Even if another Hurricane Sandy never happens, future storms will be more expensive and cause more damage. It’s not just because of climate change. More people are moving to waterfront communities, even as sea levels rise. More people are working from home -- so power outages are not just inconvenient, they’re an economic hardship. Even little things like expanding or waterproofing basements are making flooding worse -- especially for downriver communities that may be struggling to revitalize.
Here are some thoughts on how we can redevelop waterfront and shorefront communities to reduce storm damage.
1. Break the grid. The traditional grid pattern is common among beachfront communities on the East Coast. It is easy to develop, is easy to understand and creates nice views. But it also creates channels for water, sand and wind to travel inland, causing more damage to properties that are away from the shoreline. Modifying the street patterns in the first few blocks from shore from a grid to a running vine pattern (envision red brick walls) or a basketweave (volleyball) would disrupt the channels but still be accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists.
The new pattern would also have the benefit of slowing down traffic, since drivers won’t have long, straight roads to barrel through.
One risk of breaking the grid would be losing some of the nice summer breezes. But the grid-breaking block doesn’t have to have tall buildings covering the whole area.. It could have open space, such as a neighborhood park, or a low-lying building. In most cases, I would recommend open spaces because it provides more permeable surfaces --that is, more land -- to soak up water and slow down surges.
2. Rewrite buiding codes to eliminate right angles and large flat exterior walls on the shorefront side of properties. This could help to disrupt wind and water surges, which would not only protect the shorefront buildings, but also the properties behind them. When wind and water hit large flat surfaces, they can go travel faster, or slam them into pieces. When either of those things happens, anything loose and small becomes a projectile. Shorefront properties should also be required to have metal shutters and roofs made of metal or other materials that are unlikely to break up into smaller pieces. Will it be more expensive? Sure. But the kind of people who can afford to buy shorefront properties in the United States can afford to pay a little more for their own and their neighbors’ safety.
The new architectural guidelines could be simple and provide a lot of artistic freedom for architects. For example:
*No shoreline facing exterior walls shall have angles of between 70 and 110 degrees.
*No shoreline facing exterior wall shall have a flat surface that takes up more than 30% of the square footage of the wall.
3. Construct buildings on mounds of at least a few feet. Not only will this create a little more protection for the building, it will create more land to absorb flood waters. Why did so many parts of New Orleans get flooded in Katrina while the French Quarter remained secure? It is on higher ground.
We already have the “FEMA” houses, which are essentially built on stilts. The problem is that the ground floors tend to have concrete or other impermeable surfaces. In high-risk areas, new construction and reconstruction should be built on mounds and stilts.
4. Put a moratorium on new basements and basement expansions. One of the reasons that flooding seems to get worse every storm is that in most communities, there is less land to absorb water. The problem is not just big basements for large houses; waterproofing these areas ensures that water gets passed across and downstream to flood other people’s houses. In exchange for taking away potential space underground, communities could allow property owners to build a little higher.
5. Avoid mechanical solutions for protecting against water. There are some interesting ideas for protecting the New York City shoreline from wave surges. But any idea that requires someone to operate the systems in an emergency, or that require significant ongoing maintenance, should be ignored.
People tend to get less vigilant as the last dangerous event moves further into the past. At a governmental level, this means spending less money on maintenance and on people to manage the infrastructure. Check out America’s Infrastructure Report Card to see how well our collective governments do, even as we face more disasters.
The way to go is to recreate natural barriers -- sand dunes, marshes, rocky barriers between beaches and residential areas. Beach replenishment is a Band-Aid solution, which gets even more expensive when greedy shoreline property owners extort their municipalities by suing to ‘protect’ their ‘property rights.’
5. Underground power lines. Yes, it is probably expensive in the short-term to put power lines underground and take transfomers off poles. But it is more than a matter of convenience.
In the New York and New Jersey areas, several people without heat died of hypothermia, falls in their homes, or from carbon monoxide poisoning from failed attempts to heat their homes. (Yes, it’s likely that these people could have gone to shelters. But the need to stay in your own home in a time of incredible stress is so strong that many people are willing to take unnecessary risks.)
It’s also a big economic drain when the power goes out. It’s not just the traditional commercial areas that suffer. The number of people working at least part-time from home has been growing rapidly In New Jersey alone, the number of “non employer establishments” -- that is, sole proprietorships and small business partnerships -- grew from nearly 513,500 in 2002 to more than 604,700 in 2010, according to County Business Patterns -- a 17.8% increase in eight years. Not all of these organizations are in homes, but with more people telecommuting, our economy is getting more dependent on neighborhoods and subdivisions.
Taking the electrical system off of poles would reduce costs for and risks to first responders, hospitals, and public shelters. It would also create a demand for electricians, construction workers and managers, which would boost the economy.
6. Depopulate high-risk areas. The Rockaways in Queens and Midland Beach in Staten Island were part of a dwindling number of places where middle and moderate-income residents could live very close to waterfronts. If everyone were generally rational during storms and took reasonable precautions (such as heeding evacuation warnings), we should try to protect these areas from gentrification.
But as can be seen from most of the deaths in Staten Island, the desire to stay at home is so powerful that people are willing to take what others might see as irrational risks. I believe that adults should be held responsible for their actions. Unfortunately, they may be guardians of children, pets, elderly relatives or others who may not be able to choose for themselves.
That’s why I think that high-risk shorelines should either have no or few permanent homes, or that they should be gentrified so that large vacation houses or hotels face the shoreline. (The latter is more likely to happen.) These properties then become the barriers to protect homes and businesses inland.
My career focuses on social equity and opportunity. So I struggled with the idea of making it more difficult for low and middle-income people to have the same access as wealthy people. But as a planner, my first duty is to protecting the public’s health, safety and welfare. Encouraging more people to live in high-risk areas, knowing that some of them will take unnecessary risks (and knowing that some greedy property owners will subdivide lots to put even more people at risk), is wrong.
That said, we should continue to provide more public access to shorelines and riverfronts. Everyone should be able to take a walk on the beach, safely.
Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP is a national award-winning urban planner, the Executive Director of The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking, and a Senior Associate with the Nishuane Group in Montclair, NJ. He lives in northern New Jersey, and was without electrical power for eight days after Sandy.
