Break the grid, no right angles, depopulate: Ideas for protecting communites in future storms

By Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

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.

New ideas on human needs placemaking

By Leonardo Vazquez, Executive Director, The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking

A few years ago, I connected psychological theories of human needs to placemaking practice.  (See Principles of human needs placemaking.)

In that essay, I condensed human needs theories of Abraham Maslow, other psychologists, and the environmental psychology field into four categories:  physiological (i.e., food, health, shelter and other necessities of life), relational (connections to other people) and self-actualization (the need to 'be yourself') and the environmental need to be in aesthetically pleasing and green spaces.

As I've delved into creative placemaking over the last few years, I realize that those categories alone didn't answer two questions of human motivation:  Why are people content to be passive recipients of arts experiences?   Why do we get bored?

Because people need novelty in their lives.  Most people who do not have extreme compulsive or obsessive disorders seek to know something new, do something different, or even experience the same things in new ways throughout our lives.

But not everyone is looking for novelty all the time.  If that were the case, humans would be constantly restless beings, unable to maintain long-term relationships or live in a single community for many years.  There certainly wouldn't be zoning and subdivision regulations. These provide order and stability.  In other words, they respond to the human need for security.

Psychologists had identified security as a principal human need, and I made a mistake by lumping it into the other categories in my earlier essay.   (I guess it was because of my desire, not need, to make simple charts with four compass points.)

So now I see six principal human needs and their implications for placemaking practice:

• Physiological -- Food, shelter, health, and other necessities for physical well-being
• Placemaking implications:  Grocery stores, health facilities, housing
• Security -- The need to feel more safe and secure in an environment.  In other words, security is about minimizing risk.  A closely related idea is convenience:  the more distant or inaccessible something attractive seems, the more the person risks in pursuing it.
• Placemaking implications:  Land use regulations that are fairly and consistently applied, presence of security, safe streets and public areas, safe neighbhorhoods,  navigational aides such as signage and wayfinding strategies
• Relational -- The need to build and maintain respectful and loving relationships with others
• Placemaking implications:  Clubs or associations; spaces where communities of many sizes can gather, spaces that feel "owned" by communities, "third places" -- cafes, malls, etc. -- where individuals can gather to build and strengthen connections.
  
• Environmental -- The need to be in aesthetically pleasing and natural environments.
• Placemaking implications:  Attractively designed built environments, parks and open spaces, public art.
  
• Self-actualization -- The need to develop and express one's interests and creativity.
• Placemaking implications:  Schools, places where expressions of different interests are tolerated or welcome  (such as festivals), regulatory and social environments that provide fair and equitable opportunities for success.
  
• Novelty -- The need to learn and have new experiences.
• Placemaking implications:  Places that are different from other places; spaces that offer participants opportunities to see something new, or something familiar in new ways; theaters, museums and galleries; pedestrian-oriented spaces (because it easier to see new things or people while walking than while driving); opportunities for people to do something new or differently.

These needs can be complementary.  That's why the communities and areas that offer an abundance of placemaking elements tend to be among the most expensive places to live.  (As in the earlier essay, I'm determining "need" by what people are willing to pay to get the need.  Traditional economists might say that there are no real needs other than those for physical health.  But this idea assumes that mental and emotional well-being is either irrelevant or a luxury.  I suspect that these types of economists don't make very good party guests.)

But these needs are often in conflict, which is why placemaking can be so challenging.  In fact, the six needs could be organized into three continuums:

• Physiological versus environmental:  For most of human history, creating more opportunities to meet physiological needs has meant destroying or damaging aesthetic or natural environments.  Open space gets cleared to make new housing, trees and grasslands get bulldozed for road widenings. Even though adaptive reuse and environmental protections have slowed down the destruction of natural environments, proposed changes in the built environment also create tensions.
  
  For example, a developer is willing to build a new hospital in a low-income community, but only if the city clears some architecturally interesting old buildings on the site.  Building security fences would reduce operating costs for the hospital and widening the roads would make it easier for ambulances to get to and from the hospital, but  it would make the area less welcoming to residents.
  
• Relational versus self-actualization:  This, in short, is the tension between connecting to and doing for others versus doing for oneself.  While and individual can find comfort, protection and esteem in being part of groups that values him or her, that person also has to sacrifice some freedoms to live peacefully within the group. The person may feel unable to travel or speak or engage others as freely as he or she wants, especially if that person is considered a caregiver in the relationship.  This has subtle but profound effects on placemaking.
  
  As Alexander and others point out in A Pattern Language, healthy communities offer a mix of spaces:  public (such as parks), semi-public (corridors or districts that feel unwelcome to 'outsiders') and private spaces (houses and backyards).  In each type of place, there are different expectations for how individuals should relate to and care for one another.  On a regional or national scale, communities tend to be oriented towards self-actualization ('artsy' areas of cities or the Las Vegas Strip) and others toward relational behavior (residential districts, districts centered on religious or social institutions.)  Edges, districts and landmarks can play important roles in alerting participants to the tilt of those places.
  
• Security versus novelty:  In the United States, population shifts between 1910 and 2010 saw an interesting circular trend.  In the early- and mid-20th century, large numbers of people moved from dense urban areas to relatively  low-density suburban areas. Telecommunications and transportation technology made it possible for people to live farther away from one another, and many did.  Despite the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s as well as surges of immigration, cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis had smaller populations in 1996 than they did in 1960.*  With Internet technology and improvements in transportation technology, one would expect even more people to disperse.  But in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there was a significant shift the other way.  Cities grew again, and small communities added townhouses, multifamily housing, light rail, as well as other investments to make the kind of places found in city neighborhoods.
  
  There are a lot of reasons for these population shifts, but consider this:  There were enormous social and economic changes in the United States between 1910 and 1990 in American cities.  New immigrants and African-American migrants from older southern states were making cities more diverse than ever.  As ethnic groups grew in population, they also demanded a greater say in policy and placemaking.  Civil rights demonstrations and civil unrest actions both tended to happen in cities.  A person who lived his whole life in an industrial area between the jazz age and the MTV erea might have complained too much noise and pollution in the 1920s, then about blight and desolation in the 1980s.  If TV shows are a good barometer of popular culture, then the suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s offered order, quiet and convenience.  Even I Love Lucy's Ricky and Lucy moved "out to the country," even though he was a New York City nightclub entertainer.
  
  But by the time Seinfeld's Jerry and his group and the six buddies on Friends lived in New York City in the 1990s, it was a relatively safe and inviting -- albeit still quirky -- place.   In reality, leaders of major cities learned from the Walt Disney Company about how to create dense environments that could offer novelty while maintaining a sense of security.   As managers of dense environments worked to make them appear safer and more orderly,  more people visited and moved there.  Dense environments with many connections offer more opportunity to experience something new.

The three tensions described above are the most significant, but not the only ones among the elements of human needs.  For example, controversies about streetscape design guidelines could reflect a tension between self-actualization and security. A conflict over a new supermarket that might draw in low-income residents to a wealthy area could be a tension between the desire of some to better meet their physiological needs and of others to maintain what they see as existing social order.

Although placemakers try to seek the best balance possible among these elements, there is no central point that meets everyone's needs perfectly.  And it is likely that there is no district or neighborhood that is perfect for anyone all the time; what someone needs changes as he or she ages, has new experiences and new relationships.  The best places are like tables made up of smaller places, each with distinct tilts.

Sources:

*U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1999, http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf

Christopher Alexander, et. al., A Pattern Language

William H. Frey, "Demographic Reversal: Cities Thrive, Suburbs Sputter," Brookings Institution State of Metropolitan America, Number 56 of 62, June 29, 2012  http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/06/29-cities-suburbs-frey

Resources for free and low-cost economic development analysis, part 1

If you need good economic numbers and analysis in a hurry, you should consider hiring a consultant or using fee-based services. (Among the most commonly used are Claritas, ESRI and InfoUSA, but we do not make any endorsements.)

But if  you're willing to put a little time into it, there are plenty of free and low-cost resources that can help you get a pretty good understanding of your local economy.  Federal and state agencies provide a wide range of free resources.  In some cases, their websites will do simple calculations.

For economic research, you want to get information on consumer behavior and characteristics and business activity.  This essay, the first of two, focuses on information about consumers.

For consumer information, some of the best free sources are:

• American Factfinder.  This site from the US Census Bureau contains information from the 2005-2009 American Community Survey (the best source of demographic data until all of the 2010 Census numbers come out).  2010 Census numbers can be found on American Factfinder 2.  Warning: The new American Factfinder is difficult to use.  Please go through the tutorial before using it. 
  The ACS' community profiles provide interesting overviews of incomes, occupation, and industry data, as well as lesser-known data (commuting time, language spoken at home, etc.)
• The Consumer Expenditure Survey can help you estimate what people in your study area are likely to spend on various items.  The CES, from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a survey of spending patterns on a wide variety of things, from mortgages to shoes.  Unfortunately, the spending categories are not detailed.  You wouldn't know, for example, how much individuals spent on movie tickets.  But you could find out how much they spend on "fees and admissions" and develop some ideas from that.
  One interesting feature of CES is that it has tables showing spending patterns by geographic region, education, race, and other demographic characteristics.
• The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis also has information on consumer spending.  While in some ways more comprehensive than what is found in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, BEA's free analysis is done at a national level.  
• One of the more unusual studies of consumers is the Multicultural Economy series from the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth.  This annual study explores buying power -- i.e. disposable income -- for ethnic groups in the United States and every state. You have to pay for the full, current report, but as of 2011, the executive summary of the previous report was available free.
• Psychographics is more valuable than demographics, which is why research companies can charge good money for it.  Psychographics combines information about demographics (age, race, income) with information on spending habits (based on such things as magazine subscriptions).  While you can't get a full psychographic report, you can get a little information from the "My Best Segments" pages from Claritas, a fee-based provider.  The online form tells you the five top psychographic clusters in a particular zip code. 

You can use these numbers from these sources to show how much income or expected spending there might be in your area. It won't show you the whole economic picture (although, to be fair, no amount of research will), but it can give you a head start.  And the money you save on getting consumer information you can use to get more out of fee-based services or economic development consultants. 

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Director, Professional Development Institute

If you know of any additional free resources for consumer information, please feel free to share that information with us.  We'll update this essay as appropriate.

How to get smarter about the things you know

How smart are you about the things you know explores different levels of expertise -- from being aware of a topic to understanding the topic intimately.  This, the second part of the essay, focuses on strategies you and your organization can take to increase your expertise.

(If you didn't already, please read the first part of this essay.  Otherwise, much of what follows won't be as strong.)

Cost-effective ways to better knowledge:

• Webinars, videos, short seminars, traditional conference sessions (that is, a moderated panel of speakers), newspaper or magazine articles, blogs, community discussion boards.  
• In-house strategies: Invite speakers to share their knowledge with your group, or invite staff to conduct presentations on their own areas of expertise.

Cost-effective ways to better comprehension:

• Workshops of a half-day to a day, longer seminars that focus on single set of topics, books, self-paced courses and video tutorials.  
• In-house strategies: Create or maintain a library in your office, reward staff for becoming "resident experts" on various topics.  

Cost-effective ways to better application:

• Training programs that indicate what skills are to be learned and provide opportunities for participants to learn from someone who can evaluate their work.  (Because some people apply the word 'training' to any kind of learning, it is important to know what skills will be taught and how.  Also, opportunities for staff to practice their skills under real or realistic conditions.  (Any skill can be forgotten if it's not practiced.)
• In-house strategies: Provide staff time to train their colleagues.  Reward efforts made by staff to seek in-house training.

Cost-effective ways to better analysis:

• Deep learning courses, such as college or graduate courses (or BOCEP Deep Learning courses), or executive learning programs; speaking at conferences or leading workshops; organizational or group retreats focused on problem-solving.
• In-house strategies: Reserve time at staff meetings for collaborative problem-solving and peer coaching on difficult client matters.

Cost-effective ways to better synthesis:

• Studio courses, volunteer projects, or any other kind of learning experiences that challenge participants to create -- not just find -- solutions to problems.
• In-house strategies:  Synthesis is what happens when participants "learn while doing."  For this to be a good learning experience, directors and managers must be open to allowing participants to make mistakes.  If that doesn't happen, participants will simply apply what they already know, but are unlikely to integrate new information. 

Cost-effective ways to better evaluation:

• Sabbaticals, extended programs such as degree or certificate programs, extended retreats.
• In-house strategies:  The best way to get to this highest level of expertise is to create an environment that encourages a large amount of reflection.  Unfortunately, this is almost impossible in organizations that focus on getting the most productivity from staff at the lowest cost.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Director, Professional Development Institute 

How smart are you about the things you know?

There’s a big gap between knowing a little bit about a subject and being such an expert on it that you can evaluate it and create new solutions. 

Overestimating how much you know can be embarrassing (you can sound foolish next to an expert), expensive (if you take on an assignment that you’re not qualified for), and – if you’re a AICP urban planner, unethical. (See B12 of the AICP ethics code.) 

Underestimating how much you know can be costly (you may miss out on opportunities because of your lack of confidence) or cause you to waste your time trying to re-learn what you already know.  (How many times do you need to really need to go over the fundamentals of smart growth?)

If you’re an executive or director, not knowing what it is your employees know, or don’t, can cause significant risks and costs to your organization.

How do you know what it is you don’t know?  Here are some tips.

First, some learning theory. (Don’t worry, it will be short.)  According to Bloom’s Taxonomy ofEducational Objectives, there are six levels of knowing:

• Knowledge – the ability to recognize a subject and its parts.  If the subject is urban design, someone with knowledge is aware that urban design has an impact on the quality of places and that it involves streets, public spaces, trees, etc.
  
• Comprehension – knowing the concepts and details of a subject well enough to explain it to someone else.
  
• Application – the ability to apply your comprehension to a problem.  Example: Deciding what type of tree to put on a truck corridor.
  
• Analysis – the ability to examine or deconstruct a subject to make inferences or generalizations.  In other words, knowing not just what works, but why. 
  
• Synthesis – the ability to combine information in different ways to solve problems.  If you apply a particular solution to a problem simply because you have seen it done somewhere else, you are Applying.  To come up with new or innovative solutions, you need to Synthesize different types of information and adapt it to the problem.
  
•  Evaluation – the ability to make critical judgments based on your analysis of the subject and your awareness of other information relevant to the subject.  Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was an evaluation of the way planners thought about placemaking.  She analyzed activity in spaces that were affected by urban design programs, as well as activity in unprogrammed areas,  the mindsets of placemakers she had interviewed or observed, and synthesized various pieces of information to challenge us with a new way of looking at how we do our job.  Anybody can have opinions; it takes a lot of thinking to evaluate.

Education and organizational development theorists have produced a lot of useful information about how to apply Bloom’s Taxonomy.  There are a number of good free resources available on the Internet.  To save you time, here are a few questions you can ask to get a good sense of how much you know about a subject. 

If you can confidently say yes to these questions, you probably have achieved the learning level.        

•  Knowledge: Have you heard of it? Can you identify and recall the components of the subject? If the subject is an activity, can you identify and recall the sequence of steps used to achieve the objective?  Have you been able to discuss a subject without someone who is equally or more knowledgeable making valid criticisms of your assumptions?
  
• Comprehension:  If you were presented as an expert on a subject and asked, under threat of embarrassment, to explain a subject, could you do it?  Can you illustrate the concept, through drawing or metaphor?  Would you feel comfortable generalizing, based on what you believe you know?  Have you done this successfully?
  
• Application: Do you know what tools or inputs are used to solve a typical problem associated with the subject?  Have you applied your knowledge successfully?
  
• Analysis: Could you write a report that draws general conclusions about the subject, based on your examination of the evidence.  In other words, could you write a report that could be used by someone else to address another problem in that subject?  Can you explain why strategies that have worked with another problem have not, or would not, work with the problem at hand? Have you done this successfully?
  
• Synthesis:  Can you adapt tools and strategies to create new solutions to distinct problems?  Have you connected knowledge you gained from outside a subject area to successfully address a problem in that subject?
  
• Evaluation:  If you were given a choice among several solutions to a problem, could you rank them in terms of effectiveness?  Could you anticipate the negative consequences of each solution? Can you explain your evaluation so that someone with only a little knowledge of the subject can understand?

In the next essay on this subject, you will be able to identify the learning solutions that best meet your needs. 

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Leonardo Vazquez is the Director of the Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute, which provide training, coaching and other services to help build leaders for planning and public affairs in the 21st century.  

To learn more, please visit the Professional Development Institute.