Malecha, M.L., Yu, S., Lee, J., Masterson, J.H., 2019. Plan integration for resilience scorecard: evaluating networks of plans in six US coastal cities. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. Published electronically June 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2018.1453354 City of Norfolk. 2017a. Norfolk Vision 2100. https://www.norfolk.gov/ DocumentCenter/View/27768/Vision-2100---FINAL?bidId= City of Norfolk, 2017b. plaNorfolk2030. Amendments to be Initiated by City Planning Commission: May 25, 2017.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2019. Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems: Summary for Policymakers. https://www.ipcc. ch/report/srccl/ Lindsey, Rebecca and Dahlman, LuAnn. 2019. Climate Change: Global Temperature. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understandingclimate/climate-change-global-temperature Malecha, Matt, Jamie Masterson, Siyu Yu, and Philip Berke 2018. Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard Guidebook: Spatially Evaluating Networks of Plans to Reduce Hazard Vulnerability Version 2.0 [http:// mitigationguide.org/scorecard-guidebook/] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 2019. 2018’s Billion Dollar Disasters in Context. https://www.climate.gov/newsfeatures/blogs/beyond-data/2018s-billion-dollar-disasters-context National Research Council (NRC). (2012). Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. https://doi. org/10.17226/13457.

Rubin, Claire. 2019. Ch.1: Introduction, In Claire Rubin and Susan Cutter (Eds.), US Emergency Management in the 21st Century: From Disaster to Catastrophe, Philadelphia, PA: Routledge.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 2018a. Application of flood risk reduction standard for Sandy rebuilding projects: Sea-level Change Curve Calculator Using the Flood Risk Reduction Standard for Sandy Rebuilding Projects. http://www. corpsclimate.us/ccaceslcurvesECB U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 2018b. Climate Change Adaptation: Comprehensive Evaluation of Projects with Respect to Sea-level Change. http:// www.corpsclimate.us/ccaceslcurves.cfm

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END NOTES

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

N EW CO LLABO RATI O NS HELP LOCA L A ND STAT E G OVE RN M E NT I N N O RT H CA ROLINA A DVA NC E COASTAL CO M M UNI TY RES ILIENC E PLA NNING CHRISTIAN KAMRATH, C.F.M Christian R. Kamrath recently joined the Miami-Dade County Office of Resilience as a Resilience Coordinator for Adaptation where he supports various efforts focused on sea

level rise, including: conducting trainings and outreach, development of climate change policy reports and plans, and facilitating neighborhood-scale adaptation planning. Prior to joining Miami-Dade County, Christian served as a Coastal Resilience Specialist with the

N.C. Division of Coastal Management, where he led the development of the N.C Coastal

Community Resilience Guide, supported design of regional resilience workshops, and worked

with local governments to provide technical assistance. He draws additional hazards planning, research, and communications experience from his time working at N.C. Sea Grant; the

Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; National Park Service; and WRUF-TV6. Christian is a Certified Floodplain Manager and holds a B.S. in Geography from the University of Florida and a Master’s of City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he researched

the financial impacts of flood buyouts on municipalities and community relocation strategies.

HOLLY WHITE, C.F.M, AICP Holly B. White is a Principal Planner with the Town of Nags Head Planning Department

where she focuses on long-range planning, grant writing, special project management, and environmental issues including floodplain management and resiliency planning. Holly holds a Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Planning, with a focus in Coastal Planning, and a minor in Geology from East Carolina University. She is professionally certified as a member of

the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and is a Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM).

Holly serves on the Leadership Council for Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership and is a Regional Representative for the N.C. Association of Floodplain Managers.

ABSTR ACT Tackling issues of climate adaptation and resilience in small and rural communities in coastal North Carolina requires an adaptive systems-thinking approach rooted in partnerships and collaboration. Integrating climate considerations and resilience into local plans, ordinances, programs, and culture is a tall task in the already very dynamic and complex coastal environment.

This piece walks through several elements of the topic, including a personal account that puts recent hazard events in context, the experience of local adaptation planning in the coastal Town of Nags Head, and a summary of recent state-level resilience initiatives guiding progress on the coast.

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A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE WATER EVENTS From the slow-moving black-water rivers to the interconnected expanse of wetlands, salt marshes, sounds, back bays, capes, inlets, and barrier islands, water flows and supports both natural and human systems throughout the coastal region of North Carolina. As one of the most dynamic places in the country, I was excited to be moving to Morehead City along the Crystal Coast to embrace a new lifestyle and culture unique to coastal communities.

Along with the charm, beauty, and grit, I was aware of—and would unfortunately come to experience first-hand—the undeniable risk posed by natural hazards, including the tides, winds, waves, and rainfall that come with coastal storms and hurricanes that have shaped the landscape over millions of years.

Two weeks following my arrival, excitement turned to worry as Hurricane Florence formed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Even many seasoned, life-long coastal residents were not fully prepared for the storm’s impacts. Earlier forecasts showed the possibility of a major Category 4 hurricane striking the Crystal Coast, but many were relieved when Florence weakened and slowed to jogging pace (five to six miles per hour) before approaching. Instead of catastrophic wind gusts, Florence dumped record rainfall of more than thirty inches and brought storm surge and coastal erosion, made worse by multiple high tide cycles and an elevated baseline water level created by long-term sea level rise.1 Despite weakening, the hurricane-force winds damaged roofs, allowing drenching rains and storm surge to flood families and businesses from above and below. With the privilege of a flexible job, no dependents, friends nearby, adequate savings and a car, I was fortunate to be able to evacuate inland, thinking to myself when I left town, “This room could have three to five feet of flooding”.

FIGURE 1- A home in Morehead City, North Carolina damaged by Hurricane Florence is elevated about four ft above the ground to reduce

future flood risk. The neighboring blue-roofed home has their HVAC elevated about one foot above the ground.

Photo Credit: Christian Kamrath

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Thankfully, Florence slowed and shifted westward, and the saltwater only made it into my driveway and crawl space.

Homes that were closer to the nearby tidal creek, just a block away, flooded. Homeowner’s and flood insurance covered repairs for my roof and the water damage to two rooms’ worth of flooring, furniture, and light fixtures. However, the homeowners across the street had to elevate their home after sustaining substantial damage (greater than 50 percent of the home’s value) as per current flood regulations, which require one foot of ‘freeboard’ (one foot above the base flood elevation or the one percent annual chance flood).2 They decided to build an extra foot higher to be safe (Figure 1). Unlike many, they were not only able and willing to rebuild, but also to use a few thousand dollars of their own money to build higher.

Along with my neighbors and Morehead City, millions of other households and hundreds, if not thousands, of communities throughout the country have or are currently navigating the stressful, complicated, drawn-out process of long-term disaster recovery. These repeated extreme weather events have reshaped the social, economic, and environmental fabrics of riverine and coastal communities in Eastern North Carolina. Unfortunately, the increasing trend of damaging natural hazard events is not expected to slow. The impacts of climate change are set to bring about continued and unprecedented changes, moving government organizations at multiple levels to adapt their approaches to community planning.

To put things in perspective, early estimates for raising just one three-mile stretch of road in the Florida Keys to withstand estimated sea levels and high tides in 2060 is about $60 million per mile.3 When the adaptation costs for one of the most vulnerable and exposed communities in the United States are so high, not every piece of infrastructure or home can be saved, and one municipality or county government cannot tackle these issues alone. Preparing for and adapting to the changes will require a multi-jurisdictional and interdisciplinary approach. To build community ‘resilience’ is to take proactive steps to reduce both the physical and psychological damages that come with short-term shocks like hurricanes while also accounting for future climate conditions in everyday investments and decisions to adapt to long-term stresses, such as sea level rise.

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In this article, we describe some key challenges posed by future hazard events; outline how one local government, the Town of Nags Head, has taken positive steps to plan for resilience; and explore how recent efforts at the state level are fostering new modes of stakeholder engagement and future planning. Our first-hand experiences tell us that the collective capacity of North Carolinians to adapt is immense and the future risks they face are nearly as great.

FUTURE HA Z ARD CHALLENGES The devastation caused by hurricanes in the fall is compounded by other natural hazards that can occur year-round. Exacerbated by human-caused climate change and risky development practices, the impacts from unnamed coastal storms, such as wintertime ‘Nor’easters’, are creating higher surge and waves in addition to high lunar or ‘king tides’ and a higher average sea level. In northeastern North Carolina, relative sea levels (which accounts for sinking land) have risen three to four inches since 1994, and are expected to rise an additional three feet or more by 2100.4 Further, a warmer atmosphere has led to heavier and more frequent extreme rainfall events that dump freshwater onto landscapes5 made gradually more impervious by development. In addition, these less permeable surfaces have a reduced capacity to drain water into the soils because of rising groundwater levels, which are also driven by the pressure of the rising seas against the water table.6 It is a continued story of adapting to live with and manage the water to support the systems our society depends on (agriculture, natural habitat, tourism, transportation, business, etc.). In addition to flooding concerns, others face growing water quality challenges, with more frequent and widespread algal blooms and septic system failures that can choke ecosystems, increase water treatment costs, threaten public health, and stifle tourism. These compounding hazards create a complex management challenge that will continue to impact local residents and visitors daily.7 However, models based on historical climate data used to inform our infrastructure and development designs do not account for the increased intensity, frequency, and duration of hazards expected in the coming decades.

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FIGURE 2- Building blocks for the VCAPS diagramming process.

Many federal programs and systems have failed to adapt their investments to evolving environmental and social contexts,8 allowing and in some cases even encouraging unsustainable and inequitable practices as part of a ‘safe development paradox.’9 In the wake of this failure, local communities including the Town of Nags Head have stepped up to tackle these issues head on and offer lessons about an integrated planning process that has inspired and informed action at the state level.

LOCAL LEADERS DRIVING REGIONAL PROGRESS IN NAGS HEAD The Town of Nags Head is a small, coastal community nestled in the northern Outer Banks. Nags Head’s geographic location ensures access to an abundance of natural resources. However, the town’s location also predisposes it to many hazards, such as hurricanes, nor’easters, flooding, and erosion. For many, adaptation has become part of the culture. However, the impacts of a changing climate present enormous challenges to communities, especially those with close connection to water.

Due to its vulnerabilities, the town developed a partnership with North Carolina Sea Grant to adopt initial adaptive practices and policies for sea level rise and climate change.

To coproduce this knowledge, the team led a Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenario (VCAPS) process (Figure 2) that helped the community and decision-makers develop a shared understanding of the consequences of coastal hazards, with a focus on sea level rise. Approximately sixty stakeholders participated

in the VCAPS diagramming, resulting in adaptive actions from both public and private sector stakeholders in a process grounded in shared public understanding of local values. Additionally, a citizen subcommittee assisted in the prioritization of the initial list of response options.

Rather than argue the science or accuracy of climate information, the process focused on how the community observed hazards affecting it. The VCAPS process both educated participants about hazards and allowed them to systematically think through possible outcomes and consequences of their inaction. Participants were asked to think about what hazards impact Nags Head; why they care about these impacts; what the results of the impacts will be; what makes these impacts better or worse; and what actions (private or public) can be taken to mitigate these impacts.

As a result of participating in the VCAPS exercise, the Town formed a Climate Adaptation and Sea Level Rise Committee to refine over 160 potential actions into prioritized, manageable, implementable strategies. These actions were categorized into four main categories for ease of incorporation into existing departmental functions: ocean shoreline management, estuarine shoreline management, stormwater management, and water (ground/surface) management.

Concurrent to the VCAPS process, the Town conducted a separate long-range comprehensive planning process with a separate Advisory Committee and community engagement process. The actions developed through the VCAPS process served as a foundation for policies related 35

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to resiliency and sea level rise in the Comprehensive Plan.

The Nags Head Board of Commissioners approved both the VCAPS Report and the FOCUS Nags Head Comprehensive Plan in 2017.10 The policies and actions adopted as part of the Comprehensive Plan provide direction for implementation. The Town has already begun to mainstream actions into ongoing planning efforts and other projects. The most notable implementation project relates to stormwater and groundwater management.

While many may think the most visible symptom of climate change and sea level rise in coastal areas is accelerated oceanside erosion, higher intensity rainfall events coupled with elevated groundwater levels resulting in localized rainfall flooding are a greater threat. Due to increased localized rainfall flooding (Figure 3), the Town has installed a series of groundwater lowering wells that pump groundwater down in advance of major rainfall or storm events. The pumping lowers groundwater levels and allows for capacity in the soil to store rainwater thereby preventing flooding.

FIGURE 3 - Stormwater flooding in the Town of Nags Head.

Photo Credit: Town of Nags head.

While completion of the VCAPS Report and adoption of Comprehensive Plan policies have been major steps forward, there remains a great deal of work ahead. The Town is now working through key partnerships to locate funding and expertise needed for implementation of research, plans, infrastructure projects, or other mitigation projects.

Implementation may be further hindered by the many county, state, and federal regulations that are in place both governing development and protecting natural resources.

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Zoning and stormwater management are locally governed, while Coastal Area Management Act and septic regulations are state governed. Further, while floodplain management regulations are locally adopted, the regulations must be consistent with both state and federal regulations.

The most difficult issues to address will be beyond the Town’s jurisdiction. For example, stormwater and septic were identified as key action areas of the VCAPS report. However, one-third of the Town’s fifty-five miles of drainage is located within the N.C. Department of Transportation Right of Way and septic regulations are governed by the state, with permits issued at the county level. Cooperation and partnership both from departments in state government and other municipalities are critical in developing the consensus needed to move forward in developing solutions. There is a benefit to addressing many of these issues at a regional level if possible as there are economies of scale associated with activities such as designing and planning for stormwater infrastructure systems. Interestingly, while there has been a great deal of community support in becoming a more resilient community, citizens were also concerned that actions to make the Town more resilient could impact community character and quality of life.

The VCAPS process and resulting report was successful due in large part to the initiation of the project and subsequent support of the Town’s elected body, the Board of Commissioners. Additionally, community engagement was extensive from the beginning of both the VCAPS process and the Town’s Comprehensive Planning process. Most importantly, this effort was successful due to partnerships with trusted agencies, like N.C. Sea Grant and the Coastal Studies Institute. These agencies provided trusted scientific expertise that allowed the actions and policies developed to be rooted sound science. Nags Head became the first community in northeastern North Carolina to adopt policy addressing sea level rise. The experiences and lessons learned through the VCAPS and Comprehensive Planning processes ultimately became a key example and informed development of related sectors of the State’s actions through Executive Order 80.

Regional Resilience Workshop in Elizabeth City, North Carolina discuss their needs for expanded resilience and adaptation education, training, and outreach.

Photo credit: Christian Kamrath

A RENEWED VISION AND PROCESS FOR FUTURE RESILIENCE PL ANNING Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina made addressing climate change a cornerstone of his administration with Executive Order 80, North Carolina’s Commitment to Addressing Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy.11 Led by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), State agencies are developing several plans, including a Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan (CRARP), to address climate impacts, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and expand zero-emission-vehicles.

The CRARP should outline general risks posed to the State’s people, environment, and infrastructure and recommend strategies for shifting state activities while also providing guidance and assistance to local communities to address local hazard and climate risks.12 Expected in March of 2020, State agency staff and partners have been working on an ambitious timeline to host regional resilience workshops engaging local stakeholders that have informed the CRARP (Figure 4). While the plan will not provide all the answers, it will offer an updated climate assessment and framework based upon previous state climate initiatives.13 As with much of planning, the process for developing the CRARP may be more valuable than the document itself; it has fostered new and greater interagency coordination, focused engagement with new stakeholders, and formed a shared understanding of needs. The six Regional Resilience Workshops hosted throughout the state that brought together local government leaders to understand the specific hazard and climate challenges, potential solutions, and needs for building community resilience.

Executive Order 80 comes during a span of record-breaking hurricanes, including Matthew in 2016, Florence and

The N.C. Division of Coastal Management (DCM), housed under DEQ, has long supported resilience efforts through both oceanfront setback regulations for development and the distribution of Planning and Management Grants.

Building off of years of state-funded resilience pilot projects and studies as well as countless workshops and conversations in the coastal region, the DCM began in 2019 to work with local planners (including the Town of Nags Head) and subject matter experts to develop a simple yet comprehensive online N.C. Coastal Community Resilience Guide (or “Guide”). The primary goal of the Guide is to help local government planners and other staff begin the process of developing a strategy for adaptation that integrates climate change information across different plans and into codes and ordinances, non-regulatory program design, and public outreach materials.15 The Guide highlights local case studies, including the VCAPS process used by Nags Head as one potential model to begin that process. With new mapping and data tools,

FIGURE 5 - A conceptual framework and process for

‘mainstreaming’ climate and resilience – graphic featured in the new N.C. Coastal Community Resilience Guide. Source: N.C. Department of Environmental Quality

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FIGURE 4 - Local government stakeholders at the Northeast

Michael in 2018, and Dorian in 2019. To address recovery from these hurricanes, the state created a new Office of Recovery and Resilience within the Department of Public Safety. Three newly hired resilience officers have organized state Recovery Support Functions that manage various aspects of recovery such as housing and education to help guide a holistic and forward-thinking long-term recovery. As other states have done following major disasters,14 North Carolina has recognized and formalized the idea that it takes an entire team of dedicated and experienced staff working across departments—to truly build back better.

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best practices, and funding opportunities coming online every year, communities asked for a one-stop-shop for North Carolina-specific resources and guidance on ‘how’ to plan for resilience. The Guide draws inspiration from other successful coastal states, reflects insights from academia, and suggests potential approaches for implementation regardless of a community’s level of experience or resource constraints.

Integrating climate change considerations or ‘mainstreaming’ resilience into plans, ordinances, programs and investments with the support of the DCM guide may look slightly different in every community, but requires broad and deep stakeholder discussions similar to those conducted in Nags Head through VCAPS to create a path forward (Figure 5).

However, local governments made clear at the regional resilience workshops held to inform the CRARP’s development, an online guidance tool will not be enough.

Greater investment and resources from the state and federal level are needed to facilitate the community conversations required to build consensus around implementing the strategies that are developed. This is especially relevant for smaller rural communities that may not have the capacity or resources to leverage existing or newly developed opportunities.

END NOTES National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report – Hurricane Florence”. Stacie R. Stewart and Robbie Berg. (May 2019). https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL062018_ Florence.pdf 1

Town of Morehead City. Code of Ordinance. Part IV - Unified Development Ordinance – Basic Definitions and Interpretations. 2-2.224 Regulatory Flood Protection Elevation. (2019). Accessed November 15, 2019. https:// library.municode.com/nc/morehead_city/codes/code_of_ordinance 2

Harris, Alex. ”At $60 million a mile, the Keys may abandon some roads to sea rise rather than raise them”. Miami Herald. December 5, 2019. https:// www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article238040499.html 3

North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, Division of Coastal Management. “North Carolina Sea-Level-Rise Assessment Report”. March 2010. Accessed November 15, 2019. Accessed from:https://www.sealevel.info/NC_Sea-Level_Rise_Assessment_ Report_2010--CRC_Science_Panel.pdf 4

Bowden, H. Jared, PhD. “Extreme Rainfall and Future Flooding a Growing Risk? Why?”. Southeast Regional Resilience Workshop. Wilmington, NC. (May 2019). Accessed November 13, 2019. Accessed from: https://files.nc.gov/ ncdeq/documents/files/Coastal_Resilience_Workshop_Climate_Change_ Talk_Bowden_Wilmington.pdf 5

Kozak, Catherine. Coastal Review Online. “Rising Sea Levels Complicate Flooding Issues”. (December 2017). Accessed November 23, 2019. Accessed from: https://www.coastalreview.org/2017/12/rising-sea-levels-complicateflooding-issues/ 6

Bennett, Abbie. The News and Observer. ‘Sunny day flooding’ worsens at NC beaches — a sign sea rise is decades too soon, studies say.” (May 2018).

Accessed October 28, 2018. Accessed from: https://www.newsobserver. com/news/technology/article210413904.html 7

CONCLUSION While governments can support new platforms to disseminate information, such as the DCM guide, they may still be stifled if they cannot work collaboratively across jurisdictions, disciplines, and cultures to leverage knowledge and resources.

As evidenced by the intergovernmental coordination that is guiding the initiatives in the Town of Nags Head and across state agencies leading disaster recovery and climate action, a forward-thinking and equitable planning process will help all North Carolinians rise to the challenge. Setting ambitious goals are a crucial first step, but it has and will continue to require an unrelenting amount of patience and determination to move beyond our personal and professional comfort zones to effect resilience-building in our communities.

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Gaul, Gilbert M. The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of Americas Coasts. New York: Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

8

Burby, Raymond J. “Hurricane Katrina and the Paradoxes of Government Disaster Policy: Bringing About Wise Governmental Decisions for Hazardous Areas.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604, no. 1 (March 2006): 171–91. doi:10.1177/0002716205284676.

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Town of Nags Head. “Adaptation in the Town of Nags Head: Vulnerability, Consequences, Adaptation, Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) Report”.

(August 2017). Accessed October 20, 2019. http://www.nagsheadnc.gov/ DocumentCenter/View/198/Nags-Head-VCAPS-Report-Final---AdoptedSeptember-6-2017-PDF 10

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. “Climate Change and Clean Energy – Plans and Progress”. (2019). Accessed November 25, 2019.https://deq.nc.gov/energy-climate/climate-change/nc-climatechange-interagency-council/climate-change-clean-energy 11

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North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. “Climate Risk Assessment & Resiliency Plan”. (2019). Accessed November 20, 2019. https://deq.nc.gov/energy-climate/climate-change/nc-climate-changeinteragency-council/climate-change-clean-energy-0 12

North Carolina Interagency Team. “Climate Ready North Carolina – Building A Resilient Future”. (2012). Accessed November 13, 2019. http:// www.climatechange.nc.gov/Climate_Ready_North_Carolina_Building_a_ Resilient_Future.pdf 13

State of Colorado. Department of Local Affairs – Colorado Resilience Office. (2019). Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.coresiliency.com/ 14

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. “N.C. Coastal Community Resilience Guide”. (December 2019). Accessed December 2, 2019. https://ncdenr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index. html?appid=e2eb18546943471b93f0264659744a81 15

WORKS CITED Bennett, Abbie. “Sunny day flooding’ worsens at NC beaches — a sign sea rise is decades too soon, studies say.” The News and Observer. May 3, 2018. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/technology/article210413904.html Bowden, Jared, PhD. “Extreme Rainfall and Future Flooding a Growing Risk? Why?”. Southeast Regional Resilience Workshop. Wilmington, NC. (May 2019). Accessed November 13, 2019. https://files.nc.gov/ncdeq/ documents/files/Coastal_Resilience_Workshop_Climate_Change_Talk_ Bowden_Wilmington.pdf Burby, Raymond J. “Hurricane Katrina and the Paradoxes of Government Disaster Policy: Bringing About Wise Governmental Decisions for Hazardous Areas.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604, no. 1 (March 2006): 171–91. doi:10.1177/0002716205284676.

Cappucci, Matthew. “Freak storms of 2019 Atlantic hurricane season left trail of destruction and revealed climate change fingerprints. The Washington Post. December 4, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ weather/2019/12/04/headlined-by-horrible-dorian-other-freak-stormsatlantic-hurricane-season-is-done/ Gaul, Gilbert M. The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of Americas Coasts. New York: Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

Harris, Alex. “At $60 million a mile, the Keys may abandon some roads to sea rise rather than raise them”. Miami Herald. December 5, 2019. https:// www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article238040499.html Kozak, Catherine. Coastal Review Online. “Rising Sea Levels Complicate Flooding Issues”. (December 2017). Accessed November 23, 2019. https:// www.coastalreview.org/2017/12/rising-sea-levels-complicate-floodingissues/ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report – Hurricane Matthew”. Stecie R. Stewart.

(April 2017). Accessed November 20, 2019. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/ tcr/AL142016_Matthew.pdf

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report – Hurricane Florence. Stacie R. Stewart and Robbie Berg. (May 2019). Accessed November 20, 2019. https://www. nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL062018_Florence.pdf North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, Division of Coastal Management. “North Carolina Sea-Level-Rise Assessment Report”. (March 2010). Accessed November 15, 2019. https:// www.sealevel.info/NC_Sea-Level_Rise_Assessment_Report_2010-CRC_Science_Panel.pdf North Carolina Interagency Team. “Climate Ready North Carolina – Building A Resilient Future”. (2012). Accessed November 13, 2019. http:// www.climatechange.nc.gov/Climate_Ready_North_Carolina_Building_a_ Resilient_Future.pdf North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. “Climate Risk Assessment & Resiliency Plan”. (2019). Accessed November 20, 2019. https://deq.nc.gov/energy-climate/climate-change/nc-climate-changeinteragency-council/climate-change-clean-energy-0 North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. “N.C. Coastal Community Resilience Guide”. (December 2019). Accessed December 2, 2019. https://ncdenr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index. html?appid=e2eb18546943471b93f0264659744a81 State of Colorado. Department of Local Affairs – Colorado Resilience Office. (2019). Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.coresiliency.com/ Town of Morehead City. Code of Ordinance. Part IV - Unified Development Ordinance – Basic Definitions and Interpretations. 2-2.224 Regulatory Flood Protection Elevation. (2019). Accessed November 15, 2019. https:// library.municode.com/nc/morehead_city/codes/code_of_ordinance Town of Nags Head. “Adaptation in the Town of Nags Head: Vulnerability, Consequences, Adaptation, Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) Report”.

(August 2017). Accessed October 20, 2019. http://www.nagsheadnc.gov/ DocumentCenter/View/198/Nags-Head-VCAPS-Report-Final---AdoptedSeptember-6-2017-PDF 39

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WO RKI NG TO GE TH E R TO REAC H RES ILIENC E: How Collaboration was Critical in Planning a Successful R e c o v e r y f o r t h e C i t y o f Pa n a m a C i t y, F l o r i d a

MICHELLE BOHRSON Michelle Bohrson is a resilience planner at Hagerty Consulting with extensive hazard mitigation

and recovery planning experience. She has also served as the lead community engagement

coordinator for Hagerty for the City of Panama City Long-Term Recovery Planning Project where she planned, coordinated, and supported facilitation of many stakeholder and public

engagement meetings. Michelle received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan.

APRIL GERUSO April Geruso is the Director of Resilience and Lead for Hagerty Consulting. She is an experienced emergency manager and community planner, specializing in the coordination, analysis, and planning of stakeholder operations at all levels of government, community members, and within

private/non-profit sectors. Before joining Hagerty, April worked at the City of Philadelphia in

the Managing Director’s Office of Emergency Management as Deputy Director for Planning.

April received a Bachelor of Arts from Virginia Tech University and a Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin.

KAYLA SLATER Kayla Slater is a resilience planner at Hagerty Consulting with formal training and real-world

experience supporting emergency management projects. Recently, she has supported postdisaster recovery planning efforts at the municipal and state level, managing post-disaster recovery planning in the City of Panama City and State of Nebraska. The primary purpose of each of these efforts was to develop actionable strategies for long-term recovery based on the

needs of that specific disaster. Kayla graduated from the Georgetown University’s Emergency and Disaster Management Program.

ABSTR ACT In October 2018, Hurricane Michael devastated the City of Panama City.

The City’s reaction provides a case study for successful, innovative, and resilient recovery. Key to the City’s success was the extensive collaboration of diverse team members, integration of funding with visioning for recovery, and expansive engagement practices. While challenges from aggressive timelines, varying viewpoints, limitations in staffing existed, the resulting plans are highly implementable, community-driven, and built to transform the future of the City of Panama City. The collaboration and outcomes discussed in this case provide a successful model of planmaking designed to reach towards resilience.

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INTRODUCTION Comprehensive collaboration is critical to developing plans aiming to reach resilience. Following Hurricane Michael, the City of Panama City, Florida (“the City”) initiated a process for planning to reach resilience as a community.

Rather than focusing solely on recouping disaster-related expenditures through federal grant programs, the City sought out a more comprehensive vision for recovery. To set their course for recovery, the City developed a longterm recovery and redevelopment plan. Post-disaster, recovery planning is a tool that can guide recovery and prioritize use of limited resources based on need. However, not every recovery plan is successful, where “success” is defined as the ability to implement the plan. The case of the City’s recovery from Hurricane Michael provides an example of how collaboration is key for working through barriers to develop an implementable plan for recovery. The City’s planning process brought together diverse and nontraditional partnerships to develop a Long-Term Recovery Plan that is both actionable and community-driven. Their Plan is a vision for the whole community to build back better to create a less-hazardous future.

HURRICANE MICHAEL’S IMPACT ON THE CIT Y OF PANAMA CIT Y The eye of Hurricane Michael made landfall in Bay County near the City of Panama City, Florida on October 10, 2018 as a Category 5 hurricane with winds over 161 miles per hour. Hurricane Michael was the most powerful hurricane to impact North Florida in recorded history.1 Its impact took an extensive toll on the community of approximately 37,000 residents.2 Nearly every aspect of life was disrupted.

Thousands of residents were displaced, and business closures were widespread.3 Forty-one people in Bay County lost their lives as a result of the storm.4 Roughly 60 percent of the City’s housing stock was damaged or destroyed.5 Both of the area’s two hospitals sustained damage.6 The damage sustained in the City of Panama City equates to

more than 200 percent of the county’s annual budget.7 All told, there were more than 45,000 damaged and 1,500 destroyed structures equating to roughly $661 million in damage.8 As the City initiated its recovery process, a vision emerged grounded in four lines of effort. The City’s vision for recovery is, “to create a resilient, innovative, safe, sustainable, and attractive community.”9 The aim of City leadership is for the City of Panama City to become the premier city in the Florida Panhandle.10 To achieve this, the City approached recovery through the lenses of four lines of effort, including:

1 . Safety

and Security. Tying in the efforts for enhancing the safety, inclusivity, and health of the community

2 . Infrastructure.

Recovering post-Michael and enhancing the City’s resilience for the next storm

3 . Economy. Continuing to be the economic engine for the region, recovering what was lost, identifying new opportunities, and promoting diversification.

4 . Quality

of Life. Reinforcing the importance of the City’s natural and developed features for the community’s benefit.

The City’s vision served as the inspiration for community engagement and implementation. The lines the lines of effort served as the tool to organize planning efforts.

MAKING RECOVERY PL ANS ACTIONABLE Many recovery plans have failed to achieve their prescribed vision and goals. In part, this points to the fact that plans are not written to be implementable.11 Plans often fail to explain what needs to happen and to assign 41

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responsibility for each step. Plans fail to provide enough detail to take action on the items outlined. Plans sometimes even fail to align with the actual need as defined by the community, favoring precedent from other disasters or best practice.

Recovery plans are important to support visioning and decision-making post-disaster, but guidance on developing recovery plans often falls short of directing communities on specifically how to write an implementable recovery plan. Each new recovery plan builds upon lessons learned in the past and demonstrates the need to update guidance to prioritize creating actionable plans. To be successful, recovery planners must have a clear picture of need, and a plan must be realistic and supported by the community. Without these elements a plan could easily falter, and a community lose the inertia to implement the vision.

Financing the vision is often the first question on a community’s mind. Resilient practices can be more costly, with the benefits not being immediately clear to decisionmakers and leaders. While resources are available to support resilient recovery, most are not guaranteed. No resources are single-handedly adequate to support a full recovery.

All must be cross-checked for duplication of efforts and meet necessary requirements. Projects must be effectively sequenced. Financing recovery throws a wrench into dayto-day budgeting and financing resilience requires changing traditional decision-making processes. Though most do not, recovery plans should adequately address the complexities of financing recovery and resilience to aim for effective implementation.

The goals, priorities, and projects outlined in plans may not always be realistic, presenting another barrier to implementation. A realistic plan both meets the needs of the community, and details how projects fit into a community’s capacity and workflow. All parties who bear responsibility for the plan should have a say in defining and refining core elements. For recovery plans this can include elected officials, jurisdictional employees, and the community. Plans should be as specific as possible (e.g., meet unmet needs, break down projects so timelines align with available funding, assign responsibility). Buy-in and specificity up front is essential for realistic goal-setting.

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Fostering community support is another essential element for effective recovery planning. This support is developed by increasing the capacity of the community through engagement, then meaningfully incorporating input from the community into the plan. Without public engagement, a recovery plan lacks essential community buy-in. Further, planning without engagement impacts trust in the legitimacy of the process and recovery priorities. Conversely, engaging the public in the planning process creates a community-driven purpose and scope for recovery.

RECOVERY PL ANNING IN THE CIT Y OF PANAMA CIT Y With the foundation of the City’s vision and lines of effort, the City initiated planning for long-term recovery.

With this City’s comprehensive approach to planning for recovery, they selected a multi-disciplinary team to realize the vision: Hagerty Consulting, HR&A Advisors, Dover, Kohl, & Partners, and kGlobal. Each firm has expertise in separate areas of planning. Tasked together, the team was responsible for creating a collection of seven plans, together referred to as the Long-Term Recovery Plan, to achieve the City’s vision for a resilient community: the Impact and Unmet Needs Assessment, the Recovery Action Plan, the Long-Term Redevelopment Plan, the Pre-Disaster Recovery Plan, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, the Downtown Master Plan, and a Communications and Engagement Plan. The plans are built to work together and in conjunction with existing long-term recovery efforts in the region, including the Bay County School District recovery efforts and the Bay County Long Term Recovery Plan.12 The City of Panama City’s recovery planning process provides insight and lessons learned to break down barriers and develop strong, action-oriented recovery plans.

Cultivating a Collaborative Recovery Planning Process

Extensive team collaboration, internal and external to the multi-disciplinary team, promoted development of an actionable plan. Internally, intense collaboration became necessary for the diverse body. Over the short seven month planning period, the team had to unify approach and speak

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

IMAGE 1 - Damages after Hurricane Michael. Photo Credit: Hagerty Consulting.

with one voice on the future and resilience of the City of Panama City. The effort to collaborate spanned from big things to small, all tying back to a uniform vision for the community. Small areas of collaboration included aligning terminology throughout. For example, affordable housing means many things to many different groups. Rather than defining affordable housing one way by the economic group, another by recovery, and further another by the master planning group, the team came together to adopt the unified definition for the City.

Conversely, larger initiatives included making certain each plan comprised and informed all relevant priorities for all other plans. This alignment, taking the better part of a week, was at times taxing and complex. Each element relied on another, and if one change was made, at least three plans were affected. Contractors working nationwide primarily coordinated remotely, creating challenges in version control and timely resolution. In big things and small, the planning process illuminated that while much

easier to remain siloed, the City would have been the poorer for cutting essential corners.

Intensive collaboration extended beyond the contracted project team. In recovery, needs are rampant, and funding is limited. Establishing sound logic for priority setting in recovery is necessary but hard. When projects tie back to sound reasoning, limited funds can be put to better use, all while maintaining the public’s trust. In the City of Panama City, each plan contained a series of goals, strategies, and actions to restore the community and fulfill the recovery vision. To help City officials navigate prioritizing recovery actions objectively, Hagerty generated a method to rank priorities as high, medium, or low. Inputs were inclusive of areas tying back to unmet needs, equity, the city’s vision, and lines of effort. City leadership then weighted each element. Collaboration with the City on essential elements of their plans created a clear, unbiased road map and timeline for recovery and buy-in from the City on implementation.

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The collaboration wasn’t without challenges. Namely, City staff had limited bandwidth to work through recovery planning and implementation, all while needing to move forward on their day-to day jobs. This meant getting direct input from City staff required additional effort from the planning team. Moreover, in the best of circumstances large-scale recovery is complicated. The complexities in Panama City’s recovery planning was no different. Decisions needed to be made by City staff at a rapid pace to meet the demands of the planning timeline. Having one or two key staff members be dedicated to this type of planning coordination would have been ideal to reduce the weight for other stakeholders. However, reasonable limitations exist for many communities. Identifying funding, and the ability to hire quickly or specific to recovery simply may not be possible. It is at that point incumbent on the planning team to be nimble to accommodate for these resource-related challenges. Identifying these resource limitations (whether financial, personnel, or equipment) can streamline postdisaster recovery.

Emergency Management Agency) were not available for projects, collaboration was key. Shared expertise afforded the comprehensive identification of resources and funding. Additionally, team partners collaborated to frame and identify co-benefits for projects. At times this led to identifying unique funding strategies through nontraditional financial resources. At other times the City was able to inform the State of pressing unmet needs to inform priority setting for funding. The City, helping to align local and state priorities, was able to devise a more realistic and more effective plan as a result.

Integrating Community Engagement

Long-term recovery planning would only be successful if there was extensive community input. Community engagement throughout the City of Panama City’s planning process 1) provided transparency in government activities, 2) established community-driven leadership in recovery activities, and 3) developed a base for community in recovery planning outcomes. The project team utilized many methods of public engagement to support the goals of the project. In total, over eighty (80) hours of public meetings were conducted. Types of meetings varied. Each meeting was designed to be engaging and collect as much community-driven input as possible in a compressed period of time. Beyond in-person meetings, the City recognized the need to create an ongoing resource for recovery information. The resulting recovery website provided additional means of engagement through hosting public surveys throughout the planning process.

Proactively coordinating with state and federal agencies and elected leadership on recovery planning is essential.

Recovery is dependent on state and federal funding sources and technical expertise. Sound recovery priorities at the state and federal levels require good data up front and throughout the recovery process. For long term recovery Ppanning, the project team regularly collaborated with state and federal agencies, such as the United States Department of Urban Development and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Early and consistent findings, stories, and needs with the City of Panama City’s recovery process have helped The majority of the public engagement was conducted to paint a more accurate picture of recovery. In turn, this by the project team over a period of two weeks called has informed state and federal agencies on designation of “Charrette Week.” The event was heavily promoted in the programs and recovery funds. Bolstering this was direct weeks prior, leveraging numerous types of media: print, engagement with politicians, including state representatives, radio, television, and digital social media. Three town United States senators, and the United States Executive Office. halls provided opportunity for community members to In this coordination, the City regularly communicated its voice their ideas about specific recovery related topics, recovery progress and outstanding needs. including community recovery, education, and volunteer organizations. Four district-specific meetings provided As a result of intensive collaboration throughout the focus on geographic-specific priorities for recovery. A recovery planning process, the City was in a better position series of seventeen topic-specific focus groups prioritized to have an attainable plan for recovery. Where traditional envisioning related elements of the City’s future. Hands-on sources of funding (e.g., Public Assistance from the Federal design studios engaged the public in the master planning 44

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IMAGE 2 - Tours as the public engagement and design process. Photo Credit: Hagerty Consulting.

process. Commissioners meetings were held to brief elected officials on planning progress while providing the public an opportunity to address elected officials about existing and unmet recovery needs.

Meetings were live-streamed and recorded when possible.

Videos and written summaries were uploaded to the longterm recovery website. Plan elements were also posted for public comment to the website. To increase the potential for attendance, public meetings were held at a variety of times on weekdays (early-morning, daytime, and evening) and weekends. Locations were accessible and included American Sign Language interpretation at major meetings.

Though critical, establishing consensus born through public input was not an easy process. Despite the extensive opportunities for participation, representation at the meetings did not match that of the population. For example, the planning team was interested in engaging youth in the City of Panama City as there were impacts, especially to schools, particularly affecting younger community

members. However, in both targeted meetings and general meetings there was not extensive youth participation. This reflected the need for active and creative recruitment to engagement events to encourage diverse participation.

Moreover, finding effective tools to appropriately empower the community through engagement at meetings was challenging in the post-disaster environment.

Community members who were interested in engagement activities did not fully understand how their participation could impact the future of their community. This reflected the need to determine and express the goals for public participation for the plan and associated promises to the public of how their participation will influence the final plan.13 The collaboration with the community that did occur created equity in the planning process. Generating ideas from the public and translating them into projects transformed the recovery process. The City of Panama City’s projects are not only driven by need-based data, but by public desire for prioritized outcomes.

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IMAGE 3 - Town Hall Meeting. Photo Credit: Hagerty Consulting.

CONCLUSION Creating actionable post-disaster recovery plans has traditionally been challenging. Critical barriers have existed, preventing development of implementable plans. Past experience has shed light on what some of these barriers are, including identification of funding options, creation of a realistic plan, and gaining community support. In the City of Panama City, Florida, collaboration as a project team created innovative outcomes. Key among them are the exchange of expertise, increase of capacity within the City, and increased equity in recovery outcomes. While challenges occurred,

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innovations helped to break down traditional barriers and resulted in a cohesive and realistic series of plans. Chief among the successes of the collaboration include plans aligning with one another from numerous viewpoints.

Viewpoints from the community, those of the City, those of key partners, and those respectful to potential and anticipated funding streams were aligned in all plans.

The ultimate result is a practical framework for a resilient, innovative, safe, sustainable, and attractive community.

WORKS CITED

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Hurricane Michael 2018.” NOAA’s National Weather Service, October 9, 2019. https://www. weather.gov/tae/HurricaneMichael2018.

“Bay County economic impact from Hurricane Michael larger than Hurricane Irma.” WJHG, April 16, 2019. https://www.wjhg.com/content/ news/Bay-County-Economic-impact-from-Hurricane-Michael-largerthan-Hurricane-Irma-508655601.html.

1

United States Census, 2020. “Quick Facts Panama City, Florida.” Retrieved at: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/panamacitycityflorida 2

3

City of Panama City Hurricane Michael Impact Assessment, 2019.

4

City of Panama City Hurricane Michael Impact Assessment, 2019.

5

City of Panama City Hurricane Michael Impact Assessment, 2019.

6

City of Panama City Hurricane Michael Impact Assessment, 2019.

“Bay County economic impact from Hurricane Michael larger than Hurricane Irma.” WJHG, April 16, 2019. https://www.wjhg.com/content/ news/Bay-County-Economic-impact-from-Hurricane-Michael-largerthan-Hurricane-Irma-508655601.html.

7

8

City of Panama City Hurricane Michael Impact Assessment, 2019.

9

City of Panama City Recovery Action Plan, 2019.

10

City of Panama City Recovery Action Plan, 2019.

Donahue, A. and R. Tuohy, 2006. “Lessons We Don’t Learn: A Study of the Lessons of Disasters, Why We Repeat Them, and How We Can Learn Them.” Homeland Security Affairs, Vol. II, No. 2.

11

Bay County Florida, 2019. Long-Term Recovery Plan. https:// recoverbaycounty.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/LTRC-Plan-FinalVersion-070919-reduced.pdf.

12

13

Bay County Florida, 2019. Long-Term Recovery Plan. https:// recoverbaycounty.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/LTRC-Plan-FinalVersion-070919-reduced.pdf.

City of Panama City Recovery Action Plan, 2019.

City of Panama City Hurricane Michael Impact Assessment, 2019.

Donahue, A. and R. Tuohy, 2006. “Lessons We Don’t Learn: A Study of the Lessons of Disasters, Why We Repeat Them, and How We Can Learn Them.” Homeland Security Affairs, Vol. II, No. 2.

Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2016. National Disaster Recovery Framework. https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/14660149981234bec8550930f774269e0c5968b120ba2/National_Disaster_Recovery_ Framework2nd.pdf IAP2, 2019. “IAP2 Spectrum.” Retrieved at: http://iap2usa.org Michael, Olivia. “Hurricane Michael death toll climbs again.” WJHG, April 5, 2019. https://www.wjhg.com/content/news/Hurricane-MichaelDeath-Toll-Climbs-Again-508188791.html.

Michael, Olivia. “Hurricane Michael Death Toll Continues to Rise.”

WJHG, January 11, 2019. https://www.wjhg.com/content/news/HurricaneMichael-death-toll-continues-to-rise-504241911.html.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Hurricane Michael 2018.” NOAA’s National Weather Service, October 9, 2019. https://www. weather.gov/tae/HurricaneMichael2018.

IAP2, 2019. “IAP2 Spectrum.” Retrieved at: http://iap2usa.org

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END NOTES

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

P RO M OTI N G E N VI RO NMENTA L JUST IC E T HROUGH PARTI CI PATO RY DI SAST ER RES EA RC H: Hurricane Recovery in Robeson County, North Carolina LAURA A. BRAY Laura A. Bray is a PhD candidate in Sociology and research assistant in the Department of

Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. She studies

environmental inequality and social movements, with the goal of understanding how systems of inequality are maintained and challenged.

OLIVIA VILÁ Olivia Vilá is a PhD student in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management

at North Carolina State University. Olivia studies the social dimensions of disasters. She is interested in using community-based data gathered through participatory approaches to inform disaster recovery and hazard mitigation.

BETHANY B. CUTTS Bethany B. Cutts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. She studies human-environmental relationships with the goal of understanding how justice is incorporated into environmental planning.

MARGARET CRITES Margaret Crites is a community research specialist who spent over 25 years leading the Rape

Crisis Center of Robeson County. She has served on local and state committees and boards, all with the goal of making North Carolina a safer and better place to live.

HANNAH GOINS Hannah Goins is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and community research specialist. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in 2019 with a B.A. in American Indian Studies. Goins is currently a law student at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, with plans to specialize in Indian law.

SALLIE MCLEAN Sallie McLean is a community research specialist, community organizer, and former mayor of

the town of Maxton, North Carolina. She is currently working on campaigns surrounding issues of housing and environmental justice in Robeson County.

NATHAN MCMENAMIN Nathan McMenamin is a Master’s student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability. He is a graduate of the University

of North Carolina at Pembroke, with an interest in the historical dynamics of sexuality and space.

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DAVID SHANE LOWRY David Shane Lowry is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Biola University in Los Angeles, California. He studies race, health, and the world of the basketball player Michael Jordan. His

research is based in the Lumbee Indian community in Robeson County, North Carolina, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His scholarship aims to unravel the various ways that humans, especially American Indians, are held in place, covered, and made invisible.

MAC LEGERTON Mac Legerton is a Rural Development Specialist, advocate, researcher, and consultant. He cofounded the Center for Community Action in Robeson County, North Carolina and served as its

Executive Director for 36 years. In 2007, he received the national Distinguished Service to Rural Life Award of the Rural Sociological Society for his practice in rural sustainable development and social justice. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

ANGELA HARRIS Angela Harris is an Assistant Professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department at North Carolina State University. Harris’ research broadly focuses on improving

water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) globally. In particular, she seeks to explain human

exposure pathways of fecal contamination and then works to design and test interventions to interrupt disease transmission pathways.

ABSTR ACT Requirements for public participation have become commonplace within environmental decision-making, community planning, and disaster recovery. Yet public engagement often fails to achieve the principles of environmental justice, which require the equal treatment and meaningful participation of all people in political decisions affecting their environment. We argue that participatory research offers more meaningful forms of community engagement and can promote greater environmental justice within disaster recovery processes. We reflect on these issues through a case study of hurricane recovery in Robeson County, North Carolina. Using participatory documentary and citizen science methods, our ongoing research highlights the ability of participatory research to facilitate greater inclusion.

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FIGURE 1 - Post-Hurricane Matthew flooding in Robeson County, North Carolina. Photo Credit: Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA.

INTRODUCTION Natural hazards present multiple environmental justice concerns related to both vulnerability to and recovery from disasters. During disaster recovery, historically marginalized populations may be disproportionately exposed to ongoing hazards, such as environmental toxins (Allen 2007; Godsil, Huang, and Solomon 2010), and excluded from decisionmaking processes (Amore, Hall, and Jenkins 2017; Gotham and Cheek 2017). Planning scholars and government agencies almost universally promote “stakeholder engagement” and “public participation” to redress environmental injustices, yet, in practice, public engagement strategies have proven limited in their ability to address environmental disparities and barriers to equitable inclusion (Amerasinghe et al.

2008; Yakubu 2018). In this paper, we use a case study of post-hurricane Robeson County, North Carolina to reflect on the ability of participatory disaster research to promote environmental justice in disaster recovery by facilitating meaningful inclusion of community voices in post-disaster planning and building community capabilities.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE & PUBLIC PARTICIPATION Environmental justice refers to the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, 50

implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” (EPA 2018).

Community participation within environmental decisionmaking represents a core principle of environmental justice (Schlosberg 2004; Walker 2012; Holifield 2001). Beyond reducing the uneven distribution of environmental burdens and benefits, justice requires that individuals and groups are able to participate as equals within environmental decision-making processes. By challenging patterns of institutional exclusion, “participation…can alter distributions of power and influence” (Stern and Dietz 2008, 60). Although it cannot completely counteract structural inequalities, effective participation can help empower marginalized groups by bolstering their basic capabilities (resources, institutions, and opportunities) needed to participate fully in society more generally (Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010). These capacities–for example, health and safety, economic livelihoods, and cultural practices–also enable communities to better prepare for and respond to hazard events.

Scholars and practitioners across a wide range of disciplines and professions almost universally acknowledge the importance of “public participation”

FIGURE 2 - Community outreach at Lumbee Homecoming in

Pembroke, NC, July 2019. From left to right: David Lowry, Laura Bray, Angela Allen, Taleek Harlee (top), Mac Legerton, and Bethany Cutts (bottom). Photo credit: Bethany Cutts.

and perpetuate inequitable decision-making rather than alleviate injustices (Turan 2018, Whyte 2011).

Applying principles of environmental justice to disaster recovery and planning highlights the need to employ participatory strategies that account for structural inequalities and help build basic capabilities within the community. Participatory research methods, where research is carried out by or alongside community members and directed towards social action, can overcome many of the challenges of creating just public engagement and are increasingly employed in disaster settings (Le Dé, Gaillard, and Friesen 2015; Mercer et al. 2008). In this paper, we reflect on the ability of participatory methods to promote environmental justice in the postdisaster context, focusing specifically on the inclusion of marginalized voices and strategies to enhance community capabilities.

CASE BACKGROUND & RESEARCH DESIGN ROBESON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA:

Community & Disaster Context

Robeson County spans 950 square miles of North Carolina’s coastal plains, just north of the South Carolina border and about 80 miles from the coast. Located within the Lumbee (Lumber) River watershed, land use in the rural county is defined by large-scale crop cultivation and high densities of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and processing facilities. The area has long been politically and economically marginalized, resulting in high rates of poverty and large disparities in healthcare, education, and infrastructure. The county is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse rural areas in the United States, with a population made up of 39 percent American Indian, 26 percent non-Hispanic white, 24 percent African American, and 9 percent Hispanic (American Community Survey 2017). Robeson County is also the traditional homeland of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, the ninth largest tribe by membership in the US. Robeson County experienced serious impacts from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018. During Hurricane Matthew, the Lumbee River 51

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in environmental decision making, disaster recovery, and community planning (Slotterback and Lauria 2019; Vallance 2015; Campanella 2006). In principle, public participation offers multiple benefits to communities, including increased representation of marginalized groups (Allen and Slotterback 2017; Umemoto 2001) and identification of place-specific environmental inequities (Raymond et al. 2016). In practice, though, just and effective forms of public involvement have proven difficult to achieve (Konisky 2015). For many planners and agencies, engaging the public may represent a mere formality, legal hurdle, or means to legitimize previously developed plans.

For example, public engagement often takes the form of top-down consultations, or “tokenism,” whereby the public has little opportunity to actually influence outcomes (Vallance 2015; Fordham 1999). Even when well-intentioned, common tools for public participation–such as notice and comment, public hearings, and focus groups–may require high levels of education and skill or otherwise exclude marginalized populations (Amerasinghe et al. 2008). Public engagement can unintentionally exclude stakeholders who bear high costs to participate in the form of childcare, transportation, or forgone wages. Powerful groups may also dominate participation processes by being more vocal or knowledgeable, giving them disproportionate influence. As a result, public participation can ultimately justify, conceal,

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reached historic levels due to prolonged heavy rainfall, causing thousands of residents to evacuate and hundreds of water rescues (Coastal Dynamics Design Lab 2017). Hurricane Florence struck just two years later, while the community was still in recovery, and also produced significant rainfall and widespread flooding. In the town of Lumberton alone, over 500 residents were evacuated and over 500 structures damaged (USGS 2018).

PARTICIPATORY DISASTER RESEARCH:

Community Voice Method & Citizen Science

This study combines two forms of participatory research: the community voice method (CVM) and citizen science. CVM is a video-based method that focuses on creating inclusive and community-focused public participation to improve sustainability planning (Cumming and Norwood 2012). We use the framework to engage residents and community leaders in describing and documenting changes they observe during the recovery process. The filmed interviews will be used to construct documentary-style videos to be included in public workshops and policy settings in order to inform recovery.

To date, we have conducted seventy-seven interviews with Robeson County residents, community leaders, and decision makers.

“Citizen science” engages members of the public in the collection and analysis of scientific data (Silvertown 2009).

In this study, we use citizen science to conduct environmental testing for the presence of fecal contamination (indicated

by E. coli) and heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, and lead) in residential soil. Trained community specialists collect soil samples and discuss concerns about flood-related environmental hazards with residents. The soil testing is designed to fill current knowledge gaps about how environmental contaminants may move and persist following flooding (Vilá et al. 2019). Between January and October of 2019, a total of 107 soil samples were collected and tested for E. coli and another 49 for heavy metals. Following testing, the results are returned and explained to participants, along with information on how to minimize exposure risk. Through the process, residents participate in the scientific process to generate knowledge about the local environment that can be subsequently incorporated into community planning.

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ENGAGING ROBESON COUNT Y IN JUST DISASTER RECOVERY Our ongoing research in post-disaster Robeson County suggests numerous advantages of participatory methods for facilitating public participation in disaster recovery.

Specifically, we argue that participatory research can facilitate more meaningful and diverse participation within planning processes and help strengthen the community capabilities needed to respond effectively to disasters.

Although we have not yet engaged with local planners at our current phase in the research, we believe that this project holds strong promise to inform future community planning efforts.

COMMUNITY VOICE THROUGH DISASTER RESEARCH

Our project design seeks to involve community members at all stages of the research process, from defining the project objectives to data analysis. Engaging the community within the research process itself increases the overall level of community interaction, creating participation that is more meaningful. We began the project by assembling a team of community advisors and paid community researchers to represent the community’s perspective and diversity. The advisory committee provides “big picture” guidance to ensure that the project meets local needs and expectations, while the community researchers–residents hired and trained in research methods–carry out the bulk of the data collection. To initiate the research, we brought together the university-based team, community advisors, and community researchers for a participatory training workshop. Through the workshop, we collectively narrowed the project objectives and discussed how the research could most benefit the community. Common ideas emerging from the discussion included the need to “provide agency to people left out of the government process,” “help give people voice, recognize their importance,” and “promote healing, learn from others.” Since the workshop, the community advisors and researchers have continued to shape the research direction and focus.

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FIGURE 3 - Community researchers Nathan McMenamin (left), Margaret Crites (right), and Hannah Goins (bottom) at the training workshop,

March 2019. Photo credit: Olivia Vilá

One way that the community researchers have shaped the project is by identifying and recruiting essential “stakeholders” within the community. Determining stakeholders through a “bottom-up” rather than “topdown” process increases representation and promotes participatory justice. The power of researchers or officials, rather than community members, to define relevant stakeholders violates principles of justice by potentially excluding certain groups from participation. For example, community researchers identified LGBTQ residents, educators, and college students as important perspectives to include in the project, as well as residents in geographically vulnerable parts of the county. Beyond identifying important stakeholders, community researchers have been crucial for developing successful outreach strategies to recruit members of diverse groups. This community-led outreach has aided in our goal of achieving broad-based participation and representation within the project, including hard-to-reach and marginalized populations.

The community researchers have also shaped the project in more substantive ways. One theme raised by community advisors and researchers was the importance of emotional healing. Describing the benefits of the project, one community researcher emphasized: …the healing that can come from being able to talk about the hurricanes. With several interviews, it seemed that it was the first time people reflected on what they had survived, what they saw in their communities.

The theme of healing was explicitly incorporated into interviews by adding questions about mental health.

This has led to multiple discussions about the ongoing emotional toll of the storms and how the problem might be addressed through disaster response and recovery.

During one interview, for example, the interviewer and participant reflected on the potential mental health impacts of the storms: 53

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Participant:

Thank you for asking that question [about mental health] because I didn’t realize that that was an essential problem.

Interviewer:

I think people don’t realize it at first. I didn’t realize it until I started working on this project. I was displaced for both of [the hurricanes] and kind of want[ed] to put it to the side. You don’t want to think about it because you want to keep moving forward.

Participant:

And, you don’t want anybody to know how you’re feeling.

They might think there’s something wrong with you.

Interviewer:

Yeah. There’s a stigma to it… But I think it’s something that needs to be discussed and thought about so we can work past it and move forward.

This example also illustrates the value of communitybased researchers who experienced the disaster, allowing them to more strongly connect and relate to participants.

Transitioning into the filmmaking and data analysis phases of the project, the community researchers and advisors will continue to provide valuable guidance for designing the research products and translating them into local action.

process and not seen as the…key resource for revisioning and redeveloping their communities.

By providing an outlet for a diverse range of perspectives, the participatory documentary aims to facilitate greater grassroots participation in local planning decisions surrounding disaster recovery. The citizen science component also allows residents to elaborate on their environmental concerns, while testing for contamination in locations of their choosing. The resulting knowledge will therefore reflect community voices and priorities, making it more meaningful and useful. Our goal is that the soil testing results will inform community decisions concerning how to prepare for and mitigate soil contamination risks and, ultimately, inform the development of a remediation plan that can be implemented in the event of future flooding.

RESOURCING RESILIENCE THROUGH COMMUNITY CAPABILITIES

Community researchers and interview participants frequently point out that Robeson County is already resilient. For many residents, resilience is necessary for everyday survival. Through the project, we have sought to resource this existing resilience. Enhancing and activating existing community capabilities will allow the community to flourish and respond more effectively to hazard events.

Our participatory hurricane research has worked towards (1) developing new resources, including environmental

Finally, both the community voice interviews and citizen science have worked to provide a platform for residents whose voices could otherwise be disregarded in planning processes.

Multiple interview participants felt that residents had been excluded from decisions affecting the community: [T]here’s not really a place where we can go. They haven’t really told us or educated us on if we needed to speak our opinion, this is where we could go, you know… I don’t really know about what’s going on for me to speak my voice. But I’d like to sometimes.

[W]e need to involve the residents of these impacted communities as equal partners in the disaster response and recovery process…

The number one [agent] of recovery is the community members themselves that are totally left out of the disaster recovery 54

FIGURE 4 - Researcher Olivia Vilá (left) and Pastor Lawrence

Garner (right) collecting soil samples for E. coli testing at Harpers Ferry Baptist Church in Maxton, NC. Photo credit: Hannah Goins

Through environmental testing, we have sought to build a new community resource in the form of environmental knowledge. Flooding displaces large amounts of debris, including bacterial and chemical contaminants that can migrate into other areas and impact residents’ health.

Following Hurricane Florence, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality reported twentynine incidents in the Lumbee River Watershed of animal waste lagoons at risk of overtopping. Nearly two million gallons of untreated sewage spilled in Robeson County, adding to concerns of fecal contamination (Stewart and Berg 2019). The flooding also breached a retired coal ash pond in the county, releasing toxic chemicals, including heavy metals, into the surrounding environment. Our soil testing is designed to address current knowledge gaps related to the health risks of flood-contaminated soils, while enhancing the community capacity to respond to hazard events.

discussed with participants the potential health risks associated with soil contamination and protective measures they could take. The process has also helped generate community resources by developing the social infrastructure required to conduct scientific research.

Training conducted as part of the citizen science project has established a network of residents who will be able to quickly mobilize to resample in the event of another flooding event.

Another way that the project has enhanced capabilities is by connecting residents with existing community resources. This has been particularly evident within the interviews. As one community researcher described: I was struck by the ways we end up offering other help to the people we interview. [Another researcher] told me that she arranged for a smoke detector/carbon monoxide detector to be installed in a woman’s home. I’ve connected a young mother to transportation services so she can take her daughter to the doctor and told lots of folks about services in the community.

I helped [a community partner] apply for a grant.

Residents frequently expressed environmental concerns and described the floodwaters as “nasty” and “smelly,” but few articulated specific knowledge about potential contaminants or sources. This limited knowledge of postdisaster environmental hazards constrained residents’ ability to take precautionary measures. During soil sampling, for example, one participant discussed at length his health concerns and how the storms had negatively impacted the environment. Yet when asked about what precautionary measures people were taking, he pointed to a lack of knowledge as a barrier to action:

The interviews have also illuminated opportunities for participants to share their own resources and talents. For example, one interview participant expressed a desire to help people struggling with substance use disorders but was unsure how or where to begin. The interviewer responded by putting him in touch with a local program:

When you’re ignorant of the fact, what precautions are you going to take? So, until someone soundly refutes and puts out the information, then there’s only so much poor folks [are] going to do anyhow.

These and other similar instances highlight the ability of participatory research to strengthen existing community capacity by forging social connections. The community researchers possess greater knowledge about local resources. They are also more likely to sustain the newly established social connections compared to outside researchers because of their embeddedness in the community.

Through citizen science, this research has sought to provide the environmental knowledge needed to act at both the individual and community level. For example, while collecting samples and returning results, researchers

And I need to share with you that there is a drug program [here]. And maybe after this video, I’ll give you some information and you can reach out to them and maybe you can set up in their place and share what you’d like to share.

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knowledge, and (2) connecting participants with existing resources within the community, such as social support services.

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CONCLUSIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Across both government and academic contexts, calls for greater participation within community planning processes have become common. We argue that participatory research can help ensure environmental justice within hazard mitigation and resilience planning through more meaningful forms of community engagement. Through our participatory documentary, residents’ knowledge and insight will be shared with local and state organizations, such as ReadyNC and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. We have also developed close relationships with local disaster recovery and social justice organizations, setting the stage for our research results to be integrated within communitybased planning and action efforts.

We gratefully acknowledge research funding from North Carolina Sea Grant (project R/18-RCE-3), Foundation for the Carolinas, and the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center through its Quick Response Grant Program, which is funded by National Science Foundation grant number CMM11635596. Special thanks to Angela Allen, Will Beam, Taleek Harlee, Gracie Hornsby, Sean Daly, Ozioma Nwachukwu, and Jason Frye for research assistance. We also thank our community advisors, including Adrienne Kennedy and Steve Marson, for invaluable guidance on this project. Finally, our gratitude to all the Robeson County residents who have welcomed us into their community and generously shared their time and experiences.

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WORKS CITED

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B OU N CE BACK TO GE THER: Enhancing Resiliency with an Expanded View of Collaboration

SHALEEN MILLER Shaleen Miller works as the Director of the Natural Hazards Graduate Certificate at the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She receives her PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from

Florida State University in May 2020. Her work focuses on planning for healthy communities,

green infrastructure, and resilience.

ABSTR ACT Natural hazards are increasing along many fronts, which causes increased stress on the ability of localities to mitigate and respond to these hazards. Planners should facilitate enhanced regional and global cooperation and incorporate a broader range of stakeholders and disciplines in an effort to increase community resilience. An expansion in collaboration and mutual aid agreements across broader fields can help augment resources and restore normalcy to communities affected by disaster.

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INTRODUCTION Resilience has been defined as the ability of a city to recover from a shock or stressor without long-term damage to physical, economic, or social systems (Godschalk 2003); however, much of the established emergency management in place focuses on only a subset of affected infrastructure and systems in its response and recovery phase. Many aspects that can help with a community’s resilience beyond basic needs are either considered ancillary or overlooked.

While the planning field needs to continue to address the important aspects of basic healthcare, housing, and jobs, the stakeholders and fields involved in recovery and resilience need to expand to address the growing problems caused by climate change. Extending collaboration and mutual aid agreements to nontraditional fields, groups of people, and overlooked venues can allow for greater aid and promote community resilience. These overlooked venues include events and physical spaces that help people reconnect and regain a sense of normalcy. Collaborations and mutual aid agreement extensions also need to consider how they impact equity.

A PROBLEM OUTGROWING LOCAL CAPACIT Y In 2017, when Hurricane Michael swept through the southeast in October, five states were impacted: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Two million customers across these states lost power and dozens of counties were on the receiving end of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance. While it is often said that all disaster is local, it is important to remember that regional, national, and even global connections can greatly affect risk, response, recovery, and resilience.

Global climate change is increasing the risks of natural hazards, even to areas that have not greatly contributed to greenhouse gases. Sea level rise is impacting communities around the world. Yet, an increase in hazard risk can also

come from just up the road. Communities that may never have seen flooding before may find hydrological changes occurring from nearby dams and river management or development that alters runoff. Local hazard planning may be insignificant in protecting the community from these factors. Regional planning organizations can influence these conflicts, but they often lack the funding and authority to back up decision-making. Therefore, it falls to local agencies and organizations to make broader connections both within and outside the community.

FORMAL MUTUAL AID PROCESSES In emergency management and response, many agencies are familiar with mutual aid agreements—assistance agreements between agencies, organizations, and jurisdictions to quickly obtain emergency assistance.

These agreements may address personnel, equipment, materials, and other services. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact was established in 1993 and acts as an all-hazard mutual aid agreement between states. In large disasters, this assistance has been crucial, such as providing National Guard Search and Rescue teams and law enforcement personnel during the three major hurricanes of 2017 (NEMA 2018). A common example of this mutual aid is firefighting assistance. North Carolina is just one of the states that has sent its Forest Service staff to fight wildfires in California, Oregon, and Washington in recent years. This usually works well because the seasons of high-risk differ between the east and west coast. Electric utility mutual aid agreements have benefitted Florida successfully for several years. Prior to Hurricane Dorian’s landfall, the Florida Municipal Electric Association had already received commitments from 1,500 line workers in twenty states that would be pre-positioned to move into impacted communities along with Florida’s own thirtythree public power communities (Holmes 2019). These aid agreements have been instrumental in responding quickly to outages across the country.

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However, as hazards become more intense, frequent, and widespread, it is important to consider how assistance occurs and who receives it. 2018’s Hurricane Michael affected a large geographic area. In Central America, Michael caused flooding deaths in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador before it even reached hurricane-strength. Then, after departing across the Atlantic from United States shores, it continued to Spain. The widespread nature of this disaster in the United States made mutual aid agreements ineffective. Electric and construction crews in Georgia were busy responding to their own counties and unable to assist in the devastated Florida panhandle. As a result, Florida had to rely on crews from farther away that took longer to reach the affected area.

Other systems may also be affected. For example, the North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical Services maintains a Mobile Disaster Hospital that can be deployed both within and outside of the state. This unit is often deployed for long periods of time following a disaster and can serve as a replacement

medical facility. While having only one mobile unit is more cost-effective than maintaining multiple expensive units in various locations, it is not without drawbacks. For example, a disaster that affects the entire state or one that strikes when the unit is deployed elsewhere could mean that communities go without crucial medical support.

The United States grappled with the challenge of resource allocation following the hurricane season of 2017. Within days of landfall on August 25, 2017, 31,000 personnel from the Coast Guard, FEMA, the Department of Health and Human Services, United States Geological Survey, and various other public sectors deployed to Texas to assist with the massive, record-breaking flooding from Hurricane Harvey. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Irma formed into a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico, impacting Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands before it moved on to Florida. The second disaster caused a massive scramble to reallocate resources. With forces deployed to two states,

IMAGE 1 - Caption: National Guard stationed and ready to help Florida post-Michael. Photo Credit: Shaleen Miller

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EXTENDING MUTUAL AID TO NEW FIELDS AND STAKEHOLDERS In addition to the necessity of prioritizing of needs and communities fairly post-disaster, other stakeholders can get involved with recovery and resiliency through collaborations or mutual aid. Hurricane Maria’s aftermath offers several examples from which to learn.

A new collaboration arose amongst botanical gardens when several responded to requests for help in Puerto Rico. A set of volunteers from two botanical gardens in Florida—Naples Botanical Garden and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens—flew to Puerto Rico to use their expertise to clean up and save endangered plants at the Arboretum Parque Doña Inés. The Florida-based botanical gardens had expertise to share on responding to hurricane disaster, and the volunteers reflected that their volunteering helped form positive experiences despite a bad situation. Florida-based gardens also agreed to exchange and hold plant samples to maintain genetic diversity until the gardens in Puerto Rico could replant and in case of another disaster. Expanding upon this collaboration, the American Public Gardens Association created a webpage on which gardens can request recovery help. In addition, they conducted a survey of members to assess and network garden disaster needs.

The RISE network is another collaborative group that arose amidst disaster (Miller 2018). Many universities and researchers reached out to Puerto Rico in the hurricane’s aftermath to offer assistance. Some universities, such as Arizona State University, were able to give a home to displaced professors and students. Others, such as the State University of New York and City University of New York, sent hundreds of student volunteers to Puerto Rico to help with housing needs. However, much of the outreach was in connection to existing research projects.

Unfortunately, a disconnect resulted. Some communities received help from multiple sources, and others were left out entirely. In response, academic stakeholders organized a workshop in June 2018 which brought together academics, practitioners, and communitybased organizations to reimagine the relationships that match knowledge and capabilities with partner needs. Participants in this workshop discussed how resilience needed to be cross-discipline and stakeholder inclusive (Miller 2018). The collaboration continued and, in November 2019, RISE met again. This time, the group extended their platform to challenge disaster response at the governmental response, policy, and research levels. As this article is being written in 2020, RISE has once again activated its network—now bigger and broader than ever— to react to Puerto Rico’s earthquakes of December 2019 and January 2020. The RISE network is sending out calls for help, supplies, and expertise; providing points of contacts for these needs and for responders with capabilities; and asking questions to provide framework for ethical research and volunteering.

While these examples of university and of garden collaborations may be a far cry from what many believe is hazard planning, they are partnerships that are important to community resiliency. These collaborations connect available resources to the community where traditional emergency management may not be able to. Planners, with knowledge of participatory processes, are key players in helping to connect stakeholders. Therefore, planners should be encouraged to reach out to a broader set of stakeholders to help them establish plans for disaster and create collaborations that support resilience.

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along with an understaffed workforce, FEMA struggled to respond when a third hurricane, Hurricane Maria, hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. This hurricane season was also accompanied by wildfires in California, which critically tested the United States’ ability to respond to concurrent disasters. While other disparities also affected the national response rate, the outcome was that Puerto Rico response fell significantly behind that of Texas and Florida, despite Puerto Rico’s greater need for support (Willison et al. 2019). In response, FEMA administrator Brock Long noted that “the hurricanes also showed that governments need to be better prepared with their own supplies, to have pre-positioned contracts with enforcement mechanisms, and to be ready for the financial implications of disaster” (FEMA 2018, ii). This response reinforces the idea that disaster is local, but regional coordination and collaboration is important.

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IMAGE 2 - Collaborative work of RISE-PR. Photo Credit: Shaleen Miller

Incorporating new fields and stakeholders into emergency management plans and mutual aid agreements has many possible directions. For example, all cities and regions are required to document damage following a disaster in order to make their FEMA claims and must prioritize recovery.

Following a large disaster, this documentation can take extensive amounts of staff time and effort. Other departments, organizations, or similar staff elsewhere could be trained and ready to help meet this requirement in mutual aid.

cancelling, the city held the event, which news outlets coined “A Hurricane Recovery Reunion” (Flanigan 2018).

At the event, many conversations documenting damage, continuing power outages, or thankfulness for a cooked meal could be heard. These personal exchanges helped connect people to a list of informal resources, such as where to charge devices or who had generators. As such, this social networking event likely provided an opportunity to increase community resilience.

INCORPOR ATING OVERLOOKED COMMUNIT Y ASSETS

Parks are often fairly low on the long list of priorities following disaster, yet, as a recognized asset to community health, they are important. They provide important benefits both at the individual and the community-level.

For example, research has shown that access to parks is linked to an increased prevalence of physical activity and decreased prevalence of obesity. In addition, parks and greenspace promote mental health via stress relief and attention restoration, important aspects of human health post-disaster. In addition, parks help provide social cohesion by providing a public space to pause and interact, particularly with others beyond your traditional social circle. Parks, perhaps seen as a luxury in the aftermath

While electricity and housing are well-recognized needs, the need to return to normalcy is also strong. Normalcy does not mean returning to pre-disaster conditions or forgetting about the event; it is a return of balance and living beyond the disruption. Normalcy requires the recovery of public spaces and returning to daily activities.

Following Hurricane Michael, the City of Tallahassee, Florida considered canceling its scheduled “Longest Table” event, an event where residents gather at tables assembled on a main downtown street to enjoy a free meal together. Instead of 62

BROADENING NET WORKS TO DECREASE DISPARITIES A key caveat in any assistance is the possibility of exacerbating inequities. When aid is extended, it is often extended into known communities. Disadvantaged communities may not have the networks to access this aid, and therefore do not recover as quickly or to the same extent as economically advantaged communities (Peacock et al. 2014). For example, the community of Corcovada in Puerto Rico is a strong community organization as demonstrated by its ability to build its aqueduct system.

It leveraged this knowledge to obtain a grant for solar panels and for post-disaster assistance following Hurricane Maria. Corcovada, therefore, was able to lean on both government connections and their connection to United States mainland churches in hurricane recovery. Other Puerto Rican community members brought in to speak to the RISE network spoke of the difficulties of reaching aid, particularly in relatively disconnected and poor areas. In response, Corcovada was offering to teach other communities how to access and leverage resources.

Planners can help address disparities in access resources and knowledge bases by using collaborative and mutual aid techniques to broaden networks. Like Tallahassee’s Longest Table, regular community engagement techniques can be brought to bear in post-disaster situations. Similar to the RISE network, cultivating collaborations post-disaster can also help engage disconnected needs and communities.

FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS All disasters are local. Neighbors are first responders, and local communities need to prepare from the bottomup to be resilient. However, communication, travel, and technology all help connect our humanity. Local communities and their supporting agencies need to reach out to the broaden networks in preparation for future resilience. It is not enough for the local communities to wait for the national government to intervene. Rather, communities should look for ways to better collaborate not only between their own internal divisions but also within the region and beyond.

Recommendations for enhancing resilience with greater collaboration:

1 . Consider new and alternative expansions of mutual aid agreements and non-traditional collaborations.

Look beyond life and safety when considering emergency management and disaster recovery.

2 . Begin locally by using overlooked community assets, including events and places, that can be leveraged for networking, a return to normalcy, and overall resilience.

3 . Reach out to regional neighbors and beyond to create larger networks of aid.

4 . Use expanded networking capabilities pre- and postdisaster to help minimize inequities in knowledge and resources.

WORKS CITED FEMA. 2018. “2017 Hurricane Season FEMA After-Action Report.” FEMA. https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1531743865541-d16794d43d3 082544435e1471da07880/2017FEMAHurricaneAAR.pdf.

Flanigan, Tom. 2018. “Longest Table A Hurricane Recovery Reunion.”

WFSU, October 15, 2018. https://news.wfsu.org/post/longest-tablehurricane-recovery-reunion.

Godschalk, David R. 2003. “Urban Hazard Mitigation: Creating Resilient Cities.” Natural Hazards Review 4 (3): 136–43. https://doi.org/10.1061/ (ASCE)1527-6988(2003)4:3(136).

Holmes, Garnie. 2019. “FMEA Coordinating Large-Scale Mutual Aid Effort in Preparation for Hurricane Dorian.” Florida Municipal Electric Association (blog). August 30, 2019. https://www.publicpower.com/news/ fmea-coordinating-large-scale-mutual-aid-effort-in-preparation-forhurricane-dorian##.

Miller, Shaleen. 2018. “Creating Opportunities to Collaborate amidst Disaster: New Opportunities for Academia.” Cities & Health, October, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2018.1522994.

NEMA. 2018. “Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) Response to the 2017 Hurricane Season.” After Action Report.

National Emergency Management Association (NEMA). https:// www.emacweb.org/index.php/files/66/2017-Hurricane-Season/1/ EMACResponsetothe2017HurricaneSeasonAAR11-5-2018.pdf.

Peacock, Walter Gillis, Shannon Van Zandt, Yang Zhang, and Wesley E. Highfield. 2014. “Inequities in Long-Term Housing Recovery After Disasters.” Journal of the American Planning Association 80 (4): 356–71. https:// doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2014.980440.

Willison, Charley E, Phillip M Singer, Melissa S Creary, and Scott L. Greer. 2019. “Quantifying Inequities in US Federal Response to Hurricane Disaster in Texas and Florida Compared with Puerto Rico.” BMJ Global Health 4 (1): e001191. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2018-001191.

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of disaster, should instead be activated to support the community post-disaster. Activating regional response for environmental and open space is an under-tapped resource that can enhance emergency management rather than detract from it.

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T H E I M PACT O F NATURA L DIS A ST ERS O N M I LI TARY I N STALL AT IONS

RYAN SCOTT Ryan is a PhD Student and Goodpastor Scholar in the United States Army’s Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program. As an active duty Army officer, Ryan’s expertise involves aviation

operations, planning, and crisis management. Ryan’s views are his own and in no way represent the views of the Department of Defense.

ABSTR ACT While there has been a growing concern regarding the displacement of citizens due to natural hazards and resulting disasters, discussions regarding the vulnerability of military installations remain on the fringe. Changes in climate have created a new risk for mission readiness and national security.

The devastating impacts of natural disasters within the contiguous United States have proven that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary. Military installations located along the eastern and southern coasts are especially vulnerable to tropical storms and hurricanes. Environmental changes create a new complexity for the Department of Defense: military personnel must both fight and win the nation’s wars abroad while potentially conducting self-evacuation of military families, personnel, and equipment at home. Has existing research and empirical knowledge of disaster response kept pace with this existential threat? This paper explores this question by analyzing the vulnerable military installations.

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INTRODUCTION Research suggests climate change is the most serious foreseeable threat to human development because it has the potential to undermine (N.H. Stern 2007; UNDP 2008; World Bank 2010) and alter the physical and human geography of the planet (B. Glavovic and Smith 2014; N. Stern 2009). Adapting to climate change has specific implications for the Department of Defense (DOD). While the DOD’s primary mission is to defend the nation, the military often plays a prominent role in supporting civil authorities during disasters and declared emergencies (GAO 2018). Recent disasters such as Hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and Maria in 2017 highlight the importance of the DOD during a disaster. The response for hurricanes Irma and Maria alone resulted in more than 1,000 of the DOD mission assignments and over $5.5 billion in obligations (GAO 2018). Domestically, the DOD provided similar support supplementing local, state, and federal government resources that enabled a robust response to those who were vulnerable.

Though the DOD plays a vital role in protecting those who are vulnerable during a disaster, the DOD is not immune to the risks. The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts on the DOD installations, which subsequently affect military missions and operational plans (DOD 2019). Military installations are vital due to their economic impacts on the surrounding community, national defense capabilities, and as residences for military personnel and their families.

This article considers whether existing research and empirical knowledge of disaster response have kept pace with climate change. This question is relevant for how we think about the DOD’s roles and capacity in the context of natural hazards. Thus, the practical contribution of this paper is to shed light on the vulnerability of military installations. The first section of this paper describes the

scope and functions of military installations. The second section discusses risk profiles of military installations.

Finally, the author offers recommendations.

MILITARY INSTALL ATIONS The nation’s defensive strategy relies heavily on its military installations. The United States military manages property in all fifty states, seven U.S. territories, and forty foreign countries, comprising almost 300,000 buildings at a value exceeding $590 billion (Foley 2012). Within the U.S., the DOD has over 240 military installations (Military One Source 2019). All U.S. military bases, posts, camps, stations, forts, arsenals, air bases, naval bases, and space centers include living quarters, mess halls, and facilities associated with primary functions (Collins 2006).

According to Balbach, Goran, and Latino (2011), one of the first defensive systems to be established by the United States was a system of coastal fortifications. The system was initially designed to protect the eastern coast of the country and its strategic ports and population centers from either foreign nations or Native Americans (Balbach, Goran, and Latino 2011). Following an expansion based on two world wars, global military reach, and an unknown future landscape for major conflict, the U.S. coastal defense remains an important aspect of national security.

While the current posture of military installations is part of an integrated set of capabilities to execute U.S. defense strategy (Lostumbo et al. 2013), many of the DOD installations remain concentrated along its coasts.

Table 1 shows the total number of active duty military by state as of 2017; eight of the ten states with the largest populations of active-duty military have significant lengths of coastline (Table 1).

The problem is that each of these states is prone to catastrophic natural hazards. To put this in perspective, 65

military manages property in all fifty states, seven U.S. territories, and forty foreign countries, comprising almost 300,000 buildings at a value exceeding $590 billion (Foley 2012). Within the U.S., the DOD has over 240 military installations (Military One Source 2019). All U.S. military Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States bases, posts, camps, stations, forts, arsenals, air bases, naval bases, and space centers include living quarters, mess halls, and facilities associated with primary functions (Collins 2006).

Table 1. Total Active Duty Military by State (DOD Defense Manpower Data Center 2017) Georgia State Florida Washington California South Carolina Texas HawaiiCarolina North Colorado Virginia Kentucky Maryland Kansas New York Illinois Oklahoma Arizona Alaska Missouri Louisiana Mississippi New Mexico Nevada District Of Columbia Alabama New Jersey Ohio North Dakota Nebraska Connecticut Utah Massachusetts Rhode Island Idaho Montana Delaware Arkansas Wyoming South Dakota Pennsylvania Tennessee Michigan Oregon Wisconsin Indiana Maine New Hampshire Minnesota Iowa West Virginia Vermont

61,322 Total 55,862 45,343 128,373 37,507 110,913 36,620 91,175 34,460 89,303 31,418 28,888 21,604 20,588 20,567 19,802 18,297 17,302 17,072 13,122 11,554 11,485 10,322 9,852

47,788 Army 5,349 25,642 6,567 11,838 63,846 16,313 39,322 25,039 23,581 30,960 8,341 18,555 16,427 928 11,447 4,271 8,355 11,369 5,953 442 299 146 1,647

3,566 Navy 21,216 11,191 44,838 6,823 6,170 7,792 4,296 753 39,400 8 9,741 63 2,148 14,913 1,338 385 49 320 397 4,569 76 885 2,536

1,235 Marine 3,483 Corps 684 55,101 10,582 2,035 6,370 39,924 218 10,799 80 1,780 84 637 362 434 4,331 19 1,249 669 424 64 51 2,197

8,248 Air 21,088 Force 5,771 17,243 7,407 37,116 4,937 5,912 8,404 11,368 209 8,088 2,799 352 4,229 6,551 9,305 6,971 3,934 4,924 5,788 11,042 9,240 1,767

485 Coast Guard 4,726 2,055 4,624 857 1,746 1,208 1,721 46 4,155 161 938 103 1,024 135 32 5 1,908 200 1,179 331 4 0 1,705

8,750 7,669 6,793 6,583 5,849 4,641 3,979 3,573 3,371 3,367 3,208 3,196 3,190 3,102 2,809 2,580 2,095 2,088 1,572 976 963 811 757 597 248 197 168

4,579 631 495 21 162 106 179 372 152 52 59 68 121 35 62 961 352 434 119 466 547 41 55 160 94 55 50

131 446 274 5 382 3,780 26 386 2,597 38 4 19 9 1 1 690 1,294 206 164 44 100 161 223 142 21 5 10

151 370 258 15 76 59 96 167 222 29 24 16 165 8 9 379 128 228 114 105 192 27 77 116 66 44 12

2,984 4,274 5,358 6,541 5,212 32 3,678 1,001 72 3,244 3,121 3,051 2,875 3,058 2,737 223 163 113 141 68 87 10 126 50 32 27 58

905 1,948 408 1 17 664 0 1,647 328 4 0 42 20 0 0 327 158 1,107 1,034 293 37 572 276 129 35 66 38

TABLE 1 - Total Active Duty Military by State (DOD Defense Manpower Data Center 2017)

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According to Balbach, Goran, and Latino (2011), one of the first defensive systems to be established by the United States was a system of coastal fortifications. The system was initially designed to protect the eastern coast of the country and its strategic ports and population centers from either foreign nations or Native Americans (Balbach, Goran, and Latino 2011). Following

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FIGURE 1 - 2015-2019 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (NOAA 2019)

across the U.S. from 2015–2019 there have been four drought events, eleven flooding events, one freeze event, thirty-four severe storm events, eight tropical cyclone events, four wildfire events, and three winter storm events with losses exceeding $1 billion (as of October 2019) (NOAA 2019). However, California, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida were hit especially hard during this period, with climate disaster costs exceeding $20 billion for each state from 2015-2019 (Figure 1). Hence, it is not surprising that the concentration of military personnel along the coasts also complicates the military’s mission following the onset of a natural hazard.

Installations located along the eastern and southern coasts are especially vulnerable to the effects of flooding, sea level rise, tropical storms, and hurricanes. According to the DOD 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, several U.S. military installations are already at risk. The report stated that “The National Intelligence Council judged that more than thirty U.S. military installations were already facing

elevated levels of risk from rising sea levels” (QDR 2010).

For example, Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE-Langley AFB), Virginia, has experienced 14 inches in sea level rise since 1930 due to localized land subsidence and sea level rise (DOD 2019). Similarly, sea level rise has put Norfolk Naval Air Station, Virginia, strategic naval resources at risk (Foley 2012).

The DOD installations have long struggled with the devastating effects of natural hazards. Hurricane Andrew slammed into South Florida at 5:05 am, August 24, 1992, damaging 1,100 square miles as it traveled across the peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm leveled Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base. The hurricane’s winds left 50 percent of base housing without roofs and 90 percent of house windows broken (Grudo 2017). Similarly, in 2018, Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm, caused $5 billion in damages to Tyndall Airforce Base in Florida (Shapiro 2019). The base, which maintained a population of over 11,000, issued an evacuation order for all non67

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mission essential military and civilian personnel from base prior to the storm making landfall (325th Fighter Wing Public Affairs 2018). The DOD achieved the evacuation with support operations during the disaster. In the same year, Hurricane Florence dropped 36 inches of rain, flooding three North Carolina Marine Corps installations (Tucker and Herrera 2019). Hurricane Florence severely damaged the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and estimates suggest that recovery will cost around $3.6 billion (Snow 2018). The DOD, in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard, provided operational support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) following North Carolina’s emergency declaration (FEMA 2018), despite managing its own internal recovery requirements.

RISKING ABILIT Y TO SERVE AND SAFET Y OF PERSONNEL Military installations face high vulnerability. In a DOD report on the effects of a changing climate, the DOD identified floods, droughts, desertification, wildfires, and thawing permafrost as posing specific risks to the DOD installations and infrastructure (DOD 2019). In the report, military departments focused on seventy-nine mission assurance priority installations based on their operational roles. The report’s findings suggest that about two-thirds of the seventy-nine installations addressed are vulnerable to current or future recurrent flooding and more than onehalf are vulnerable to current or future drought (DOD 2019).

Although the report showed that impacts vary by region for coastal flooding, there were more significant impacts on the east coast and Hawaii than the west coast (DOD 2019). While it is difficult to assess whether this sample is generalizable to the total population of the DOD installations, it remains troubling when considering the national security implications and potential hazards to the DOD mission and the force.

into planning (Tucker and Herrera 2019). The documents require military leaders to deliberately evaluate and adjust resources when factors like extreme weather present risks to military goals. Hence, the military’s success depends upon its ability to anticipate, respond, and adapt quickly.

This is becoming more complex in an era of climate change.

Marine Corps Installations East (MCIEAST)–a Marine Corps Base that commands and controls assigned Marine Corps Installations to support the operating forces, tenant commands, military personnel, and families– is strategically important to the rapid deployment of military personnel and equipment (MCIEAST Fact Sheet).

Specifically, MCIEAST’s role is to prepare and support expeditionary forces to rapidly deploy and respond to conflicts, contingencies, and crises around the globe (MCIEAST 2017). MCIEAST achieves this by offering military training areas at installations located in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

RISK TO MISSION

Risk to mission refers to those factors that interfere with the military’s ability to meet its desired goals. Senior military leaders play a key role in this process. In 2016, the Department issued DOD Directive (DODD) 4715.21, Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience (updated in 2018), which assigns responsibility to all organizational entities within DOD to assess the effects of climate change and integrate them 68

FIGURE 2 - The Social Vulnerability Index to Sea Level Rise,

(NOAA 2019)

military communities must either “stay put” or issue an an evacuation order (Stern and Saathoff 2012).

Given the population and size of many military installations, the factors that go into evacuating a military installation can make crisis situations following the onset of a natural hazard complicated while also creating a tremendous risk to the force. As previously noted, Hurricane Andrew struck the area of southern Dade on the morning of August 24, 1992. Relief operations involved over 24,000 U.S. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Canadian forces deployed to Florida in the largest peacetime deployment within the contiguous United States at the time (U.S. Joint Forces Command 1992).

During the same event, Hurricane Andrew necessitated the evacuation of nearly 750,000 persons from Monroe, Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties (Governor’s Disaster Planning and Response Review Committee 1993).

This hurricane was an example of extreme physical risk to both responders and evacuees.

RECOMMENDATIONS PREPAREDNESS

Risk to force is a term that refers to hazards that threaten the lives of service members. On a broad scale, risk to force is assessed by the military Services, which include the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Risk to force also refers to civilian employees and families. This term can also include the economic and social factors in one’s life that prevent an individual from performing their assigned duties. Therefore, the risk to force in terms of being vulnerable to natural hazards might include physical, social, or economic factors that affect service members, civilian employees, and their families.

A challenge inherent in disaster management is how to reduce vulnerabilities while also enhancing capacity to cope with future events (Shaw 2006). For the DOD installations, planners and installation safety decisionmakers must go beyond referring to previous metrics to assess installation preparedness. They must turn instead to assessments of all future vulnerabilities based on climate projections from a diverse group of experts that offer different perspectives on disaster preparedness.

Hence, installation preparedness must incorporate planned adaptation–an intentional and deliberate choice to take action in light of anticipated climate change (B. Glavovic and Smith 2014).

The worst-case risk to force scenario for the military would be a natural hazard occurring on a military installation that requires the DOD to conduct simultaneous evacuation, self-recovery, and disaster response. Stern and Saathoff (2012) make a similar point in their research involving the threat to military installations due to man-made disasters.

Their research suggests that during a catastrophic event

Mitigation refers to the capabilities necessary to reduce the loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters (DHLS 2016). According to Comfort et al. (2004), five critical functions that practicing disaster managers need to increase efficiency in disaster mitigation are: (1) an exchange of information within and among

RISK TO FORCE

MITIGATION

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Unfortunately, floods, tropical storms, hurricanes, and sea level rise make MCIEAST installations vulnerable to financial burdens that result from damage to military infrastructure and facilities, thus increasing the risk to the DOD mission. Hurricane Florence, for example, struck Camp Lejeune in 2018 and dumped 20-30 inches of rain over several days, according to the National Weather Service. The storm also created an 84,000-gallon sewage spill on the base (Snow 2018). According to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sea level rise vulnerability calculator, every MCIEAST installation location is currently at risk (Figure 2). The assessment is much worse when calculating the projected sea level rise out to 2080. On the low end, NOAA estimates a one-foot sea level rise by 2080. On the high end, we can expect a four-foot rise by 2040, followed by an additional four-foot sea level rise by 2080 (GOA 2019). In both scenarios, the military installations are at risk when considering sea level rise alone. An increase in sea level rise based on the estimates above would subsequently disrupt readiness and rapid deployment. Thus, the vulnerability of military installations to natural hazards currently presents a significant risk to the DOD mission.

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organizations; (2) accurate information to assess known threats to the community; (3) transfer of information between jurisdictions; (4) real time monitoring capabilities; and (5) effective reporting of actions. Although one would assume that the military and their installations inherently possess these capabilities, practitioners and researchers should work together in understanding their actual ability to achieve these functions. For example, the DOD should consider working with crisis management experts, scholars, service members, and their families to create a shared understanding of the vulnerabilities of its military installations in addition to conducting large scale training exercises that incorporate the five mitigation functions mentioned above. Therefore, to prepare for the risks ahead it is important to communicate the full nature and extent of anticipated disaster impacts (Godschalk 2017).

RESPONSE

The literature provides clear evidence on the efficacy of the military during the response phase of a disaster. The military is considered as a last, though powerful and trusted, resort (Kapucu 2011). However, the U.S. military can continue to improve its disaster response functions by learning from the experiences of other nations. Developed countries like Japan and Australia have generated lessons resulting from extreme weather events. These disasters should generate collective learning and information sharing opportunities that extend globally to help the DOD fully assess the impacts of climate change on its military installations. Furthermore, the DOD would benefit from empirical research focused on understanding the demands associated with simultaneous response, evacuation, and recovery on military installations.

RECOVERY

One of the central characteristics of recovery is the tension between speed and deliberation: between rebuilding as quickly as possible or slowing down to develop comprehensive plans for betterment (Johnson and Olshansky 2016). Given the policy-driven nature of defense spending and the complexity of the policy process, this tension is not easily overcome. However, planners can support recovery efforts by engaging in pre-event recovery plans that facilitate integration of sustainable hazard mitigation measures into decision-making before an event and provide significant 70

benefits for post-disaster recovery and reconstruction (B.C. Glavovic, Saunders, and Becker 2010). Successful engagement also requires establishing clear resiliencebased goals and objectives (Smith 2017). The DOD can ensure effective engagement occurs by ensuring a diverse group of participants are involved in the planning process, such as scholars, planners, and military practitioners.

CONCLUSION The era of climate change and adaptation presents a new complexity for the DOD. The continued frequency and intensity of extreme weather as well as sea level rise has brought attention to the vulnerability of military installations. While military installations have traditionally served to allow the U.S. to respond to any crisis, they themselves are, and will increasingly be, vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Those responsible for planning against this risk must create an adaptive strategy that incorporates climate change projections to help the military maintain and expand its capacities and resilience in the face of increasingly severe natural hazards and disasters. The U.S. military has a unique and capability. But the degree to which the military is able to carry out its organizational goals and objectives depend upon its installations. More importantly, we must all consider the well-being of the service members, civilian employees, and their families who live and are dependent on military installations.

The author’s views are his own and in no way represent the views of the Department of Defense.

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Army Technology. 2019. “The world’s biggest military bases.” https:// www.army-technology.com/features/feature-largest-military-basesworld-united-states/.

Balbach, Harold E, William D Goran, and Anthony R Latino. 2011. The military landscape: Why US military installations are located where they are.

Engineer Research And Development Center Champaign Il Construction Engineering Research Lab (Champaign, IL).

Comfort, Louise K, Mark Dunn, David Johnson, Robert Skertich, and Adam Zagorecki. 2004. “Coordination in complex systems: Increasing efficiency in disaster mitigation and response.” International Journal of Emergency Management 2 (1-2): 62-80.

FEMA. 2018. FEMA daily operational timeline. edited by Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Digital Library.

Governor’s Disaster Planning and Response Review Committee. 1993. Final report: Hurricane Andrew. Florida Office of the Governor. https://www.hsdl. org/?view&did=774700.Foley, Catherine. 2012. Military basing and climate change. American Society Project (Washington, DC). https://www. americansecurityproject.org/climate-energy-and-security/climatechange/climate-change-and-u-s-military-basing/.

Glavovic, B. C., W. S. A. Saunders, and J. S. Becker. 2010. “Land-use planning for natural hazards in New Zealand: the setting, barriers, ‘burning issues’ and priority actions.” Natural Hazards 54 (3): 679-706. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11069-009-9494-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9494-9.

Glavovic, Bruce, and Gavin Smith. 2014. “Learning from natural hazards experience to adapt to climate change.” In Adapting to climate change: Lessons from natural hazards planning, edited by Gavin Smith and Bruce Glavovic.

New York: Springer.

Godschalk, David R. 2017. “Responding to sea level rise: Coastal north carolina.” Carolina Planning Journal 42: 70-75. https://proxying.lib.ncsu.edu/ index.php?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db= eih&AN=123365603&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Grudo, Gideon. 2017. “When Andrew hammered Homestead.” Air Force Magazine.

Johnson, Laurie, and Rob Olshansky. 2016. New Zealand: Centralizing Governance and Transforming Cityscapes. In After Great Disasters: How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Kapucu, Naim. 2011. “The role of the military in disaster response in the US.” European Journal of Economic & Political Studies 4 (2): 7-33.

Lostumbo, Michael J., Michael J. McNerney, Eric Peltz, Derek Eaton, David R. Frelinge, Victoria A. Greenfield, John Halliday, Patrick Mills, Bruce R. Nardulli, Stacie L. Pettyjohn, Jerry M. Sollinger, and Stephen M. Worman.

2013. Overseas basing of U.S. Military Forces: An assessment of relative costs and strategies.

Military One Source. 2019. “Military Installations.” https://installations. militaryonesource.mil/view-all.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 2019. U.S. Billiondollar weather and climate disasters. National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Shaw, Rajib. 2006. “Indian Ocean tsunami and aftermath: Need for environment-disaster synergy in the reconstruction process.” Disaster Prevention and Management 15 (1): 5-20.

Smith, Gavin. 2017. “The role of planning and resilience in an era of climate change.” Carolina Planning Journal 42: 66-69. https://proxying.lib.ncsu.edu/ index.php?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db =eih&AN=123365602&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Snow, Shawn. 2018. “$3.6 billion price tag to rebuild Lejeune buildings damaged by Hurricane Florence “ Marine Corps Times.

Stern Eric, K., and Gregory Saathoff. 2012. “Crisis leadership and military community resilience.” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 9 (2). https://doi.org/10.1515/1547-7355.1957. https://www. degruyter.com/view/j/jhsem.2012.9.issue-2/1547-7355.1957/1547-7355.1957. xml.

Stern, N. 2009. “Title.” Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, London and Leeds, UK. Stern, Nicholas Herbert. 2007. The economics of climate change: The stern review. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press.

Tucker, Margaret, and G. James Herrera. 2019. Military and installation sea-level rise. Congressional Research Services (Library of Congress Congressional Research Service). https://www.hsdl. org/?view&did=827726.

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R E H ABI LI TATI O N O R EXPLOITAT ION? Incarcerated Firefighters in North Carolina

J. CARLEE PURDUM J. Carlee Purdum is a Research Assistant Professor at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery

Center in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Texas A&M University. In her role, she works on collaborative research projects related to emergency management, long-term

disaster recovery, and emergency response. As a Sociologist, her research focuses on the social vulnerability of incarcerated populations and incarcerated workers within the context of emergency planning, everyday emergency response, and disasters.

ABSTR ACT The Building, Rehabilitating, Instructing, Developing, Growing, Employing or “BRIDGE� program, is an overlooked incarcerated labor program that houses, trains, and deploys incarcerated men between the ages of 18 and 32 to respond to wildfires, disasters, and emergencies in North Carolina. BRIDGE is a rehabilitative program that provides vocational training, but there are concerns that the program exploits incarcerated persons. New research suggests that the BRIDGE program does not reduce rates of recidivism as the North Carolina Forestry Department advertises.

Furthermore, positions within the Forestry Department require stringent background checks, a likely obstacle for applicants from the BRIDGE program despite their elite training. These findings suggest that incarcerated people are exploited by the BRIDGE program. Incarcerated persons volunteer to do dangerous work in wildfires and disasters, but the state government does not prioritize their rehabilitation, and the agency that oversees the program misleads participants as well as the wider public regarding the success of the program.

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BRIDGE: AN INTRODUCTION Beginning April 1, 1985, wildfires overwhelmed droughtstricken North Carolina. These were the worst wildfires the state had seen in more than two decades. As the different fires grew out of control, scorching thousands of acres and destroying hundreds of homes, the state called upon at least seventy-five untrained incarcerated men who, alongside twenty-five civilian firefighters, ultimately defeated a wildfire that had consumed parts of Burke County (Clark 1985). The significant role of incarcerated people in the North Carolina wildfires prompted Governor Jim Martin to work to establish the Young Offenders Forest Conservation Program, also known as the Building, Rehabilitating, Instructing, Developing, Growing, Employing (BRIDGE) program. The program was modeled after similar ones operating at the time in California and Washington and officially opened in 1987 (NCDFR 2010; Teater 1989). Over time, the program has become deeply embedded in wildfire and disaster response.

Available legislative reports and other public documents published by the North Carolina Forest Service (NCFS), formerly known as the North Carolina Division of Forest Resources, demonstrate that incarcerated labor through BRIDGE is thoroughly embedded within and integral to the agency’s work across forest management, wildfire response, and other disasters. Civilian project leaders for BRIDGE individually oversee five to ten incarcerated men as they respond to emergency situations (i.e. wildfires, other disasters, and search and rescue) (State of North Carolina 2020). For example, in response to tornadoes in North Carolina in 2017, the North Carolina Emergency Management Agency requested that the BRIDGE program provide labor for both individual assistance and public assistance. Incarcerated people would provide labor hours to benefit both private individuals as well as public service agencies. FEMA would reimburse the costs of their labor to the state.

One unique aspect of the program is that it trains participants to operate as part of a helitack crew. In response to wildfires, “a helicopter is used to transport the inmates as close to a beginning fire as possible and either land near the fire, or when necessary, inmates are lowered to the fire by ropes hanging from the helicopter” (Hartley n.d.: 7). Aside from fighting wildfires, participants are trained in carpentry, construction, and the operation of forklifts, ATVs, and other equipment like chippers, mowers, and chainsaws (NCFS 2018).

The program began with only eighteen participants, but in 2018 at least 178 incarcerated men participated in the program and a total of 616 were considered eligible for the program (NCFS 2018). Eligibility requirements state that participants must be between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two, meet medical requirements, not be convicted of sexual offenses, and meet additional security and behavioral requirements (NCFS 2018). Although they do not explicitly prohibit incarcerated women, participants have exclusively consisted of incarcerated men. NCFS legislative reports show that hours of labor provided through the BRIDGE program for the state of North Carolina reached about 130,000 hours a year in 1998 but fell dramatically in 2002 due to the closing of Blue Ridge Youth Center in Avery County (NCFS 2010) (Figure 1). The closing of prison facilities has been widely criticized by corrections officials and even local journalists as a detriment to the state’s forestry service in that it has limited the available labor pool of low-cost incarcerated workers (Asheville Citizen Times 2009; Brevorka 2002; Fisher 2002). In 2018, BRIDGE participants worked 82,658 hours, including 20,527 hours of fire control and fire suppression and 9,570 hours of disaster relief (NCFS 2018). The closing of correctional facilities and the decreased availability of incarcerated men led to easing the restrictions on the ages of those that could participate (NCFS 2010).

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FIGURE 1- Inmate work hours (Significat decrease in 2002 due to closing of Blue Ridge Youth Center)

COMPENSATION When Governor Martin introduced the program to the North Carolina legislature in 1986, he, along with two of his cabinet secretaries, reportedly described the benefits of the program in “cold economic terms” by stating that the use of incarcerated workers would save the state a “tremendous” amount of money. He then described the opportunity for rehabilitation as the “most important element” of the program (O’Connor 1986). Members of the public also criticized the new program as a form of labor exploitation of incarcerated persons. For example, a lawyer hired by Burke County community members to prevent the BRIDGE program from being located in their area described the program as exploitative, saying, “This is not a rehabilitative program at all… but a means… to provide cheap labor for the Forest Service” (Gage 1987).

BRIDGE Program participants are paid a maximum of one dollar a day and receive “good time” credits from their sentences. This extremely low pay makes incarcerated workers more appealing to the state than civilian workers.

In 2017, the BRIDGE program director in Morganton, North Carolina, Travis Ruff, spoke at the North Carolina Agriculture “Ag Development Forum” about the program (North Carolina Agriculture 2017). Ruff, who is often the public face of the program, described the benefits to the state from the disparate pay for incarcerated workers: 74

We use an eight-hour day roughly as far as money goes, if you use an eight-hour day, our inmates get paid one dollar per day. So, eight hours per day, that’s twelve-and-a-half cents per hour. Most of those eight-hour days didn’t even come into play, you were talking about some [inmates] working thirtyhour shifts, so that twelve-and-a-half cents go down to pretty much nothing.

Ruff also described the wages that participants are paid as “a salary only an inmate would work for” (Hutchins 2013). In 2010, the Forestry Department produced a report arguing against closing the program, stating that incarcerated persons were “the most cost-effective method available to the state” (NCFS 2010). In its 2018 annual report, the NCFS again described the benefits of the low wages paid to incarcerated persons, pointing out that emergency responses to flooding and tornadoes in that year used 2,884 incarcerated worker hours at the “meager” cost of $360.50 (NCFS 2018:6).

PERCEIVED NECESSIT Y OF THE PROGRAM In 2009, Governor Beverly Perdue proposed cutting the funding for BRIDGE to effectively end the program (NCOSBM 2009). The 2010 report published by the Forestry Department in response to the proposed elimination of the program described how without BRIDGE, the state would be devastated by wildfires. The NCFS states that the only

Elimination of the BRIDGE Program would be one more blow to an agency which is tasked with one of the most daunting missions in the state, protection of homes and lives in the wildland urban interface. Crews provided by the BRIDGE Program are a critical resource which can’t be replaced in a costeffective way... The only alternative is to maintain a trained and readily available resource such as the BRIDGE Program.

Without a resource such as BRIDGE wildfires will become larger, cause more damage, and endanger more lives. Loss of the program would lead to economic and natural resource damage from which it may take years to recover. (NCFS 2010:20) NCFS officials also argued that the program should be saved in light of an increasing demographic of incarcerated young males who are the ideal candidates for this labor.

The predicted increase in the incarceration of young men would be beneficial to the state because this increase would provide an ideal labor pool should the program continue: Based on statistics from the North Carolina Department of Correction the population of male prison youths has ‘increased by 12 percent from January to July 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008, and total admissions have increased by 16 percent.’ ... Statistics from the “Pathways to Corrections Future: North Carolina Department of Correction Strategic Development Plan 1998-2020” show trends are toward increases in North Carolina’s general population along with significant increases in the population of males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four... (NCFS 2010:11)

AN “UNOFFICIAL STUDY” Since the inception of the program, the North Carolina legislature has never required the program to meet any milestones regarding recidivism or post-release employment opportunities for former participants. In the 2010 report issued to determine the feasibility of continuing the program, the state’s Division of Forest Resources argued that participating in the BRIDGE program drastically lowered the rates of returning to prison, citing an informal study: Results of an informal recidivism study conducted by North Carolina Division of Forest Resources for calendar year 2008 showed a 7.3 percent rate of return for the BRIDGE Program as opposed to a 7.5 percent rate of return for the general population of inmates of the same age as shown by NCDOC. (NCDFS 2010: 3).

This was a very serious claim. Such a drastic reduction in returned incarcerated persons meant that not only was the state saving money with low wages for BRIDGE program participants but also with fewer incarcerated persons to house and provide for in the long-term.

The North Carolina Fiscal Research Division of the General Assembly (NCRDGA) requested additional data to perform its own official analysis of the claim of such substantial cost savings for the government (NCFRD 2010).

Only two months after the NCFS released its report in support of BRIDGE, the Research Division released its findings. In the report, the author cited the informal nature of the study to justify further testing.

Letters of support from Forestry Department officials, workers, and community leaders are included in the document to argue for the necessity of the program. For example, one forest ranger stated, “I don’t want to think what it would be like without the BRIDGE Program. It would be very difficult to estimate the increase in property damage and possible loss of human life without this valuable firefighting resource” (NCFS 2010: 40).

The North Carolina Fiscal Research Division of the General Assembly (NCRDGA) requested additional data to perform its own official analysis of the claim of such substantial cost savings for the government (NCFRD 2010).

Only two months after the NCFS released its report in support of BRIDGE, the Research Division released its findings. In the report, the author cited the informal nature of the study to justify further testing.

MISLEADING THE PUBLIC AND

In its formal study, the NCRDGA found that a slightly

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way for the state to suppress wildfires is to maintain a labor force of incarcerated persons:

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higher percentage of incarcerated persons who participated in BRIDGE had returned to prison. Over a span of three years, the return to prison rate for BRIDGE program participants was 39.1 percent in comparison to non-participants who were similarly classified incarcerated individuals, who had a slightly lower rate of recidivism at 37.6 percent. The report stated that “based on the results of this analysis, we conclude that there is no reduction or increase in returns to prison due to participation in the program” (NCFRD 2010). Furthermore, the report essentially described that rehabilitation should not be an important consideration for the program, because the incarcerated persons that the Forestry Department employed would probably end up back in prison anyway: Because this program targets young male offenders who may have exceptional challenges re-integrating into society after release from prison, the ability of the program to impact recidivism may not be the single most important consideration of program effectiveness.

Although this report refuting the claim that the program reduced recidivism was issued in April of 2010, the Forestry Department and Department of Correction have continued to use the debunked statistic, likely misleading both the public and the participants of the program. Every BRIDGE legislative report submitted to the General Assembly has continued to cite the false and misleading information, including reports from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018. The statistic is also cited on the program’s website under the heading “Successes” and in the description of the program on the Department of Correction’ website (NCDPS 2012). In 2018, a reporter cited the debunked statistic as a reflection of the program’s success, writing in an interview with Ruff, “There’s no comprehensive data on what BRIDGE crewmen do when they get out. But Ruff [program leader] says the recidivism rate for BRIDGE graduates is 7.3 percent, compared to 38 percent for the state’s general prison population. In his view, the men ought to be grateful” (Williams 2018).

JOB OPPORTUNITIES If a former participant of the program wanted to work for the Forestry Department, that former offender would face numerous obstacles, including a lack of the required minimum experience and stringent criminal background checks. The average participant does not leave the BRIDGE 76

program with enough experience to apply for any of the jobs listed by the NCFS. The agency requires three years of forestry work to apply for a position as a county forest ranger, two years to apply for a position as a forester, and one year to be a forest fire equipment operator (NCDC 2017; NCFS n.d.). Although the NCFS website does not list a level of experience required to apply for the temporary position of smoke chaser, official job applications for the position list a requirement of at least one year of related experience (NCDA 2020; NCDA 2019; NCDA 2018). The average BRIDGE offender is enrolled in the program for only 201 days, or 55 percent of one year (NCFS 2018). This is a significant increase from 2013, in which the average participant was in the program only 111 days, or 30 percent of one year (NCFS 2013).

Additionally, the online application for forestry positions asks applicants to disclose information about their criminal backgrounds.

Have you ever been convicted of an offense against the law other than a minor traffic violation? (A conviction does not mean you cannot be hired. The offense and how recently you were convicted will be evaluated in relation to the position for which you are applying… If you answered “yes” that you have been convicted of an offense against the law other than a minor traffic violation, please explain the nature of the conviction and the date.

According to a job advertisement posted by the State of North Carolina for a BRIDGE project leader, a person who would oversee the “supervision, safety and security of inmates” in the BRIDGE program, anyone applying must be cleared by the National Criminal Information Computer in addition to becoming certified as a “custodial agent” for the state’s Department of Correction (State of North Carolina 2020).

North Carolina law encourages local officials to conduct criminal background checks on applicants for fire and emergency services positions. The North Carolina State Firefighters’ Association (2015) suggests the following guidance to local fire departments in accordance with state law:

Given these requirements, the program does not prepare the average participant to leave the program with enough experience to apply for a position with the NCFS. Applicants will also face criminal background checks.

There easily accessible materials to guide departments as they consider former BRIDGE participants. The Forest Service does state online, “BRIDGE can also be used as a job reference when applying for employment following release from the prison system” (NCFS n.d.). The North Carolina Legislature has never required the Forest Service to follow up with former participants and report whether they were successful in finding a relevant job post-release.

These findings demonstrate a lack of effort to provide an effective evidence-based rehabilitation program for incarcerated persons through their participation in forestry and emergency services.

DISCUSSION Since 1985, incarcerated persons participating in the BRIDGE program have become increasingly embedded within the state’s Forestry Department. They assist with mitigating the risks of wildfires and work to extinguish them. Their role is seen as integral to this work in North Carolina, primarily because they do not have the right to standard wages. In return for their labor, the Forestry Department and the Department of Public Safety have argued that BRIDGE participants benefit from rehabilitation and vocational training. In reports, the Forestry Department has relied on “informal” methods to determine that the program reduces the number of participants returning to prison. At best, relying on informal information should be considered extremely negligent, especially because the Department claims the program significantly betters the lives of participants.

At worst, the Forestry Department ignored the state’s official formal research project that demonstrated the

lack of a statistically significant relationship between participation in the program and a reduction in the rate of return to prison for participants. The study that Forestry Department officials have continued to point to was found to be inaccurate. When the state’s own Research Division discovered this, they did not recommend program changes or more research on how to better provide rehabilitative opportunities for incarcerated men. Instead they argued that rehabilitation is not important enough to be a factor in evaluating the program’s success.

Legally, the state does not require that the NCFS tracks the outcomes of former participants. High turnover rates have shown that the average incarcerated person does not leave with enough experience to qualify for any job with the Forest Service, even as a temporary smoke chaser.

The criminal background process is also used to weed out candidates that have been convicted of a crime. It would appear that the only policy in place within the forestry service to assist BRIDGE participants post release is to offer a job reference.

In the same report in 2010 that argued the program was valuable because it decreased the rate of return to prison (the debunked statistic), the Forest Service framed the program as a way to capitalize on and benefit from increasing rates of incarceration for young men in the state. Where critics of the state’s increased reliance on incarceration as policy failure, the Forestry Department sees opportunity. This reflects the interdependent relationship between prison systems and disaster labor programs. If the state is only willing to pay workers at severely restricted wages, then it will need a steady labor supply of young incarcerated persons who can be exploited for their labor. When North Carolina attempted to decrease its reliance on incarceration, the labor pool was impacted, leading the state to expand the type of incarcerated persons it would accept to the BRIDGE program when officials feared they would no longer be able to respond to natural disasters. This case demonstrates how criminal justice reform policy impacts the ability of the state to fight disasters if it relies on incarcerated persons. As the risk of wildfires and other disasters increases, efforts to reform prisons could be stymied if 77

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If the applicant’s or current member’s verified criminal history record check reveals one or more convictions, then the conviction shall constitute just cause for not selecting the applicant for the position or for dismissing the current member from a current position with the local fire department or emergency medical services.

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the state prioritizes the need for low-cost labor above the need to decrease high rates of incarceration.

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AP. 1986. “Plan Would Ease Prison Crowding.” Rocky Mount Telegram, May 7th, 1986, 1.

AP. 1985. “Tar Heels Fleeing Fires.” Rocky Mount Telegram, April 5th,1985, 1.

Barrett, Mark. 1987. “County Backs Forestry Camp At New Prison.” Asheville Citizen-Times, August 19th, 1987, 1B, 8B. Clark, Paul. 1985. “Weather Keeps Fires Burning.” Asheville Citizen-Times, April 9th, 1985, 1-2.

CSG. 2014. Justice Reinvestment in North Carolina: Three Years Later. Lexington, KY: The Justice Center for the Council of State Governments. http://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/JRinNCThreeYearsLater.pdf.

Denton, Van. 1986. “Prison Forestry Camp to be Moved Back to Burke County.”

Asheville Citizen-Times, July 11th, 1986, 21.

Flanagan, Glen. 2015. “Remembering the worst wildfire in Burke County’s history.” The News Herald, April 3rd, 2015. https://www.morganton.com/ news/remembering-the-worst-wildfire-in-burke-county-s-history/article_04427898-da5b-11e4-89f9-8b7375fb2e99.html Fisher, Kerra Bolton. 2002. “Budget Plan Calls for Closing 3 WNC Prisons.”

Asheville Citizen Times, June 27th.

Gage, Charles. 1987. “Residents Oppose Prisoner Work Camp.” Asheville Citizen-Times, August 26th, 1987, 4.

Hartley, Bill. n.d. Western Youth Institution—25 Years of Service: a History of Western Correctional Center. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Public Safety. https://www.doc.state.nc.us/dop/wyi/history.htm Lieberman, Marion H. 1987. “Burke Homeowners Challenge New Prison Camp for Youth.” Asheville Citizen-Times, May 14th, 1987, 21.

NCDA. 2020. General Utility Worker (Smoke Chaser). North Carolina Department of Agriculture, Raleigh: North Carolina. https://www.ncworks.gov/vosnet/ jobbanks/jobdetails.aspx?enc=9B8/uT7EfbEIDLIMZ8rho6bBXhVDlNxNh/

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tN4zWh0V95+YdCtKyYCIFRNw2ILTQnX22l2dBuwNtgeQLcfd382XFCJN6/ UwF+uFk9qbYsYAhhD0Wic52O5Hta/aqiV0aMlg4/KVB8YwNrQQqZyPWUJWfd2c/wHtsE2/Ffi8XlokU11gv36QkOfhuUwMxBaXXuSI1GLzQcSetkkVYQDmUQW7VB6MXcQmj07KG74JbnZksUDNNmEk58fNbGngsefybG NCDA. 2019. Smoke Chaser-Forest Firefighter. North Carolina Department of Agriculture, Raleigh: North Carolina. https://www.ncworks.gov/vosnet/ jobbanks/jobdetails.aspx?enc=9B8/uT7EfbEIDLIMZ8rho6bBXhVDlNxNh/ tN4zWh0V8rJ4MFnASLHLpciMy7D/jtJL4j4fzXwiHfN09DXCjSpeHCeW1+v8TgHj4apme9jEAYqTFpXjeqV6m4DCME/4JZNcMa2dHvfEgLy9Ga6swn4Q== NCDA. 2019. Smoke Chaser-Forest Firefighter. North Carolina Department of Agriculture, Raleigh: North Carolina. https://www.ncworks.gov/ vosnet/jobbanks/jobdetails.aspx?enc=9B8/uT7EfbEIDLIMZ8rho3HT5vfPC+8J002LvQDdj3C/nBhciOOya/WsWDAbHlUnqfZ5aYCEcvkyeEWxfHjtVuDcUp0P4Cu5roIoo618c/CLjAPppXgFyMeM0eCDd3mXxzpdLNjK0KP08PBJYk x4bR0FYeTQ/aii9 co 6yKW88zQI9I+eP7J/ pTV+ciV8BDiO+8TRrZdHHGLiZ1QUgWEfeaylzH4mncrR8bi7r/mduzGnedw8u/tRVOkw+747kFBL NCDFR. 2010. BRIDGE CONTINUATION REVIEW LEGISLATIVE REPORT. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCDPS. 2012. Prison Work Programs. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Public Safety. Retrieved January 17, 2020 from https://wayback. archive-it.org/194/20150728221148/https://www.ncdps.gov//Index2.cfm ?a=000003,002240,002249,002353.

NCDPS. n.d. a. History of North Carolina’s Corrections System. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Public Safety. https://www.ncdps.gov/ adult-corrections/history-of-corrections NCDPS. n.d. b. Closed Prisons. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Public Safety. https://www.ncdps.gov/adult-corrections/prisons/ closed-prisons NCDPS. n.d. c. Young Offenders Forest Conservation Program (BRIDGE).

Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Public Safety. https://www. ncdps.gov/young-offenders-forest-conservation-program-bridge.

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NCFS. 2017. YOUNG OFFENDERS FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM B.R.I.D.G.E. Annual Legislative Report. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCFS. 2016. YOUNG OFFENDERS FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM B.R.I.D.G.E. Annual Legislative Report. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCFS. 2015. YOUNG OFFENDERS FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM B.R.I.D.G.E. Annual Legislative Report. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCFS. 2014. YOUNG OFFENDERS FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM B.R.I.D.G.E. Annual Legislative Report. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCFS. 2013. YOUNG OFFENDERS FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM B.R.I.D.G.E. Annual Legislative Report. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCFS. 2012. YOUNG OFFENDERS FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM B.R.I.D.G.E. Annual Legislative Report. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

NCFS. n.d. Types of Jobs at NCFS. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources. https://www.ncforestservice.gov/jobs/types_of_jobs. htm.

NCFRD. 2010. STATISTICS MEMO—B.R.I.D.G.E. Program Continuation Review: Return-to-Prison Rates. Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina Fiscal Research Division. https://www.ncleg.gov/documentsites/ Committees/HouseAppropriationsJPS/2012%20Session/May%2022,%20 2012%20-%20Governor’s%20Budget%20Presentation/Requested%20 Documents%20-%20Mortgage%20Settlement%20and%20BRIDGE/ DOC_BRIDGE_Statistics_2010_04.pdf

NCOSBM. 2009. Recommended Operating Budget with Performance Management Information 2009-2010: Natural and Economic Resources. Raleigh: North Carolina Office of State Budget Management. https:// files.nc.gov/ncosbm/bgt0911v5r.pdf NCDC. 2017. Smoke Chaser—NC Department of Agriculture. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Department of Commerce. https://www.ncworks. gov/vosnet/jobbanks/jobdetails.aspx?enc=9B8/uT7EfbEIDLIMZ8rho/ bFqeqxRHlLivh3C648JWcwilJqjVNMJtfYktOufrUStIhn5xq23HMon53tNgyMkOGtRSA4excpg9Gs++TmRw4ku/LYtUwhDlABCKQYnSh1S478nzF1TibTgrq3/7r8+IKOWqhlBsa0sCNbKC54Tz0qOxnE2dQKpzag6m9GZfm5lXhWyzWHbiwkVDeUvKNJHoSx3uUUO8RinXmq45asU+/ QeyDWtqs+t70fK8b40Gqx. NCSFA. 2015. Criminal History Checks on Firefighters and Rescue Members. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State Firefighters’ Association. https://ncsfa. com/criminal-history-checks-on-firefighters-and-rescue-members.

State of North Carolina. 2020. Bridge Project Leader New - North Carolina.

Raleigh, North Carolina: State of North Carolina. https://www.linkedin. com/jobs/view/bridge-project-leader-new-north-carolina-at-state-ofnorth-carolina-1543789550/ UPI. 1985. “North Carolina Declares Disaster as Marines Battle Raging Wildfires.” The Brattleboro Reformer, April 11th, 1985, 3.

Williams, Casey. 2018. “The state locked them up. Now they’re North Carolina’s elite firefighting force.” SCALAWAG, May 24th. Retrieved January 17th, 2020 from https://www.scalawagmagazine.org/2018/05/the-statelocked-them-up-now-theyre-north-carolinas-elite-firefighting-force/.

NCOSBM. 2010. Recommended Operating Budget with Performance Management Information 2010-2011: Natural and Economic Resources.

Raleigh: North Carolina Office of State Budget Management. https://files. nc.gov/ncosbm/documents/files/2010_budget.pdf.

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R E VI E W | TH E U N I N H A BITA BLE EA RT H: Life After Warming

AUTHOR/ DAVID WALLACE-WELLS Review by Nora Schwaller

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warning by David Wallace-Wells gives insight into the possible range of worlds that await us in the emerging era of climate change. This is not the new normal, the new abnormal, or any other beginning. It is the end of the climactic conditions that supported humanity through every significant marker of civilization, industrialization, and global, human advancement. And things, Wallace-Wells notes in his opening sentence, are “worse, much worse, than you think.”

To the author’s credit, he makes the case for concern quickly and effectively. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey was the third storm over a 1 in 500-year intensity to hit Texas since 2015; the Camp Fire became the deadliest storm in California’s history, one of a hundred major wildfires across the American West burning just that week; Japan experienced biblical rains that displaced 1.2 million individuals; a typhoon in China displaced 2.45 million people; India experienced its worst flood in 100 years in the state of Kerala; and Hurricane Florence ran headlong into Wilmington, briefly turning the city into an island, and spurring tornadoes across the state of North Carolina.

We will soon be nostalgic for such times. In the near-future we will not consider these events as disasters so much as we will see them as simple weather.

As Wallace-Wells states, “the devastation we are now seeing all around us is a beyond-best-case scenario for the future of warming and all the climate disasters it will bring” (p. 19). It is this framing that is particularly disturbing and that provides the most value. This is because it provides a tale that feels both close and familiar to the average western reader of casual climate non-fiction (the presumed targeted audience of the).

Penguin Random House, LLC, 2019. 320 pages.

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Where that leaves us is far from meeting the opportunity to limit warming to “just” two-degrees Celsius, as the 2016 Paris Climate Accords established as the must-meet threshold (one which no industrialized country is on track to meet). On such an earth, some areas would become too hot for human habitation, others would submit to rising tides; contemporary diseases now isolated in the

BOOK REVIEW

NORA LOUISE SCHWALLER is an architect and a PhD Candidate in the Department of City and Regional

Planning at UNC, Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on how disasters affect population movement compared to existing migration patterns. She hopes this work will help communities implement equitable plans to prepare

for a future of climate change. In her free time, she likes taking her dog on nature walks, baking for friends, and casually perusing the design history of contemporary video games and systems.

Global South would creep into the Global North, and old ones frozen in tundra may become activated as the permafrost melts; freshwater would become increasingly scarce leading to societal instability in large swaths of the world; the air would become more polluted leading to greater health issues, and the very food we eat would become less nutritious as yields drop and previously fertile fields become incapable of growing grains that have historically supported our fast-growing populations.

That level of warming, which the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands referred to simply as “genocide,” is quickly falling outside of our grasp. In 2017, the year after the signing of the Climate Accords, carbon emissions grew by 1.4 percent.

Wallace-Wells explains that this inaction goes back longer: “Three quarters of a century since global warming was first recognized as a problem, we have made no meaningful adjustment to our production or consumption of energy to account for it and protect ourselves” (p. 44). And it does not seem like we are trending in a direction that would change that.

While the author is quite successful at establishing this frame, beyond the experience that the reader can bring to bear, the argument fails to provide a compelling human narrative. The book is designed, insomuch as you can judge a book by its cover, to express itself as a Gladwellian series of essays around a single theme. The serif font, subtitle, and a single image on a white cover is so ubiquitous of a style that it might have come from the ‘Malcolm Gladwell book generator’. But it does not have the easy charm of Gladwell’s stories, bereft, as it is, of any human character outside of the abstraction.

cannot point to where they were when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 ppm (it was May 9, 2013, for those who are willing to try), the same way I can remember the classroom I was in when the news of 9/11 broke, or my parents can remember the day that the Berlin Wall fell. Rather we are all, unevenly, victims and perpetrators, captured in a state closer to “half-ignorance and half-indifference” than “true denial or true fatalism” (p. 55).

Compounding this issue, the author does not give a clear path forward. Again, much of this is beyond Wallace-Wells’ control.

As he notes, “the climate calculus is such that individual lifestyle choices do not add up to much, unless they are scaled by politics” (p. 34). And various sources of political will, to this point, have been at best wavering and at worst obstinate.

As a result, where this book ends is on a meditation of the Fermi paradox. This thought experiment asks, if earth-like planets are as common in this galaxy as grains of sand on a beach, why have we not seen evidence of aliens? An answer might be that the life-cycle of industrialized civilizations may only be a few hundred years long, starting shortly after the climate shifts to sustain it and ending when the industrialization process shifts climate towards destruction.

While the author, an avowed optimist, sees this as a reason to be empowered by the exceptionality of our profoundly fragile ‘project of civilization’ (p. 224), it is hard to read to the end of this book and survive a deep feeling of fatalism.

Rather, the book provides a horrifying slew of figures that, despite the author’s best intentions, begin to merge into a miasma of bad news encircling worse prospects. Much of this is beyond the author’s control. As Wallace-Wells notes in the latter half of the book, one of the challenges of confronting climate change is that it does not lend itself to an easy narrative.

There is no discernable protagonist or antagonist. The readers

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R E VI E W | TH E DI VI DE D C ITY— Po v e r t y a n d Pr o s p e r i t y i n U r b a n A m e r i c a

AUTHOR/ ALAN MALLACH Review by Will Curran-Gnoome

The challenges presented by gentrification in America’s wealthiest metropolises, places like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, are the topics of frequent refrain. While some—particularly white, well-educated, young people—benefit from an influx of jobs, rising incomes, and new cultural offerings, long-time residents can face precipitous increases in housing costs and dramatic changes to their neighborhoods.

Alan Mallach intentionally steers the conversation away from the posterchild cities of gentrification to explore how neighborhoods in America’s post-industrial cities are changing. Is gentrification taking place, and if so, where? Who is benefitting, and what is happening to everyone else? The Divided City details how places like Cleveland, Baltimore, and Detroit are seeing limited pockets, while in the remaining neighborhoods, which are home to the majority of residents, poverty rates are static or have grown over time, painting a picture of decline, not gentrification.

To ground this narrative of diverging urban futures, Mallach walks readers through the history of traditionally industrial urban areas, touching on the evolution of labor markets “From Factories to Eds and Meds” (Chapter 3), changing demographic trends, and the spatial implications of racism and housing. These factors build into an analysis of the contemporary postindustrial city—as well as “The Other Postindustrial America: Small Cities, Mill Towns, and Struggling Suburbs” (Chapter 7). While Mallach’s assessment of conditions is sobering, the following chapters present a more optimistic picture. He details strategies other cities have used successfully to improve outcomes in declining neighborhoods, including innovative job readiness programs, greening of vacant lots and rehabbing the facades of abandoned houses, and community policing initiatives.

On some fronts, The Divided City interrogates challenging topics with insight and nuance. Mallach untangles the meanings of “gentrification” in a dedicated chapter, exploring the multiple facets of physical, economic, and cultural displacement and change. He also includes a compelling discussion focused on the ways in which evolving power dynamics intersect with and undergird perceptions of gentrification.

Island Press, 2018. 344 pages.

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“The most unsettling thing about gentrification, however, is how it reflects the utter and complete lack of control the poor and the nonwhite have in where they are permitted to live.”

--Jake Flanagin in The Divided City (p. 120)

in public health and social services research with a nonprofit in Philadelphia. Will’s academic interests include land use policy, affordable housing, and the relationship between the built environment and health.

Similarly, Mallach does an admirable job of explicitly addressing the intersection of race and class with systems of housing, education, and employment. And while these issues rightly receive a dedicated chapter, Mallach avoids the easy one-and-done approach, integrating lenses focused on race, wealth, and education—though not to any significant extent gender—throughout the book.

initiatives are replicable and scalable. Do we understand the preconditions for the success of, for example, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) of which Mallach is such a proponent? Extrapolating from a single success story is challenging, and while such examples deserve to be tested, their lack of demonstrated scale and replicability suggests they are not ready for the big leagues.

Yet while the breadth of The Divided City is insightful and Further, while Mallach’s argument for local action rests helps to ground many of Mallach’s later recommendations, it is on changing the dynamics and priorities of local power both a daunting amount of background material to cover and, coalitions, he provides no particularly clear strategies for how this might happen. necessarily, limited; how can anyone describe, critique, and propose improvements to urban education and job systems in a single chapter? The ongoing debate around charter schools, “[Equity and inclusion] require changing ways of thinking, for example, is hardly conclusive, and it seemed minimally and changing the ways in which power is exercised not useful to re-hash it here: the chapter was at once too short and only in American society generally, but separately in each too long, lacking both true insight (understandably—Mallach one of the hundreds of individual cities and regions that is not an education researcher) and any compelling conclusion. make up our country.” (p. 258) Conversely, the scope of the book makes it all the more disappointing that key issues are omitted entirely. The Divided City is silent on the relationship between climate change and patterns of (sub)urbanization in the United States. In a book that otherwise cogently foregrounds issues of race and wealth inequities, neglecting the extent to which climate change will—and already has—disproportionately impacted lowincome communities of color was one of a few serious shortcomings. Similarly, the inattention to exclusionary zoning and zoning reform was disappointing, especially given that zoning aligns nicely with Mallach’s emphasis on city-level action over “utopian” dreams of federal policy change.

One important thread throughout is the explicit emphasis on bottom-up change:

“I stress local policy, because if there’s any lesson to be learned from the way power works, it is that change will only happen if the people who make local decisions want it to happen.” (p. 246) Mallach frames this as “focused, visionary pragmatism”: fighting for change city by city, as opposed to holding out for radical shifts in federal policy. Consequently, his recommendations are mostly drawn from and focused on local initiatives and governments. Yet it is unclear whether these

Existing coalition members, such as “eds and meds,” are successful under the status quo; they have no obvious reason to support more equitable policies. Mallach also cites the lack of coordination between community organizations and advocates for equitable growth while describing how these actors could exert power of their own over local decisionmaking, but again, there is no clear proposal for overcoming such collective action challenges.

The Divided City presents an informative analysis of postindustrial American cities. Mallach starts with a thorough history of urban manufacturing economies and uses relevant data to describe how and why these cities’ neighborhoods are changing, both for good and bad. He details how race and class are fundamentally linked to which neighborhoods are changing and who is affected, and points to successful examples from cities that are working to ensure more equitable growth. This is a worthy topic, and Mallach demonstrates himself a capable narrator and a persuasive advocate. In a second edition, we look forward to an explicit focus on climate change, discussion of zoning reform, and more detailed descriptions of local coalition building and advocacy strategies.

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BOOK REVIEW

WILL is a first-year master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Prior to UNC, he worked

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

S O FT CI TY Building Density for Everyday Life

AUTHOR/ DAVID SIM Review by Amy Sechrist

Humans are messy and complicated, but we strive for order and control in our cities. We separate types, sizes, and uses of buildings, removing the disorder that is characteristically human.

The world is rapidly urbanizing. The UN predicts that nearly 70% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050. Must our urban future be one of continued control? Must our future be one of skyscrapers, long commutes, and disconnection from the environment and our neighbors?

In Soft City, David Sim answers these questions with a resounding “no.” Sim provides a vision of an alternative urban future, where density and diversity in urban form strengthen our relationships and create a flexible city that is both efficient and enjoyable to inhabit.

Sim’s advocacy for a human-centered city is unsurprising considering his close relationship with Jan Gehl, who literally wrote the book on designing cities for people. As a partner and Creative Director at Gehl, Sim carries on this tradition of people-centered design with an urban design handbook full of beautifully illustrated and straightforward examples of the human-scaled city.

A soft city is defined by supporting more than a city built at humanscale; it supports small-scale, pleasant design interventions to foster better relationships between city dwellers and the built environment, nature, and each other.

The book is divided into three independent sections. The first focuses on how to encourage diversity and density in urban space, thereby increasing the “likelihood or the possibility of useful things, places and people being closer to you” (p. 12). However, density and diversity of buildings is not the ultimate goal; instead, Sim’s urban design strategies are meant to facilitate dense and diverse human interactions. Special attention is paid to lower building heights (ideally 4-5 stories) and enclosed block configurations.

Island Press, 2019. 235 Pages.

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The second section turns to the challenges of moving people through dense urban spaces. Sim discusses strategies not just for shortening commute times but for making them more enjoyable and social.

BOOK REVIEW

AMY SECHRIST is a first-year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning with a

concentration in housing and community Development. Her research interests include affordable housing, planning for equity, and the intersection of gender and planning. Prior to UNC she worked as a Housing

Advocate and Shelter Manager at a gender-based violence crisis center and as a federal project management

consultant. Amy holds a certificate in Creative Placemaking from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and a bachelor’s degree in Political Communication from George Washington University.

Many of his design guidelines will be familiar to current proponents of increased mobility, including wider sidewalks, curb extensions, and dedicated bike lanes. Perhaps the most interesting component of the section deals with the last few feet of any commute. The experience of traveling from your apartment door, down the stairs, and on to the sidewalk are of vital importance as they connect the private realm with the public realm of the neighborhood.

The final section centers on our relationship with the environment. In theory, as we live in denser urban configurations where access to nature may be at a premium, we will need other ways to connect with the natural world. This does not mean that every city dweller needs access to private green space, but that cities should have a density and diversity of natural options so that each inhabitant can connect with nature in the ways that work best for them, from large-scale parks to flower boxes.

Sim’s discussion of climate focuses on the creation, through intentional design, of enjoyable micro climates that allow people to spend more time outdoors year-round. Specific design strategies include enclosed block layouts and sloped roofs that allow for more sunlight to reach street level. Though Sim dedicates almost a third of the book to the topic captured in the title of Chapter 3, “Living with the Weather in a Time of Climate Change,” his discussion of the issue leaves something to be desired. While he puts forth design strategies that would surely bring urbanites closer to nature, he provides little guidance on living in the increasingly extreme climates created by global warming.

a pragmatic approach for embracing the challenges of modern urban living.

In a sense Sim is asking us to take responsibility for our corner of the neighborhood. He calls on us not to retreat from conflict and messiness but to embrace it. Dense urban living is complicated and challenging but does not need to be confined or sterile. As Sim sees it, humans are complex with varied needs, desires, and preferences, and by taking a softer approach to cities we can create spaces that embrace this complexity instead of trying to control it.

Soft City is an engaging and visually interesting book for those interested in creating a more human urban landscape. The book functions as an idealistic design handbook and offers little by way of guidance on implementing these designs in the real world. While inspiring, the reader is left with a distinct sense that Sim’s vision of a wholly soft city may be ultimately unattainable. Sim provides a passionate and updated appeal for a messier, more complex, and more human urban experience. He places people at the center of their own urban story, urging us not to retreat into the isolation of our high-rise apartments but rather to seek and build communities that nurture and enrich our lives together.

Sim closes the book with an appeal to the reader as neighbor, community member, and human. To Sim a city is a system of relationships, and if we hope to tackle the great challenges of our age, including climate change, then the strength and resiliency of our relationships are of dire importance. In this way, what lies at the heart of Sim’s argument for a softer city is

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ST RO NG TO WN S: A B o tt o m - U p Re v o l u t i o n t o Re b u i l d A m e r i c a n Pro s p e r i t y

AUTHOR/ CHARLES L. MAROHN JR. Review by Luke Lowry Wiley & Sons, 2019.

256 pages.

Since World War II, American cities have experienced unprecedented levels of growth. In a matter of decades, the traditional cores of our cities exploded outwards as automobiles and other technologies enabled rapid expansion which continues today. In most cities, growth is the main metric used to measure success. Politicians clamor to attract new mega-developments, sometimes offering multi-million dollar subsidies to sweeten the deal. Cities take on debt to build new roads without blinking an eye. Greenfield sites on the edge of cities are converted to suburban housing to accommodate the incoming population. In general, these are all seen as indicators of an active, robust economy. But what if growth meant something else entirely?

What if the growth that supposedly brings wealth to a community was actually stripping it of its financial stability?

In Strong Towns: A Bottom Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, author Charles Marohn challenges the common paradigm that growth is indicative of a healthy, thriving city. Rather, through examples, analogies, and illustrations, he builds an argument that most American cities have developed in a financially unstable way and are in desperate need of change.

Charles Marohn is the founder of the Strong Towns organization.

He began his career as a civil engineer in the state of Minnesota, consulting with cities on multi-million dollar infrastructure investments. After analyzing the associated costs and revenues of those projects, he began to realize that almost none of the infrastructure in which cities invested generated enough wealth from taxes to cover basic long-term maintenance. This discovery led him away from engineering and towards the world of municipal finance.

Strong Towns was created as a movement to promote financially strong and resilient American cities by rethinking the model of development. The Strong Towns book is an attempt to synthesize and distribute the story and mission of the organization.

In the book, Marohn argues that the American pattern of development is fundamentally flawed. Before World War II, cities were built incrementally, gradually increasing from low-intensity to high-intensity through private investment. In the post-war era

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BOOK REVIEW

LUKE LOWRY is a first-year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning with a specialization in transportation. He is particularly interested in pedestrian and bicycle planning as a means to increase equity and create vibrant communities. A lifelong resident of North Carolina, he enjoys spending time

in the mountains near his hometown. He also enjoys reading, staying active, and finding new coffee shops to fuel

his caffeine addiction. Luke received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from UNC Charlotte.

of suburbanization, development was built all at once to a finished state. As auto-oriented development expanded outwards, cities also expanded public infrastructure to serve the new development. This rapid growth enlarged the tax base of cities, giving the illusion of wealth. However, the public infrastructure also created long-term financial maintenance liabilities. The development, most of which is low-density and auto-oriented, rarely generates enough tax revenue to cover maintenance. Thus, cities are faced with either taking on debt or inducing more growth to generate additional tax revenue, which Marohn terms the Municipal Ponzi Scheme.

The implications of this argument are grim. Without the means to cover basic maintenance costs, cities will be faced with tough decisions about where to invest their limited funds.

Although the problems addressed by Marohn are daunting, he is reticent to offer grand, bold solutions. Rather, he emphasizes the importance of taking small, incremental actions. In the book, he states “The problems we face are so enormous, so intertwined and multifaceted, that the only way to approach them with a full appreciation of the stunning level of complexity they hold is incrementally” (p. 123). In the concluding chapters of the book, he outlines some specific strategies; mainly, he discusses how to identify productive places, strategies for making smart investments, and ways to reorganize local government to empower grassroots action.

While Marohn is honest about the difficulty of the situation and holds back no punches, his solutions still manage to inspire hope and present an optimistic vision about the future of American communities.

Despite any minor flaws, the main purpose of the book was achieved: to deliver the Strong Towns message in a singular, succinct format. Although the book covers several topics, the arguments are developed in a logical, coherent manner.

Additionally, the book also succeeds in taking a complex topic and simplifying it to a version that is both intellectually engaging and palatable to a wide array of audiences. Though Marohn delivers harsh truths throughout, his thoughtfulness and caring are evident. Rather than a platform to criticize, this book is an invitation for all to sit, ponder, and come together to find answers to our most pressing urban development needs.

Overall, Strong Towns is a book that everyone should read.

For urban planners and other professionals, it is a relevant guide on how to make the right investments for long term stability within communities. Even for those outside of the urban planning field, it is still relevant. While Strong Towns is a book on municipal finance and urban development, it achieves much more. Ultimately, this book is a treatise on human behavior and how to best use resources to optimize the welfare of ourselves and our neighbors. For anyone who cares about creating great places that will last in the future, Strong Towns is a must read.

Strong Towns is by no means a perfect book. Despite its relatively slim size (slightly over 200 pages), there were several sections that felt unnecessarily repetitive. In addition, the solutions presented felt brief; while the goal was obviously not to present step-by-step “how to fix your city” instructions, more examples would have better elucidated some of the concepts.

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S UP E RP O WE R O n e M a n ’ s Q u e s t t o Tr a n s f o r m A m e r i c a n E n e r g y

AUTHOR/ RUSSELL GOLD Review by Olivia Corriere

Superpower follows quirky, optimistic businessman Michael Skelly from his beginnings installing rainforest canopy gondolas in Costa Rica to his stardom in the wind energy industry. Author Russell Gold tells Skelly’s professional story in a narrative style that traces the rise and evolution of renewables in the United States —a story about the electric grid that we all depend on.

In the early 2000s, technology enthusiasts and environmentalists drove the wind energy industry. When the Zilkha family, wealthy from their banking business, sold their oil company, they started Zilkha Renewable Energy the next day sensing industry growth on the horizon. They first crossed paths with Skelly when they acquired International Wind, for whom he was working at the time. It was a perfect match; the Zilkhas appreciated his ambition, his ability to connect with people, and his outright zeal for renewables.

All at once, Skelly and Zilkha Renewable shook things up in the wind industry with deep pockets and big oil business experience.

As Gold put it, “Hippies were no longer running the wind business.

Green pieties had been replaced by accountants’ green eyeshades” (p. 66). Skelly successfully built massive wind projects for Zilkha Renewable, like the 423.45MW Blue Canyon wind project in Slick Hills, Oklahoma. Gold decorates what could be a dry corporate growth story with anecdotes about Skelly’s positive attitude, daily bike commutes, and eclectic business and negotiation strategies.

Take for example his suggestion to Michael Zilkha to wear his pink bike shorts and cycling shoes during a momentous finance meeting.

When Zilkha Renewable sold to Goldman Sachs in late 2004, Skelly took a break from the energy industry to run as a pro-energy, moderate Democrat in the Seventh Congressional District of Texas.

Spoiler alert—it is challenging to beat out an incumbent Republican in the Lone Star State. After trying his hand at politics, Skelly catapulted back into energy development, co-founding his own new company: Clean Line Energy Partners would tackle the archaic 20th-century transmission lines.

Simon & Schuster Publicity, 2019. 336 pages.

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The American grid transports electricity with a network of transmission lines; it accepts electricity from generators, distributes

BOOK REVIEW

OLIVIA CORRIERE is a senior undergraduate studying environmental sustainability, geography, and urban

planning. She works as Project Manager at Blue Dogwood Public Market in Chapel Hill, NC. She also serves as Co-Chair of the UNC Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee, managing renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy education projects on campus. In her free time, Olivia enjoys hiking and cooking with friends and family.

electricity through transmission lines, and sells it at wholesale to utilities. Because these transmission lines have limited capacities, congestion can become an issue when new generators (renewable or otherwise) come online, thus making the electricity more expensive and increasing strain on the infrastructure.

His new company would build transmission lines from energy resources to load centers. It would buy electricity from generators like wind farms, transmit it to load centers, and sell it to utilities at a premium. These enormous infrastructure projects are expensive, require long-term investors, and involve lengthy stakeholder processes. Government usually leads these types of development projects because the electric grid is functionally public, interstate infrastructure. Skelly was disrupting the status quo completely, and it was not easy.

There were questions and heated debate about landowner rights, eminent domain, environmental implications, and economic impacts.

Gold closely examines Skelly’s Oklahoma-to-Memphis 720mile, 4,000 MW transmission line, the Plains & Eastern Line. Arkansas political representatives were livid that the transmission line passed through the state without providing clear local benefits. Some posed questions about whether Clean Line even had the authority to build transmission lines since it was not a utility. Politicians waxed poetic about the threats of the line, turning their constituents against it, often by wielding false information. Landowners were terrified that they might lose their land. Notorious anti-transmission line mobilizer Julie Morton put it simply, “To us, it looks like Big Oil is moving over and here comes Big Renewable” (p. 181).

of stakeholder meetings, offering the cheapest electricity on the market, and offering cash per mile to counties where the line would be built. This process is a long, administratively complex, technically difficult, and politically-contentious one.

Superpower clarifies several complex issues for the reader: the limitations of existing transmission lines, the politics that create roadblocks for renewables, the intense difficulty of comprehensive stakeholder engagement, and how energy policies and legislation affect developers in practice. Gold condenses and explains complex policies like the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act and the Energy Policy Act, making them understandable for the reader. These policies regulate and steer energy in the U.S., so it is critical to understand them as climate change accelerates and as the American fuel portfolio comes into focus as a major talking point in the 2020 presidential race.

Gold chose the right character to carry the story of the renewables industry. Skelly is an interesting, likable person, and by the end, I was rooting for him. The anecdotes that Gold tells about Skelly and his business style are fun to read and add color to the picture of the renewables industry as a high stakes industry run by nimble, driven people.

Gold wrote this book to get into the nitty gritty of what it would take to build a new energy infrastructure. He wanted to write about the experience of working in energy, especially as the sector grows and there is more demand for workers in the industry. As he hoped it would, Superpower will appeal to people interested in challenging the status quo in energy and excite them to do something different.

Skelly went back and forth for years with individual “‘You only get one life, right?’ Skelly once said. ‘You might landowners, politicians who blacklisted Clean Line projects, as well do something that is interesting and is challenging and potential electricity buyers—especially the Tennessee and is exciting. If it weren’t all those things, it wouldn’t Valley Authority, a regional transmission organization (RTO) in be worthwhile’” (p. 273).

Tennessee. Meanwhile, Arkansas Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton introduced legislation that explicitly targeted the Plains & Eastern Line. All the while, Skelly was holding dozens 89

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 45 / Hazards in the Southeastern United States

R ACE FO R P RO FI T: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership AUTHOR/ KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR Review by Veronica Brown

In Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor details how following the end to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) redlining in 1967 and the passage of the Fair Housing Act the following year, federal low-income homeownership programs extended mortgages backed by the FHA to Black homebuyers in urban areas. Through these programs’ reliance on unprecedented publicprivate partnerships, the real estate industry transformed housing discrimination from an operation of exclusion into what Taylor terms predatory inclusion, systematically exploiting Black homebuyers through their incorporation into the market. Race for Profit emerges as a necessary addition to the housing canon, expanding existing understandings of discrimination and advocating for a radical reenvisioning of our approach to housing.

Race for Profit begins as calls for improved housing conditions reached a fever pitch in the mid-1960s, with protestors occupying the chamber of the House of Representatives after Congress failed to pass a bill providing rat extermination to the nation’s cities. Amid urban rebellions and increasing demands to extend homeownership to African Americans, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Act in 1968 to create a series of homeownership programs targeted at low-income buyers. These programs featured low interest rates, extended terms, and monthly payments tied to owner income rather than home value. The FHA would also insure these mortgages, reversing its historically exclusionary policies. The National Association of Real Estate Boards exerted considerable influence in the drafting of the HUD Act. The White, suburban housing market had become saturated, while deteriorating houses in urban areas sat empty. The housing industry thus lobbied for the programs to focus on existing stock in cities, opening an urban market on which they could unload formerly unsellable stock.

The University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 368 pages.

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Taylor illustrates that the low-income homeownership programs assumed a position in a market in which risk had become inextricably intertwined with race. FHA-backed mortgages recast racialized risk as an opportunity for private interests. With the mortgages guaranteed by the FHA, riskier buyers became attractive, as lenders could foreclose on houses, collect, and begin the process again with

BOOK REVIEW

VERONICA BROWN is a first-year student in the Master’s of City and Regional Planning program. She received her undergraduate degree from Smith College, where she studied the psychology of contemporary visual culture. Before coming to UNC, Veronica worked in communications at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

another buyer. The HUD Act had also created the Government National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Ginnie Mae, introducing mortgage-backed securities to expand the availability of mortgage funds. The bundling and reselling of mortgages created an incentive for mortgages in large volumes, regardless of their viability. Taylor argues that through the surrender of housing to the private market in a nominal partnership, the federal government lost the ability to regulate its programs effectively. Homeowners discovered their purchases to have crumbling foundations, rat infestations, and faulty or absent heat and plumbing. Although the FHAinsured mortgage was contingent upon an inspection, this procedure frequently took place only on paper as real estate brokers bribed inspectors in an example of the widespread corruption in the implementation of the programs.

As the flaws of the low-income homeownership programs became apparent through legal action and media reports regarding corruption, unlivable conditions, and high foreclosure rates, HUD Secretary George Romney and other officials shifted the blame for the programs’ failures to individual homeowners. In one of the book’s best chapters, “Unsophisticated Buyers,” Taylor describes how, despite the significant structural problems documented in many of the homes, HUD ascribed blame for their condition to the owners’ housekeeping skills. The agency published pamphlets with instructions about dusting that were of little help to people whose condemned houses were crumbling beneath them.

Claiming that the Black homebuyers were fundamentally incapable of the task of homeownership, however, conveniently absolved HUD for the programs’ failures while also justifying the discontinuation of government involvement in housing.

Race for Profit rightly centers the experience of Black mothers as a primary site of contestation for housing policy. Taylor concludes “Unsophisticated Buyers” with a description of the legal battles these women waged, suggesting that the homeowners’ collective action embodied a meaningful form of resistance. Although sharp in its indictment of the narrative of personal responsibility espoused by Romney and others, this section feels disappointingly brief, if only in comparison

to the deliberate pace of the chapters tracking the creation of the programs.

In her thorough examination of a purposefully erased chapter of housing policy, Taylor achieves a compelling history for both specialists and the general-interest reader. The concept of predatory inclusion, perhaps Taylor’s most important contribution, offers an important framework for critiques of housing under capitalism. Taylor provides a necessary rejoinder to the dominant focus on expanding the market as a remedy for historical exclusion. Although the enduring legacy of redlining is undoubtedly critical to understanding the landscape of segregation in the United States, any reading list with Color of the Law should also feature Race for Profit, which suggests a more revolutionary rethinking of our contemporary relationship to housing. If racial exploitation is embedded in capitalism, housing justice cannot be realized through homeownership. Rather than focusing on the even extension of corrupt structures, we must envision a future that divorces property ownership from a full realization of citizenship.

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E VE RYTH I NG M U ST GO

AUTHOR/ KEVIN COVAL Review by Doug Bright

Haymarket Books, 2019.

112 pages.

Kevin Coval’s latest collection of poems, Everything Must Go, offers a story about the “life and death of an American neighborhood”: Chicago’s Wicker Park. Coval’s words, paired with drawings from Langston Allston, illustrate the Wicker Park that Coval came to know during his time as a resident, starting in the 1990s. The pages honor institutions that made the neighborhood what it was upon his arrival, but also document the changes—physical and spiritual—that came through the process of gentrification. Coval’s celebration of diversity—of culture, of income, of thought—evolves into a eulogy lamenting the departures of his friends, the incumbent community that artists moved into, and, with those two, the soul of the neighborhood he came to know, vanquished by a wealthier and whiter demographic. The book comes at a time of political change in the city, where a new mayor’s promises to dismantle long-standing political power structures conflict with continued neoliberalism of the previous administration, buttressing economic inequality through public subsidy. While reminding us that the spirit of a neighborhood is non-trivial, Coval reflects too briefly on the role that he and his fellow bohemians played in the process.

For Coval, gentrification is more than the loss of affordable housing, forced displacement, and the demographic shifts that come with it. He emphasizes the importance of the character of Wicker Park through a micro lens, through individual characters. Odes to personal connections and roommates, a neighbor nicknamed Mr. Rooster, fellow poets such as Denizen Kane and Thigahmahjiggee (a.k.a. Sharkula), and romantic prospects—mingle with salutes to the nameless, whose work make the neighborhood work: tamale vendors, waitresses, an incense salesman, barbers, car mechanics, and the like. He stresses, too, the importance of place, especially in its ability to create connection, recognizing the specific (cafés— Earwax and Urbis Orbis—and a bookstore called Lit-X) and the categorical (bowling alleys, dive bars, barbershops). The poems progress pseudo-chronologically, eventually revealing more and more obvious changes: fancy restaurants pop up, new construction booms, and MTV’s The Real World moves into the former Urbis Orbis space (not without protest).

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BOOK REVIEW

DOUG BRIGHT Doug Bright is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, specializing in transportation and pursuing the design track. He is interested in youth planning literacy, urban

food systems, the social power of place, and the intersection of technology and sustainable transportation

systems. He received his undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College and is a proud Chicagoan.

Coval is a long-time player in Chicago’s poetry scene and serves as a mentor to young poets. He plays institutional roles as the artistic director of Young Chicago Authors (an organization that emphasizes youth expression through creative writing and hip-hop), is a founder of that organization’s Louder Than A Bomb youth poetry festival (the largest in the world), and has taught at both the School of the Art Institute and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a white man—raised Jewish in the northern suburbs of Chicago—who participates in and educates others about the traditionally black realm of hip hop, a source of conflict that Coval himself has addressed. Coval’s grandfather moved to Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood in 1906 as a newly arrived immigrant; the author, raised in the suburbs, began living in Wicker Park in the 1990s.

Langston Allston, a New Orleans-based illustrator and muralist, focuses on people (especially portraits) at both scales. His smaller works are consistent with the black-andwhite, line drawing style seen in Everything Must Go. The illustrations alternate between direct representation of the subject of the poem (often people) and sketches of buildings in the neighborhood, creating a visual atmosphere, especially useful for non-Chicagoan readers. Allston never saw the Wicker Park constructed by Coval’s words, so his drawings are primarily derived from Coval’s poems.

Today’s Wicker Park represents yet another gentrified neighborhood radiating from the center of wealth on the Near North Side of the city. It is separated from Lincoln Park, a lakeside neighborhood synonymous with old money in Chicago, by the Chicago River, the Kennedy Expressway, and the blighted, industrial areas that line both of them. It is this missing piece in Chicago’s wealth map that is the site for a megadevelopment known as Lincoln Yards, a hotly debated topic in the city, in large part due to massive tax increment financing incentives the city has committed to the project, one which opponents argue could easily be funded without subsidy. On the west side of the river, Wicker Park was arguably the first neighborhood to gentrify and plays an analogous role to Lincoln Park, a core from which other gentrification stems

into nearby neighborhoods such as Ukrainian Village, Logan Square, and Humboldt Park. With Lincoln Yards, two cores can become one, but Everything Will Have to Go Again.

Coval’s poems do not address how politics and policy impact gentrification, but by chronicling individual people and places, they add nuance and weight to the argument that gentrification destroys neighborhood culture. The author meaningfully reflects on his relationship with the neighborhood, especially whether or not he has claim to the neighborhood due to his family history, in which his grandparents were residents, but his parents participated in “white flight” to the suburbs.

The expressways were built /& my parents remember /they left & i return.

(A Portrait of the Artist in the Hood, lines 9-11) He fails, however, to reflect on the fact that patterns of gentrification, including in Chicago, often involve the influx of artists as an early transitional stage in the process, one that could be seen as catalytic.

At a time in Chicago’s history that represents nearly unprecedented potential for progress on equity, Everything Must Go provides a reflection on neighborhood change that emphasizes the up-close-and-personal, the nuance, and the sum of its parts: a soul of a neighborhood. It aims to capture, backed by emotion, a component of neighborhood change that can too easily be shrugged off as ever-changing or too ethereal. While it neglects to suggest solutions for the challenging problems of gentrification (including one that impacts health most directly: displacement), it comes as close to success as possible in explaining the potential loss that lives in the relationships between people and places and the human connections borne out of sharing those spaces.

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BEST MASTER’S PR OJ E CT S CLASS OF 2019

BOBBY FUNK OPPORTUNITY ZONES AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: HARNESSING A TAX BENEFIT FOR PUBLIC GOALS B e s t M a s t e r ’s Pro j e c t

This project looks at the new Opportunity Zone tax benefit and analyzes North Carolina’s zone designations from a market-condition perspective. Because Opportunity Zones rely on private equity, this project helps practitioners better understand the underlying conditions of given zones based on long- and short-term investment patterns.

These patterns predict future investments and the relative investment risk considered from a private equity perspective, all affecting the potential economic returns from Opportunity Zone investments. Better understanding these conditions will help community development practitioners understand their leverage in public-oriented real estate development opportunities, helping set clearer financial expectations to achieve public goals.

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BEST MASTER’S PROJECTS - CLASS OF 2019

K ARL A JIMENEZ-MAGDALENO DISRUPTED: AN EXPLORATION OF EVICTION AND HEALTH IN DURHAM, NC Pe o p l e ’s C h o i c e A w a r d M a s t e r ’s Pr o j e c t

In Durham, NC, concerns about evictions have come to the forefront as the city deliberates over the strategies to address an increasingly unaffordable housing market. Durham County had over 10,000 eviction filings in 2017, many of which were no-fault evictions: unrelated to non-payment of rent or lease violations. Nofault evictions are understudied and become lost in a national narrative focused on non-payment of rent.

Community development practitioners lack an understanding of how the eviction process specifically affects physical and mental health, and how the “no-fault” factor moderates the eviction-health pathway. Grounded in contextual background and a literature review, this project showcases portraits of two tenants relying on Section 8 vouchers who experienced a no-fault eviction judgment, and depicts changes in their health.

Tenants experienced new occurrences of depression, heart conditions, rapid weight loss, and exacerbations of existing health conditions. The goals of this project are to share the stories of evictions and health with the Durham community and to initiate efforts dedicated to addressing evictions. The findings of the project are available at DurhamDisrupted.com.

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CL AS S O F 2 0 1 9 M ASTE R’S P ROJ E CT T I T LE S

OLACHI ANAEMEREIBE

AMELIE BAILEY

EMMA BLONDIN

KATHIA BUENROSTRO

JAMES CARTER

ALLISON CLONCH

LUCIA CONSTANTINE

KAYLA DICRISTINA

Evaluation of the Neighborhood Conservation District Overlay in the Northside Neighborhood of Chapel Hill, NC Formalization of Temporary Urbanism in Local Government

Perceptions of Carbon Taxes In North Carolina

Urban, Suburban, Rural: Economic Growth Patterns Connecting Carolina Annexation and Water Utility Extensions in Wake County, NC: The Role of Race, Income, and Other Demographic Characteristics Por Gusto y Por Necesidad: Understanding the Barriers and Opportunities to Latinx Entrepreneurship in Rural Communities An Application of the Land Suitability Analysis Technique

ELLEN EMERIC

Fair-Free: An Exploration of the Chapel Hill Short Range Transit Plan Unfunded Project Improvements from an Equity Perspective

ROBERT FUNK

Opportunity Zones & Community Development: Harnessing a Tax Benefit for Public Goals

BROOKE GANSER

SAKSHI HANDA

KARLA JIMENEZMAGDALENO MARGARET KEENER

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HI Real Estate: a virtual community for real estate investors

How Complete are Complete Street Policies? A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Town of Chapel Hill’s Complete Streets Policy Analysis of Twitter Usage by Governmental Actors in North Carolina Hurricane Florence Recovery Disrupted: An Exploration of Eviction and Implications on Health in Durham, NC Exploring the Local Implementation of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program in Hurricane Matthew Recovery: A descriptive case study series

STUDENT WORK

EVAN KIRK

FREDERICK NORCHI

MICHELE PLAUGIC

HILARY POLLAN

ALISON SALOMON

Modeling Single-Family Residential Stormwater Fees in North Carolina: A Comparison of the Equitability and Affordability of Four Fee Structures Affordable Housing Toolkit for Local Governments: Successful approaches from North Carolina and beyond Neighborhood air quality and health: Quantifying outdoor air pollution risk in Philadelphia Assessment of Centralized Kitchens for Multigenerational Populations in North Carolina: A Case Study Approach Institutional Foodshed Analysis: Exploring the Application and Feasibility of a Novel Methodology at a North Carolina Hospital

NICHOLAS SMITH

Dix Park Equity Plan Framework

MATTHEW STERN

Five years in: Assessing the impacts of Chicago’s Large Lots Program

DYLAN TIMMERMAN

SONYIA TURNER

AUDREY VOGEL

An Inventory of Transfer of Development Rights Programs in the United States Development in Slum Settlements - Building a Preschool in Ikageng, South Africa Assessing Green Infrastructure Implementation in Washington, D.C. to Promote Equity and Climate Change Resilience

ALEXIS VREELAND

Hazard Mitigation Strategy Application: An Evaluation of the Town of Princeville’s Future Mitigation Strategies

JIANGYUE WU

Triumph of the Bike Sharing: Understanding Spatiotemporal Patterns of Dock-less Shared Bicycles in Shenzhen

SAMUEL YEAGER

The Role of the Qualified Allocation Plan in Promoting Urban Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Development

YUEJUN ZHAO

What Is Your Modality Type? Identifying Traveler Typology in North Carolina 97

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Y EA R I N R E V I E W An Update From New East NATALIE SWANSON

The Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) continued to grow over the 2019-2020 academic year in student numbers, accomplishments, and physical space. New East construction drew to a close in February, bringing the long-awaited addition of an elevator to our homebase. As we reflect on the year, we are happy to celebrate the leadership and accomplishments of our students and faculty as they contributed both to the DCRP community and the broader planning field.

Forty-one Master’s students and four PhD students matriculated into the program in Fall 2019, and thirty-four Master’s students and four PhD students are graduating in Spring 2020. Additionally, DCRP welcomed new staff members and professors. Diana Devereaux accepted the position of Department Manager beginning mid-March 2020. Assistant Professors Miyuki Hino and Noah Kittner joined the land use and environmental planning faculty, and we welcomed back Research Professor Phil Berke after five years at Texas A&M University.

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LEADERSHIP Student organizations have provided phenomenal supplemental and supportive programming. Plan 4 All, led by Morgan Cooper, Maria Dewees, Tori Gibler, and Kelsey Peterson, initiated the Peer Application Support Service (PASS), a student-run mentorship program committed to increasing the diversity of each admitted class at DCRP. PASS supports under-represented minority groups by providing guidance to prospective Master’s students during the application process. In its inaugural year, PASS connected 50 applicants to current students and alumni who had volunteered to read drafts of personal statements and answer questions about life at DCRP. Plan 4 All also facilitated a summer book club to welcome first-year students to the program.

The Placemaking Committee, led by Ben Berolzheimer, Anna Gustines, Heyne Kim, and Lauren Turner, arranged Halloween pumpkin carving, decorations for common spaces post-construction, and a celebration of the Korean New Year.

Co-Presidents Frank Muraca and Lara Seltzer shepherded Planners’ Forum, the umbrella organization for DCRP student committees, through the calendar year and have now turned their positions over to first-years David Dixon and Amy Sechrist. Under the direction and coordination of Anna Gustines, DCRP students also had the opportunity to visit Asheville, North Carolina over Fall Break to learn about local planning issues.

HONORS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS Clay Barnes, a second-year Master’s student, presented her research titled “Environmental Analysis of a Major Freight Corridor: Charlotte, North Carolina” at this year’s Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.

Second-year Master’s student Meg Bryson presented her research with the Highway Safety Research Center at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting on “Opportunities for Incorporating Health Considerations in Transportation Decision-Making.”

Professor Nichola Lowe was appointed interim director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS), tasked with leading CURS through a strategic conversation to shape the Center’s future. CURS is one of the oldest universitybased research centers focused on urban and regional development and has long-standing connections to DCRP. Lowe’s book, Putting Skill to Work, is forthcoming in Spring 2021 from MIT Press.

Mai Nguyen, Associate Professor and Faculty Fellow for the Institute for Arts and Humanities, won the 2019 bronze medal for Regional Plans by the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association. Nguyen serves as the Director of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP) and Co-editor of Routledge Handbook of Housing Policy and Planning. Furthermore, she was re-elected for a second term as the Board Chair of the Urban Affairs Association.

Emma Stockton, a dual-degree Master’s student in City and Regional Planning and Public Health, has been awarded the ULI/Randall Lewis Health Mentorship Fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year.

Associate Professor and CPJ Faculty Advisor Andrew Whittemore was appointed the Editor for the Journal of Planning History, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal from SAGE Publications that provides a scholarly outlet for the growing multidisciplinary cadre of academics and practitioners in the broad field of planning history.

Celebrated students Tory Gibler, Kaitlin Heatwole, Clay Barnes, Lindsay Oluyede, and Libby Szuflita won Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship awards through the Federal Highway Administration.

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N CA PA 20 1 9 CO NFE RE N CE Durham

Save the date! | October 20-23

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CA R O LI N A P LANNI NG JO U RN AL

VO LUME 4 6 CALL FO R PAP E RS Carolina Planning Journal is accepting abstracts for papers relating to:

T H E FU T U R E O F L A N D USE R EGU L AT I O N

Over the past year, cities and states from Minneapolis to Oregon and California took unprecedented steps to overhaul their land use policies. Motivations ranged from affordable housing deficits to concerns around carbon emissions and municipal tax bases. What is needed to achieve comprehensive

TOPICS OF INTEREST INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

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Land use regulation and (anti-) discriminatory housing markets

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Addressing accessibility and mobility issues through transportation and land use policy

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Framing and messaging of regulatory reform campaigns

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International regulatory approaches and their application to the US context

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Quantifying the fiscal and social costs of land use policies

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Stakeholder engagement and coalitionbuilding strategies and case studies

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Land use regulation for natural hazards resilience

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

By August 14, 2020, interested authors should submit a two-page proposal. Proposals should include a title, description of the proposed topic and its significance, a brief summary of the literature or landscape, and a preliminary list of references (not counted toward the two-page limit). Final papers typically do not exceed 3,000 words. Proposals and questions should be submitted to CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com.

By September 18, 2020, Carolina Planning Journal will notify authors regarding their proposals. Drafts of full papers will be due by December, and editors will work with authors on drafts of their papers over the course of the winter. The print version of the Journal will be published in the Spring of 2021. Carolina Planning Journal reserves the right to edit articles accepted for publication, subject to the author’s approval, for length, style, and content considerations.

Bridging Planning Theory and Practice Since 1974 101

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