This article is adapted from Buy-in for Buyouts: The Case for Managed Retreat from Flood Zones, a Policy Focus Report to be published in September 2016 by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in conjunction with Regional Plan Association.

Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy cost the New York metropolitan area an unprecedented number of lives and properties. In the span of 14 months, between August 2011 and October 2012, the storms killed 83 residents and caused $80 billion of damage in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. More than $60 billion in recovery funding was allocated to local governments, home owners, and facilitators to repair roads and seawalls; elevate, secure, or acquire buildings; restore dunes and wetlands; and reconstruct communities. 

The hurricanes generated a regional dialogue about how to prepare for and respond to extreme weather events. These conversations led to state-of-the-art, government-sponsored design competitions such as Rebuild by Design. And at the federal level, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) conducted the two-year, $19.5 million North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study, which focused on how to protect Northeast residents from hurricanes. 

Yet nearly five years later—after recovery efforts have been completed and appropriate programs implemented—many communities in the region still could not withstand the surge levels of another Sandy or the riverine flooding of another Irene. And by 2050, the number of residents vulnerable to flooding in the region will likely double to 2 million people, due to rising sea levels, the increasing frequency and magnitude of storms, and steady population growth. One third of the victims will be socially vulnerable. 

The Case for Buyouts

Rebuilding and restoring are the most common and popular adaptation tools for strengthening community resilience in the face of climate change, but the strategy that most effectively eliminates risk is managed retreat through the use of buyout programs. Yet, because of the social and political complexity of managed retreat, governments and communities across the United States have largely dismissed it as an adaptation strategy. 

Typically funded by federal or state dollars and managed at the state or county levels, buyout programs are designed to provide a mechanism for residents to sell their homes and move to safer locations if they no longer want to live in high-risk flood zones. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut all employed buyout programs on a limited scale following Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy, but too often this approach was considered controversial even for the hardest hit areas.

Indeed, managed retreat poses considerable challenges. For home owners, the decision to leave a community can be traumatic, especially if adequate and affordable housing is hard to find nearby. For municipalities, the loss of tax revenue from bought-out properties can have a serious impact on the local budget. On a higher level, urban planning’s dubious history of relocating low-income communities, ostensibly for the greater good, stands as a reminder of how well-intentioned, even necessary measures such as managed retreat can have disproportionate negative impacts if they are not carefully considered in close consultation with residents. 

But if these problems are carefully considered during the design and implementation process, the benefits of buyouts can outweigh the risks. Unlike other adaptation measures, retreat is a one-time investment that requires no further action beyond providing relocation assistance to participants and protecting the natural landscape left behind. Managed retreat also has the potential to create synergies with other resilience and adaptation strategies. Since development is not permitted on acquired land, buyouts can be used to implement projects such as sea wall construction, wetlands restoration, and many other engineered and nature-based resilience measures. Residents can forge new beginnings on safer ground and help create public amenities by allowing for the acquisition of homes in flood-prone areas and restoration of the land to natural floodplain functions.

While the promise of buyouts is great—yielding 100 percent risk reduction, a greater return on public investment, and other benefits to communities and habitats—they have attracted only $750 million of the billions in federal aid allocated for resilience and recovery in the New York metropolitan region. The vast majority of recovery efforts have focused on more popular adaptation measures.

Buyouts in the New York Metropolitan Region

This article highlights the experience of three cities in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey that adopted buyout programs after suffering major property loss from Hurricane Irene or Superstorm Sandy. The case studies demonstrate that buyout programs are a useful tool for moving residents in flood zones out of harm’s way, but they also illustrate the limitations of current programs. 

Buyout Programs in the New York Region

NY Rising
New York State established the New York Rising Buyout and Acquisition Programs (NY Rising) in order to address the damage caused by hurricanes Irene and Sandy as well as Tropical Storm Lee between 2011 and 2013. In a handful of designated “enhanced buyout areas,” including Oakwood Beach on Staten Island, home owners were offered the pre-storm value of their homes, plus incentives for group participation to prevent the so-called “checkerboarding” of bought-out properties. 

Blue Acres
The Blue Acres program, run by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, predates hurricanes Irene and Sandy, but it has benefited from the funding made available after those storms. In recent years, the program has mainly targeted neighborhoods in Sayreville and Woodbridge, and identified individual properties or clusters of properties that experienced repetitive or severe repetitive losses.

Other Federally Funded Programs
In many cases, buyout programs are administered on the local level and funded largely through federal grant programs such as FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and the USDA’s Emergency Watershed Protection Floodplain Easement Program (EWP-FPE). Typically, federal grants for buyouts require a local funding match of 25 percent.

Oakwood Beach, New York

Oakwood Beach is located on the central part of Staten Island’s South Shore. The lowest-lying portion of the neighborhood is situated next to the marshes of Great Kills Park. The most serious flood risks come from storm surge off the Raritan Bay and Lower New York Harbor. Additionally, sections of the neighborhood experience nuisance flooding following even modest rainfall. Along with the neighboring upland community of Oakwood, Oakwood Beach has a population of 22,000, and nearly 3,000 residents live in current FEMA Special Flood Hazard Zones. The number of people within high-risk flood zones is expected to increase nearly 150 percent, to 7,300 by 2050. 

Oakwood Beach is a middle-class community with a median annual household income of $89,000. The neighborhood is 31 percent low-to-moderate income, 16 percent nonwhite, and 69 percent owner-occupied. The neighborhood was largely developed in the 1960s and 1970s; nearly half its residents have lived in the community for more than 25 years. In general, the homes built closer to the water are smaller and cheaper than those located farther upland. Single-family homes dominate the neighborhood, but there are a handful of apartment buildings inland.

Hurricane Sandy severely impacted Oakwood Beach. The storm surge overtopped the boulevard that runs along the coast and damaged the berm between the neighborhood and the Atlantic Ocean. The surge inundation was exacerbated by the floodwaters trapped within the “bowl” topography of the South Shore (SIRR 2013). In Oakwood Beach, some homes were swept off their foundations; others were flattened. Staten Island as a whole was among the hardest hit areas, with 23 storm-related deaths in the borough (SIRR 2013; Koslov 2014). Prior to Sandy, Oakwood Beach withstood several other historic floods, including intense inundation from a nor’easter in 1992 and flooding from Hurricane Irene in 2011 (Oakwood Beach Buyout Committee 2015; Koslov 2014). After the 1992 storm, residents organized a Flood Victims’ Committee to petition for better flood protection from the state and federal government. Although the USACE somewhat addressed their concerns by constructing a berm, it was not completed until ten years after the nor’easter (Koslov 2014).

Building on their experience organizing for flood protection in the 1990s, Oakwood Beach residents moved quickly to plan their recovery after Hurricane Sandy. At an early community meeting devoted to immediate disaster response and aid, one organizer asked if residents would support a buyout program. Nearly all community members in attendance said yes. Residents then formed the Oakwood Beach Buyout Committee, which began to draft an application for a state buyout. The committee conducted outreach to gauge interest and provided information to residents about what a buyout program might entail. The committee collected signatures from nearly all the neighborhood’s residents to indicate their interest (Lavey 2014). Additionally, committee members surveyed residents about where they felt safe living within the neighborhood, in order to generate maps of priority acquisition areas. 

This mapping effort is a powerful tool for communities organizing to receive buyouts. However, some populations that are considering buyouts are settling in marginal flood-prone areas because they have suffered government-imposed relocations and disinvestments in the past. If buyout program plans are not community-driven, they risk continuing this pattern of marginalization. As we observed in post-Katrina New Orleans, residents understandably opposed buyout programs proposed by outside planners who hadn’t consulted with the local population. By contrast, Oakwood Beach residents collaboratively created their own “green dot” maps to convey their goals for a buyout program and to confirm that they did not want redevelopment in their flood-prone area. 

The NY Rising Program heeded residents’ requests and launched a buyout program for Oakwood Beach. As of June 2015, nearly 99 percent of the neighborhood’s residents have participated. The state plans to purchase 326 properties, an acquisition process that will be completed in 2016. As of February 2015, the state owned 296 properties and had demolished 60 (Rush 2015; Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery 2015). 

The relative success of Oakwood Beach’s buyout program is not surprising considering the fiscal context. Factoring in the projected sea level rise by 2050, a single 100-year flood event could cause $216 million of damage across 1,837 properties, and 830 would have to be demolished. As summarized in table 1 (p. 32), a buyout of only those 830 properties would save community residents $817,000 per year in flood insurance premiums and an annualized average of $5.7 million in damages and dislocation costs. In terms of the potential costs to communities, Oakwood Beach benefits from being only one neighborhood in a very large city. The loss in tax revenue is quite negligible in the context of New York City’s $75 billion budget.

Wayne, New Jersey

Wayne is a township of 55,000 people in the outer ring of northern New Jersey suburbs. Twenty percent of households are low-to-moderate income, 20 percent of residents are nonwhite, and 80 percent are home owners. The town is landlocked but lies within the Passaic River Basin. Approximately 12 miles of Wayne’s western border is formed by the Pompton River, which has a history of flooding. Additionally, the township has several lakes and streams with development encroaching on flood zones. Approximately 5,400 people (nearly 10 percent of the total population) currently live in Special Flood Hazard Areas. Wayne is the wealthiest of the case studies, but the town has experienced the slowest property value growth since 2000. FEMA has provided $6.9 million in individual assistance to Wayne home owners since 2007, and 15 percent of registrants occupy repetitive-loss properties.

Wayne has experienced severe flooding since colonial times. The most severe flood to impact the entire Passaic River Basin occurred in 1903. Since then, several major floods have occurred each decade. Although the USACE began plans to reduce flooding in the Passaic River Basin in 1936, a comprehensive plan for the area has yet to be implemented.

The first buyouts in the Passaic River Basin began in 1995, after the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) formed its Blue Acres Program. They have continued through various funding sources, including NJDEP, FEMA, and open space taxes, in the case of municipalities in Morris County. However, Wayne was not included in the first round of buyouts through the Blue Acres Program in the late 1990s. As a result, municipal officials approached the state about funding the town, which led to several other programs. In 2005, the NJDEP and USACE identified the Hoffman Grove neighborhood in Wayne as a priority area for buyout funding (USACE 2005). A series of allocations since 2005, including additional funding after hurricanes Irene and Sandy, allowed for the purchase and removal of 96 homes in the Hoffman Grove neighborhood. FEMA was the primary source of funding for these purchases; the Blue Acres Program provided the nonfederal match. Despite these significant subsidies, news sources reported that “there is no immediate funding to buy and raze the houses that are left standing” (McGrath 2011). Nevertheless, all but 29 homes in this neighborhood have now been purchased and removed.

In May 2015, the USACE, together with NJDEP, released a follow-up to that 2005 study and identified 27 additional properties within Hoffman Grove as priorities for acquisition. Municipal officials in Wayne are now working to identify willing residents in order to move the program forward. Once these buyouts are complete, the entirety of the Hoffman Grove neighborhood will return to a floodplain.

The buyout programs in Wayne more closely resemble the FEMA buyout programs that began in the 1990s in response to the Great Flood of 1993, given Wayne’s vulnerability to seasonal and storm-related riverine flooding. Buyouts have undergone greater testing in riverine settings, leading to simpler program designs. Additionally, lower property values in inland riverine areas make it possible for buyout programs to purchase a greater number of homes. (Following disasters, property values of riverine flood properties are less resilient than coastal property values.)

The fiscal impact analysis for Wayne reveals that, after the acquisition of 96 Hoffman Grove properties, the township has a relatively small number of properties vulnerable to severe flooding compared to the other case studies. Even so, a 100-year flood event could still severely damage 127 homes, costing $25 million, as shown in table 1 (p. 32). It is worth noting that applying Wayne’s buyout program to the remaining most vulnerable properties may lead to an average of $840,000 in lost tax revenues per year. 

Milford, Connecticut

Milford is a coastal city of 52,000 people, midway between Bridgeport and New Haven on Long Island Sound. Milford has the longest coastline of any town in Connecticut (14 miles) plus two significant rivers, the Wepawaug and Housatonic, leaving residents vulnerable to both coastal and riparian flooding. Oceanfront property is one of Milford’s most prized amenities, and the town has more waterfront homes than any other case study in this article. Currently, there are 8,100 Milford residents in the 100-year flood zone, with a 26 percent increase projected by 2050. Milford also has the most repetitive-loss properties of any municipality in Connecticut. Since 2007, Milford residents have made up 20 percent of registrants in FEMA’s individual assistance program; FEMA awarded them $3.5 million. The town is 25 percent low-to-moderate income, 15 percent nonwhite, and overwhelmingly owner-occupied.

Milford’s own analysis confirmed the city’s extreme vulnerability. A Category 2 hurricane has the potential to inundate more than 2,000 properties, including 35 city facilities. More than 1,500 homes were damaged by Irene and Sandy, over 200 severely (Daley 2014). An excess of $60 million in flood insurance claims were paid to Milford residents in 2011 and 2012 (City of Milford 2015). A year after Sandy, entire streets and dozens of homes remained empty, while many others were elevated on piles and rebuilt. As in many areas damaged by Sandy, government funding came slowly, which retarded recovery (Zaretsky 2013). An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 homes in the city may still need to be elevated to satisfy building code requirements (Buffa 2013).

The primary strategies for combating flood risk in Milford have included beach nourishment projects, building retrofits and elevations, revetments, jetties, and groins. The city’s 2013 Hazard Mitigation Plan outlined over $14.4 million in flood mitigation projects, including elevating structures, protecting or upgrading critical infrastructure such as the wastewater treatment plant, and replenishing dunes (City of Milford 2013). The highest-priority projects were neighborhood drainage systems and catch basins. Due to lack of funding, however, many proposed projects either stalled or have not begun. 

The USACE evaluated the coastline of Milford for the North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study and found that the implementation of structural measures, like beach fill or dune projects, may be limited due to space constraints even in areas where these approaches might normally be most cost effective. If these measures are not applicable, flood proofing, and even acquisition and relocation, might be the most economical long-term strategies (USACE 2015). These challenges are shared by many highly developed areas along the eastern Atlantic coast. Buyouts can be difficult to secure in the short term, and structural solutions do not effectively reduce risk. 

Yet buyouts have received some attention from the city’s residents. FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant funds were used to buy several properties. Additionally, Milford has received $1.4 million from the USDA Floodplain Easement Program to buy at-risk properties (USDA n.d.). Despite available funding, however, the programs received only seven applicants in 2013. Furthermore, the city’s official position was “unenthusiastic” (Spiegel 2013). Milford stakeholders interviewed for this report cited concerns over the loss of the municipal tax base as the primary cause of resistance to buyouts, as coastal property owners pay the highest property taxes.

From the state’s perspective, Milford presented a promising case for a buyout program since many of the repetitive-loss properties were adjacent to the Silver Sands State Park, and acquired parcels could be incorporated into the park. Stakeholders indicated that positive alternative models for development are needed to encourage participation in buyout programs. The fiscal analysis performed for this study reveals that, while buyouts would impact property taxes, the effects would not be as severe as perceived by municipal officials. As a percentage of the most recent budget, buyouts of the most vulnerable properties would result in only a 1.36 percent loss in revenue, as indicated in table 1 (p. 32). 

Milford’s vulnerable properties have the highest average value among the case studies. Factoring in 2050 sea level rise projections, Milford’s most vulnerable homes—those that could suffer over 50 percent damage—could face $204 million in damage and dislocation costs over the next 100 years. Relocating home owners from just these properties that are most at risk could save $435,000 in annual flood insurance premiums. 

Conclusion

Buyout programs have long been avoided in public dialogue. Yet when weighed against the magnitude of risk faced by some U.S. coastal and riverine communities, they can be a viable and effective way to enable retreat from flood zones. As tools to preserve communities and strengthen resilience, they deserve serious consideration.

The three case studies highlight both the potential value of buyout programs and the political, social, and economic challenges of implementing them. Many factors contributed to the relative success of buyout participation in Oakwood Beach and Wayne and to the failure in Milford. The timing of the program, the level of program engagement with residents, the attachment to place, and the availability or lack of alternatives all played a role. In order to meet the needs of residents and municipalities, we must rethink the goals, strategies, and time frame of buyout programs, improve the administration of funding, reform the planning process, and design minimally disruptive programs. 

For an in-depth exploration of managed retreat in the New York metropolitan region, see the forthcoming Policy Focus Report, Buy-in for Buyouts: The Case for Managed Retreat from Flood Zones, to be published in September 2016 by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in conjunction with Regional Plan Association.

Robert Freudenberg is director of Energy and Environment at Regional Plan Association (RPA), where Ellis Calvin is an associate planner in the same department. Laura Tolkoff is a former senior planner for Energy and Environment, and Dare Brawley is a former research analyst at RPA.

Photograph: Tom Pioppo/FEMA (2011)

References

Buffa, Denise. 2013. “Storm-Battered Shoreline Gets a Lift, One House at a Time.” Hartford Courant. August 3. http://articles.courant.com/2013-08-03/news/hc-houselifter-20130803_1_houses-milford-contractor-coastline.

City of Milford. 2015. “Flood Insurance Claims Paid to Milford Residents by Year.”

Daley, Beth. 2014. “Milford, East Haven Top Connecticut in Costly Flood-Prone Homes.” New Haven Register. March 21. http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20140321/milfordeast-haven-top-connecticut-in-costly-flood-prone-homes.

Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery. 2015. “Notice of Change of Use of Acquisition Properties by NY Rising.” New York.

Koslov, Liz. 2014. “Fighting for Retreat after Sandy: The Ocean Breeze Buyout Tent on Staten Island.” Metropolitics. April 23. http://www.metropolitiques.eu/Fighting-for-Retreat-afterSandy.html.

Lavey, Nate. 2014. “Retreat from the Water’s Edge.” The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/hurricane-sandy-retreat-waters-edge.

McGrath, Matthew. 2011. “Hoffman Grove is More Wilderness than Neighborhood.” NorthJersey.com. December 30. http://www.northjersey.com/news/wayne-neighborhood-surrendering-to-the-river-1.276454.

Oakwood Beach Buyout Committee. 2015. “About Us.” http://foxbeach165.com/about-us/.

Rush, Elizabeth. 2015. “Leaving the Sea: Staten Islanders Experiment with Managed Retreat.” Urban Omnibus. http://urbanomnibus.net/2015/02/leaving-the-sea-staten-islanders-experiment-with-managed-retreat/.

Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR). 2013. “A Stronger, More Resilient New York.” City of New York. http://www.nyc.gov/html/sirr/html/report/report.shtml.

Spiegel, Jan Ellen. 2013. “Despite Storms, Few Coastal Homeowners are Open to Buyouts.” Connecticut Mirror. September 16. http://ctmirror.org/2013/09/16/despite-storms-few-coastalhomeowners-are-open-buyouts/.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). 2005. “Passaic River Floodway Buyout Study Limited Update: Final Report and Environmental Assessment.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 2015b. “North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study: Main Report.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). n.d. “Emergency Watershed Protection Program — Floodplain Easement Option.” http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail//?cid=nrcs143_008225.

Zaretsky, Mark. 2013. “1 Year After Superstorm Sandy, Recovery Moves Slowly on Connecticut Shore.” New Haven Register. October 26. http://www.nhregister.com/generalnews/20131026/1-year-after-super-storm-sandy-recovery-moves-slowly-on-connecticut-shore.

Recent news stories routinely feature “hot market” U.S. cities with astronomical housing prices that end up displacing residents with moderate or low incomes. In Portland, Oregon, Mayor Charlie Hales declares a state of emergency, directing a budget cut from the city’s general fund to create more affordable homes. San Francisco’s epic housing battles pit longtime residents against tech workers. In Seattle, 40 people, 35 jobs, but only 12 housing units arrive daily. In Denver, Mayor Michael Hancock pledges $150 million for affordable housing in the next decade. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh plans to build 53,000 units by 2030, while neighboring Cambridge adds density in infill areas and near transit. And in Boulder, Colorado, public officials consider a host of housing options in an approach they call “gentle infill.” 

“Hot markets exist for many reasons, but in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Boulder, and other cities, housing issues are clearly a result of strong economic development,” says Peter Pollock, FAICP, manager of Western programs for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. In these cities, a jobs-housing imbalance leads to inadequate housing options. The “gentle” or “sensitive” infill approach is about “trying to find ways to make infill compatible with surroundings to achieve urban design goals and enable production of more housing,” he says. The term also “puts a positive spin on something that may not be universally accepted”—namely, density—“and suggests that we can do a better job.”

While half of all households nationwide are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, many residents in hot market cities are spending more than 50 percent and being forced to leave. Housing activists, such as those at the recent first national YIMBY (“Yes in my backyard”) gathering (see sidebar), are challenging city planners and elected officials to create more diverse infill options to house people, stem displacement, make better transit connections, and create more environmentally sustainable communities.

How Did We Get Here?

Desirable cities are growing rapidly because they’re attracting millennials and cultural creatives for job opportunities and lifestyle amenities, and the newcomers have gravitated in numbers that far exceed places to live. The tech industry, with its influxes of well-paid workers, is often blamed for driving up housing costs and causing displacement. But other factors are also in play. Many cities built little if any housing during the Great Recession. Mortgage credit is tighter. Construction costs are escalating. New housing is priced at market rates that drive up the cost for existing homes. Zoning that favors single-family detached houses or luxury apartments has led to expensive housing monocultures. What’s being viewed as a crisis in many cities is the loss of housing not just for lower-income residents but also for workforce and middle-income residents—teachers, nurses, firefighters, small business owners, young professionals, young families, and others who typically provide a foundation for communities.

Restoring the “Missing Middle”

The good news is that cities across the United States are already working on solutions. Communities are overturning policies that prohibit housing or place tight restrictions on where and how it can be built, to allow for more diverse and affordable places to live. Many urban planners and public officials are focused on developing housing types that restore the “missing middle,” to shelter moderate and middle-income households. 

The missing middle, a concept that grew out of new urbanism, includes row houses, duplexes, apartment courts, and other small to midsize housing designed at a scale and density compatible with single-family residential neighborhoods. Since the 1940s, this type of development has been limited by regulatory constraints, the shift to car-dependent development, and incentives for single-family home ownership. Three- or four-story buildings at densities of 16 to 35 dwelling units per acre used to be a standard part of the mix in urban neighborhoods. Many urban planners say this scale and density of housing is needed again to offer diversity, affordability, and walkable access to services and transit. Cities are using a variety of additional approaches to inject more moderately priced housing into residential neighborhoods, from shrinking or subdividing lots to adding accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to expanding legal occupancy in homes. Some of these gentle infill approaches are showing great potential or in fact adding needed units on a faster track. 

How does gentle infill work? It depends on the city, as demonstrated by the following examples from Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Portland, Oregon: More Housing is Better

Portland typically ranks atop lists of “best places” to live but has recently slipped a few notches because of its housing prices, which ballooned 13 percent in 2015. According to a recent study released by Metro, the regional government organization, Portland area rents increased 63 percent since 2006, while the average income of renters rose only 39 percent. The population grew by 12,000 in 2015, to more than 632,000 residents in 250,000-plus households. 

Since 1973, Portland has been living with statewide urban planning that mandates an urban growth boundary to protect farmland and forests from urban sprawl and to ensure efficient use of land, public facilities, and services within the urban boundary. This city has an ambitious agenda to meet its growth projections with several big planning efforts: a new zoning map and the 2035 Comprehensive Plan, its first update in 30 years, adopted by city council in June 2016; a new land use code with regulations that affect a range of growth from multifamily and mixed-use development to transportation corridors and parking; and Central City 2035, a long-range development plan for the city center and its districts. 

The city is relying on policy changes in view of the 142,000 additional jobs, 135,000 extra households, and 260,000 more people that it will need to accommodate by 2035, according to Metro. About 30 percent of new housing will be built in the city center, 50 percent in mixed-use centers and corridors, and 20 percent in Portland’s single-family residential zones, which comprise about 45 percent of the city’s 133 square miles of land. The city has about 12,000 buildable lots, assuming that some current lots can be subdivided to provide more sites.

Since 2010, an estimated 20,000 new residential units have been built or are in the pipeline, and tax increment financing in designated urban renewal areas has invested $107 million in new and preserved affordable housing. In March, the state legislature lifted a 17-year ban on inclusionary zoning, which will allow the city to require builders to set aside units for new workforce housing. The city is focused on funding strategies to provide more affordable homes for households below 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). To increase the number of middle-income units for people earning more than 80 percent of AMI, the city is relying on policy changes, rather than funding strategies.

By the end of 2016, a stakeholder advisory committee for the Residential Infill Project (RIPSAC) will provide advice regarding the size and scale of houses, small-lot development, and alternative housing types. One proposal under consideration is to allow more internal conversions of large historic houses into multiple units, an approach that would provide more housing while avoiding teardowns and preserving the historic fabric of neighborhoods. Building on the legacy of small homes that exist from a century ago, Portland is looking to add little houses on undersized, pre-platted lots. And the city is considering whether to allow the development of more tall “skinny” homes of up to 1,750 square feet on 2,500 square-foot lots, half the square footage of land required under R-5 single-family zoning. 

“Five or ten years ago, people would ask, ‘Why is this house being built on a narrow lot?’” says RIP project manager Morgan Tracy. “Now it’s not so surprising. They’re really becoming popular because they’re at a lower price point for buyers.”

Policy changes regarding accessory dwelling units have helped generate new moderately priced housing and have drawn the attention of public officials from other cities in search of solutions to their own housing crises. ADU construction has exploded since 2010, when the city waived development fees covering sewer, water, and other infrastructure connections, reducing construction costs by $8,000 to $11,000 per unit. The waiver inspired a surge in construction: almost 200 ADUs were permitted in 2013—six times the yearly average from 2000 to 2009. In 2015, the city granted 350 new ADU permits, for a current total of more than 1,500 units. Tracy says ADUs “are a well-accepted means of producing more housing because they’re better integrated into a site and don’t necessitate a home being demolished.”

Any single-family house in the main zoning districts can have an ADU, and a proposal would allow up to two units—an interior apartment plus a separate carriage house or granny flat. The city does not limit the number of ADUs within a neighborhood or require off-street parking. It has also streamlined some ADU standards to allow for improved designs with slightly greater height and setbacks. RIPSAC is considering proposals to allow any house to have two ADUs, both interior and detached, triplexes on corner lots where duplexes are now allowed, and duplexes on interior lots, with a detached ADU. Allowing duplexes on interior lots and triplexes on corners “doesn’t mean everyone will take advantage” of the policy changes, says Tracy, noting that only 3 percent of corners now have duplexes. But “if every property owner took advantage of additional unit potential, we would double the number of housing units in each neighborhood.” 

The next phase of infill housing policy considerations will address how medium-density housing types might fit into small infill and multi-dwelling sites. The city has already been moving in that direction: Portland’s Infill Design Toolkit guide focuses on integrating rowhouses, triplexes and fourplexes, courtyard housing, and low-rise multifamily buildings into neighborhoods. 

“What may be shocking and alarming for some people becomes more acceptable as you see it more,” says Tracy. “We’re seeing that with duplexes and triplexes in single-family neighborhoods. The last time we built them was in the 1930s and ’40s. We’re trying to promote a wider diversity of housing forms, and some folks are supportive because they understand the need to be able to house more people on available land.”

Boulder: More Housing Is Better, But There Are Down Sides

Boulder is studying what other cities are doing to encourage gentle infill, and a recent trip to Portland by city officials, staff, and business leaders offered perspective on what could work at home. Like Portland, Boulder has determined to halve carbon emissions by 2030, provide more infill housing in the developed city core, protect open space, and encourage public transportation use. But with one-sixth of Portland’s population and different challenges and opportunities, Boulder seeks its own consensus on what gentle infill means. 

Located 25 miles northwest of Denver in the foothills of the Rockies, Boulder also ranks high on the lists of healthy, livable, and entrepreneurial places. The natural beauty and high quality of life in this 25.8-square-mile city of 105,000 have attracted start-ups and established tech firms such as Google and Twitter. The influx has fed a digitally paced lifestyle and “1 percent” housing market in which the median single-family detached house costs over $1 million. 

In the past two years, housing prices overall have risen 31 percent. Factors beyond the tech industry have limited affordability for many years (disclosure: for 23 years, I’ve lived, worked, and raised two kids in a formerly modest Boulder neighborhood that has been largely rebuilt with higher-end homes). The University of Colorado-Boulder, a key economic driver with 38,000 faculty, staff, and students, generates significant housing demand. A jobs-housing imbalance translates to an estimated 60,000 cars arriving and departing daily, despite regional and local bus service. 

State law prohibits rent control, and the state’s “condominium construction defects legislation” has squelched that type of construction for middle-income housing. Boulder is also home to many independently wealthy “trustafarians” and speculative buyers who purchase homes with cash from selling property in other high-end markets. Some are second or third residences; others are reserved for short-term rentals like airbnb. In June 2015, city council voted to restrict short-term vacation rentals, saying they impacted affordability and reduced the number of long-term housing opportunities. 

Development limitations include few residential lots, a 45,000-acre ring of protected open space around the city, and a height limit, to preserve mountain views, capped at between 35 and 55 vertical feet, depending on planned development intensity and location near transit. The city is within sight of a theoretical build-out; a forecast of 6,760 additional units by 2040 is being considered for the current update of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. A 2015 housing survey conducted for the plan indicated that most residents were willing to increase density and building height to allow for more housing, at least in some parts of the city.

Since 1989, while the percentage of lower-income households has held steady, middle-income households have declined from 43 percent to 37 percent of the populace. The segment disappearing at the fastest rate is households earning between $65,000 and $150,000 as well as families with children. City council, the planning board, and local newspaper op-ed pages field lively debates over the “Aspenization” of Boulder and infill housing options that could slow or reverse the city’s momentum toward greater exclusivity and less diversity. 

Boulder has been working on affordability and inclusivity for some time. Its inclusionary zoning ordinance has produced 3,300 affordable housing units since 2000. Developers of projects with five or more units are required to construct 20 percent as permanently affordable, build off-site, donate land, or make a cash-in-lieu payment to the city’s affordable housing fund. The city’s goal is 10 percent permanently affordable housing; some 7.3 percent of the city’s housing stock now qualifies. 

Part of the affordable program is aimed at middle-income housing: the city has a goal of creating 450 permanently affordable units for households earning 80 to 120 percent of AMI. Since 2000, 107 units for middle-income households have been built in new mixed-income neighborhoods on land annexed in north Boulder. Many are in the Holiday neighborhood, a mixed-use model of 42 percent affordable units integrated within a total of 333 townhomes, row houses, flats, live-work studios, and cohousing. Recently built middle-income units are located in the Northfield Commons neighborhood, where half of the 43 percent of affordable units in duplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, and townhomes are reserved for middle-income households.​​

YIMBYs Unite in Boulder

On a hot sunny weekend in June, the first-ever YIMBY (“Yes in my back yard”) “unconference,” as the democratically run gathering was called, drew 150-plus young and old urbanists to Boulder from 25 cities, including New York; San Francisco; Sitka, Alaska; and Brisbane, Australia.

“YIMBYTown” drew urban planners, architects, elected officials, and advocates for affordable housing, transportation, public health, the environment, and social justice. It was sponsored by the San Francisco based Open Philanthropy Project and the Boulder Area Realtor® Association and hosted by Better Boulder, a local advocacy group that last November spearheaded a successful campaign to defeat two ballot initiatives intended to limit growth in the city. (Disclosure: The author is a Better Boulder member-volunteer.) Presentations and discussions focused on housing, zoning, gentrification, coalition building, and NIMBY challenges, including titles such as “How F-cked is San Francisco—Lessons From the Worst Housing Market in the Country” and “Reframing the Sacredness of Single-family Zoning.”

The gathering was bookended by references to the social and economic implications of rising housing costs and displacement. In the opening plenary, Sonja Trauss, founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation (SFBARF), says a key goal of the movement is to “repopulate cities” as “an integrative process to counter the segregation of the suburbs.” In closing remarks, Sara Maxana of Seattle for Everyone noted a growing body of evidence that “exclusionary zoning causes housing shortages in high-demand cities and leads to exclusion by class. It induces segregation by wealth and reduces access to opportunity, good jobs, schools, healthcare, and open space.”

“It’s very expensive to subsidize people making $70,000 to $130,000 per year,” says Aaron Brockett, a city council member and former planning board member, referencing a middle-income housing study prepared for the city that defined Boulder’s middle market as 80 to 150 percent of AMI. He advocates for “market solutions like smaller units as a trade-off in those areas that have amenities and services such as mixed-use areas where people can walk to transit and redeveloping areas.”​

In preparing a comprehensive housing strategy, Boulder is exploring ideas for middle-income infill housing in transit corridors, commercial strips, business parks, and industrial areas that could be rezoned and redeveloped, and in walkable mixed-use neighborhood centers in residential areas. “The 15-minute neighborhood is the Holy Grail for a lot of communities, but it takes a lot of work,” says Jay Sugnet, project manager for Housing Boulder. “Are they in single-family neighborhoods or at the edge of service-industrial areas? Where are you willing to locate those, and what’s appropriate? You also need a concentration of people to support retail. Boulder has lots of commercial corridors, but they need a sufficient number of people to support all of them.”

The city also plans to adjust the ADU ordinance to achieve more middle-income affordability in neighborhoods of mostly single-family detached houses, which comprise about 41 percent of the city’s 46,000-unit housing stock. An ADU ordinance in effect since 1981 has permitted only 186 ADUs and 42 OAUs (owner’s accessory units) because of requirements regarding off-street parking, minimum lot size, and limits on ADU density. “We’d like ADUs for diversity of housing in neighborhoods,” says David Driskell, executive director of planning, housing, and sustainability. “Physically we could put in quite a few here, but, politically, there will be quite a lot of discussion about parking and traffic impacts.”

City council is considering “creative adjustments” to existing housing that could have less impact on the footprint and “character” of residential areas, such as loosening code restrictions on the number of unrelated people who can share a home. In most residential zones, no more than three unrelated people can share a house, even if it has six bedrooms and multiple bathrooms. A ballot measure petition launched recently by University of Colorado graduate students asks Boulder voters to overturn the occupancy limit and adopt a “one person = one bedroom” policy. Allowing higher occupancy is controversial, because, although it would provide more places for students and others to live legally, it could further drive up housing costs for families, as monthly rent in group houses, particularly close to the university, often costs as much as $1,000 per bedroom.

The city is also discussing a revision of its 20-year-old cooperative housing ordinance. No co-op projects have been permitted because the ordinance was “essentially a path to No,” says Driskell. Three affordable rental co-ops were established under other measures. City council is considering a more welcoming ordinance that supporters say would benefit the city by offering a sustainable and community-oriented lifestyle for single residents, young families, seniors, and people who work lower-wage jobs. 

“We tend to be a regulatory city, and we have really embraced deliberative planning,” says Susan Richstone, deputy director of planning, housing, and sustainability. “It hasn’t always been easy, but we’re having the discussions and making changes in planning and zoning levels within a regulatory framework. It’s in our DNA.”

“Density is a bogeyman here, and people are up in arms,” says Bryan Bowen, an architect and planner who is a member of the Boulder Planning Board and the city’s Middle Income Working Group.  Residents are anxious about both modest homes being scrapped and replaced with 5,000 square-foot $1.5 million new homes and the possibility of greater density with more large edgy-looking multifamily apartment buildings. “That’s probably why gentle infill feels good, though it has an interpretive quality. It’s a question of what people find to be compatible and palatable.” There’s no consensus yet about which infill approach will work best, Bowen says. “But frankly, in moderation, some application of all of them might be needed.”

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs): A Preferred Infill Housing Approach

Demographic changes such as aging populations, shrinking household size, college-loan-strapped millennials, and cultural preferences are leading many cities to allow home owners to build ADUs, also known as in-law apartments, granny flats, and carriage houses. Advocates say ADUs—built in the interior of a home, rebuilt from a garage, or newly built as a separate cottage—offer affordable options for elderly parents, adult kids, and caregivers. They’re also a source of rental income that can help residents stay in their homes. As older home owners wish to downsize and age in place, some are choosing to live in the ADU and rent out their main house. 

Typically ranging from 200 square feet to more than 1,000 square feet, ADUs are part of a long tradition of modest apartments and multigenerational houses that were common before the era of single-family suburban homes. Many housing advocates are keen on ADUs as a way to add units quickly, with home owners financing the infill of existing neighborhoods, compared to the lengthy and costly process of land acquisition and development of larger-scale multifamily projects by municipalities, nonprofit affordable housing organizations, and private developers. At Denver’s Bridging the Gap housing summit in May, a session on small-scale affordability posed a potential scenario for the city: 70 neighborhoods multiplied by 300 ADUs per neighborhood would equal 21,000 moderately priced housing units.​

At the recent YIMBY conference in Boulder, Susan Somers of AURA (formerly Austinites for Urban Rail Action) in Austin, Texas, described a coalition effort to become “an ADU city” and achieve much greater housing density in the mostly single-family detached city. They accomplished their mission; in November 2015, the Austin City Council passed a resolution relaxing ADU regulations and allowing them on smaller lots. AURA hopes to help home owners entitle 500 new ADUs annually. The units provide “affordable housing and a source of income to allow folks to stay in their homes,” says Somers. In gentrifying East Austin, “this is how families stay together.”

Cambridge: Bridging the Income Gap

Cambridge, located across the Charles River and three miles west of Boston, has the most expensive housing in Massachusetts and bears keen pressure to produce more missing-middle options. The population has increased more than 10 percent since 2000, to 110,000 residents within a compact 6.5 square miles, and is projected to grow by 6,200 homes before 2030, according to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), the regional planning agency for Metro Boston. The city has 117,000 jobs and more than 52,000 housing units, about half of them located in mixed-use commercial areas. The average listed single-family home price in 2015 exceeded $1.2 million. Median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,300.

“Cambridge has become a bifurcated place of very high income and very low income,” says Andre Leroux, executive director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance. “It’s hard for middle-class people to live there.” Cambridge has the infrastructure to support much greater density and to add significantly more residential development and huge residential towers, “but it doesn’t want to be downtown Boston.”​

The city is in the first year of a three-year comprehensive plan process, its first since 2000 (the state does not require municipalities to develop comprehensive plans). Affordable housing for low, moderate, and middle incomes—a resounding theme through the public process—is the number-one priority, says Iram Farooq, assistant city manager for community development.

“For a lot of working people, there are fewer affordable options in the city,” says Farooq. The greatest population decline has occurred among residents earning between 50 and 80 percent of AMI, she says. Middle-income households earning between 80 and 120 percent of the area’s AMI are also leaving the city for housing options elsewhere in the urban region. She notes that a city program that offered low-interest financing to home buyers earning up to 120 percent of AMI experienced little demand. 

“Just creating the program doesn’t mean people are going to use it. With the same financial commitment, they are able to go three miles down the road and find a nicer or bigger house for the same money. Being able to hold onto the middle is more challenging than at other income levels.”

The city is using regulatory strategies to fund more affordable housing. An incentive zoning ordinance enacted in 1988 required linkage payments to offset the effects of commercial development on the housing market. In 2015, the city updated the ordinance, increasing the rate for developers from $4.58 to $12 per square foot and broadening the requirement to include any nonresidential development, including healthcare and university facilities, labs, and office space. The city is also considering new zoning for infill sites and an expansion of its inclusionary housing ordinance, which now requires 11.5 percent affordability in new projects, to 20 percent affordable units for moderate, middle-income, and low-income households.

Cambridge has been building infill housing, mostly in projects ranging from 50 to 300 units, on larger sites. East Cambridge, for example, has seen the development of thousands of housing units in the past decade, along with millions of square feet of office space and restaurants, on land that was formerly industrial. The city is requiring residential units with all new development; 40 percent of a new commercial project in East Cambridge’s Kendall Square will be dedicated to housing. Some of this new development is subsidized for the middle class. But few parcels exist in residential areas, land costs are high, and residents are pushing back.

For years, housing advocates have been urging the city to add more infill housing and increase density in Central Square, the historic municipal center of the city. Located on Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square has a subway station and a bus-transfer station where eight bus routes converge. The area has some three- and four-story buildings as well as one- and two-story buildings that could be redeveloped for dense mixed-use housing next to transit. The square historically had taller, denser buildings before some third and fourth stories were removed to reduce taxes during the Depression. In 2012, however, some neighbors tried to persuade the city to downzone Central Square. 

“Downzoning is not appropriate in a crisis in which we’re so restricted in our ability to build housing,” says Jesse Kanshoun-Benanav, an urban planner and affordable housing developer who started the civic group A Better Cambridge in response to the downzoning effort, to promote increased density for infill housing opportunities. The city council tabled the downzoning effort and since then has been allowing zoning changes in Central Square and providing incentives such as additional height and density in exchange for the development of more affordable housing.

At the eastern end of Central Square, Twining Properties is developing Mass + Main, a multiparcel mixed-use project with a 195-foot tower and 270 apartments, 20 percent of which will be affordable for low, moderate, and middle-income residents. The project required a zoning variance, notes Farooq. “We’re now hearing political desire to rezone the rest of Central Square. People don’t seem to be as opposed to density as height, so we’ll have to explore what that means in terms of urban form.”

Townhouses, duplexes, and triple deckers are the norm in Cambridge, and only 7.5 percent are single-family detached homes. New rules passed in May that allow the conversion of basements into accessory dwelling units in single- and two-family homes throughout the city could enable 1,000 legal ADUs. The ADUs don’t need a zoning variance, and off-street parking is not required. The square footage of the new units won’t count as gross floor area (ADUs previously were prohibited in most cases due to the existing floor-area ratio and requirements for lot area per dwelling unit). Supporters say the rules won favor because they allow for more efficient use of large homes and won’t alter the look of the neighborhood. 

“It’s important that there are people in the city who are willing to accept trade-offs,” says Farooq, noting that the YIMBY movement has “great political capital” to counter NIMBY pushback against infill housing. “There is a community desire to see more housing, and many young people, including a lot of renters, recognize that it’s important to increase the supply and not have steep increases in rent, to make housing more manageable and accessible.”

Regional Approaches

Leroux from the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance and others across the nation say that housing needs should be addressed as a regional issue, and cities and towns should work together to allow urban infill housing and approaches like ADUs under state zoning laws. In June, the Massachusetts Senate passed a bill that would reform 1970s-era zoning laws to permit ADUs and multifamily housing districts in every community. A coalition including the Alliance; the Senate President; mayors; and advocates for the environment, public health, affordable housing, and transportation supported the bill, which is poised to become state law next legislative session. A legal and policy strategy, it includes a fair-housing clause that prohibits communities from making discriminatory land-use decisions, which Leroux and others say increase segregation in many metropolitan areas, as low-income residents, including people of color, get pushed out of redeveloping urban neighborhoods.

Suburban communities also need to do their fair share, he says. Many suburbs are still zoning and building for the auto-oriented market, with “a lot of modest homes being torn down and replaced with McMansions,” he says. “We think there’s a grand bargain to be made between cities and towns and the real estate development community to unshackle development near walkable places, infrastructure, and transportation while curbing sprawl and protecting natural areas.” To allow for more diverse housing growth, he says, the Alliance and others are promoting “as-of-right,” or permitted zoning uses, in walkable areas, commercial centers, villages, town centers, and urban squares, because “that’s where the market is and where we need to let the market do its job.”

Kathleen McCormick, principal of Fountainhead Communications, LLC, lives and works in Boulder, Colorado, and writes frequently about sustainable, healthy, and resilient communities.

Photograph: Meghan Paddock Farrell

Amid the jagged peaks of the San Juan Mountains, in the northeast quadrant of the Four Corners regional border, is a cluster of five southwestern Colorado counties whose names evoke the region’s rich and diverse history: Montezuma, San Juan, La Plata, Dolores, Archuleta.

Diverse, too, is the way of life and the economy of the region—from tourism and agriculture to fossil fuel extraction. Fewer than 100,000 people populate the varied and mountainous area. The cities of Durango and Cortez represent a bit of relatively bustling semi-urban life, while small mountain towns and two Native American reservations occupy outposts across the 6,500-square-mile area, roughly the size of Connecticut.

For these far-flung communities, planning for the future has become much more uncertain in the 21st century, as the wildcard of climate change and the vagaries of the energy industry have minimized sure bets. Educated guesses about the coming decades are getting harder to make across many dimensions: from unpredictable prices and revenues within the natural gas industry to swings in the size of the snowpack, affecting river flow, crops, and skiing alike. And many variables are highly interconnected.

“Our biggest question is our vulnerability to drought,” says Dick White, city councilor in Durango. “Our agricultural and tourism industry could be totally disrupted if we go into long-term drought and have lots of wildfires.”

Recognizing the need for wider policy coordination, a regional group of governing bodies formed the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments in late 2009, to address larger challenges and to seek out collaborative opportunities. Yet, in terms of policy, the road-map to stability, sustainability, and economic prosperity has not necessarily become clearer.

The conundrums at hand may simply surpass the conventional planning tools themselves, observers say. Regional planning as a discipline, of course, stretches back decades, but the procedures, templates, and models employed—from “visioning” to “normative,” “predictive,” or “trendline” methods—are not always up to the task of grappling with irreducible uncertainties. So, last year, the Southwest Colorado Council embarked on an intensive process in partnership with Western Lands and Communities—a joint program of the Sonoran Institute and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy—with an emerging policy tool that embraces the very idea of uncertainty: exploratory scenario planning, or XSP. Unlike the normative or traditional planning processes, it is not about what is preferred—an expression of community values—it is about what may happen beyond the control of planners involved.

XSP requires participants to identify the greatest causes of uncertainty in their community and use those challenges to envision alternative scenarios of the future. Whereas two to four scenarios would typically result from more traditional forms of scenario planning, the Southwest Colorado Council created eight scenarios during their XSP sessions.

Early in 2015, consultants, experts, and regional policy makers converged in the city of Durango to unpack a crucial question that would generate relevant scenarios: “Given the possibility of extended long-term drought and its potential environmental impacts, how could the Five-County Region develop a more adaptable economy?”

The question—which the group worked out through a careful, community-oriented process—became the focus of an extensive process of fact-gathering and analysis. This research culminated in two workshops structured to explore a variety of regional “futures”—the possible and plausible ways in which life in southwest Colorado could play out. The time horizon was to be 25 years, through 2040.

Participants considered the interrelated impacts of several critical areas of uncertainty, including the length of potential drought, local production levels of natural gas, and the cost of oil.

The central idea behind XSP is to bring together stakeholders to advance a multistep planning process that imagines many futures and formulates strategic insights accordingly. Its methodological steps are roughly: first, formulate a core set of questions; then, precisely identify and rank the forces of change; next, create narratives around possible scenarios and their implications; and, finally, formulate active responses and discern actions that would help address multiple scenarios. The process, says Miriam Gillow-Wiles, executive director of the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments, furnished a fresh way to help planners and policy makers imagine regional dynamics. “I think it set the council of governments up to be not just another economic development organization or government organization, because we are doing something different,” she says.

The project was also another step by Sonoran and Lincoln toward fine-tuning the concept and ultimately testing the value of exploratory scenario planning—which has its early roots in the business management and military spheres—in the context of urban and regional planning. Other recent case studies have been explored in central Arizona, in the Upper Verde River Watershed and the Town of Sahuarita, just south of Tucson, Arizona.

“This is something that is not only a good idea intellectually,” says Peter Pollock, manager of Western Programs at the Lincoln Institute. “It will add real value to your community planning process to deal with real problems.”

A Range of Futures

Dealing with real—and really tough—problems is the name of the game in southwest Colorado, as the region faces a “daunting” array of changes all at once, according to a 2015 report, “Driving Forces of Change in the Intermountain West,” prepared as part of the exploratory scenario planning process. Some are demographic—inflow of population, with more Hispanics, coupled with urbanization. Others relate to the “uncertain and complex” nature of the energy industries, which are affected by volatile global economic patterns.

Durango City Councilor White says he and fellow policy makers have been forced to think a lot about these shifts as their city considers a variety of infrastructure projects, from expanding the sewer treatment system to growing the size of the airport. White, a former Smith College astronomy professor who retired early and moved West to get involved in environmental policy, was a key member of the group that met last year in Durango as part of the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments.

“You’ve got this range of possible futures, and you really don’t know which road you’re going to go down,” he says. “The idea is to identify the biggest risks and best ‘no regrets’ policies.”

For White, the entire exercise of gaming out how varying drought conditions might affect the whole regional economy helped clarify issues. “Conceptually, I find that an extraordinarily useful policy tool,” he says. The sewer and airport infrastructure questions have subsequently been cast in a new light: “I have seen both of these decisions through the lens of [exploratory] scenario planning.” Given future uncertainties, White says he is determined to make investments that will give future policy makers flexibility should they need to make further infrastructure changes.

The final “low-regret” actions and strategies that stakeholders identified included: better coordination with federal agencies on forest management, public-private partnerships to promote use of biomass and biofuel, assessments of available land for development, identifying new opportunities to augment water resources from groundwater, the charging of real costs for water service and realistic impact fees, and support for small business and agriculture incubators.

Those insights and associated new perspectives are often hard-won, planners and participants concede. Exploratory scenario planning, as the southwest Colorado project demonstrated, can be a demanding process.

Hannah Oliver, who co-facilitated the scenario planning effort as a program manager with the Sonoran Institute in the Western Lands and Communities program, recalls driving all over the southwest Colorado region to get a feel for its land and its people and conducting many interviews with stakeholders. And that was just to prepare the groundwork—the “issues assessment”—for the stakeholder meetings.

The goal of the workshops themselves is to push the boundaries of the possible while staying within the bounds of the realistic. “You don’t want the scenarios to be so outlandish that community members can’t see themselves in it,” she says. The process aims to generate what Oliver, who was joined as a facilitator by Ralph Marra of Southwest Water Resources Consulting, calls “Ah-hah” moments. In this case, participants came to understand the profound implications of lower gas production, severe drought, and swings in oil prices—with ripple effects across the tourism and agriculture industries and with deep overall impacts on the regional economy. Southwest Colorado, they realized, could face a very different future under certain plausible conditions.

“You come out exhausted,” Oliver says of the typical initial workshop. “For the participants, it’s like going to a boot camp. People coming out of that workshop say, ‘I’ve never had to think like that before.’”

For community members, it can certainly take a lot of concentration to juggle the variables. “I think the whole way of scenario planning—if X, then Y—is a really useful way to look at things,” says Gillow-Wiles. But “the whole process itself can be challenging, because there are so many unknowns.”

Lessons Learned

A key to success, in any case, is to gather a broad range of people into the same room. In a wide and geographically dispersed region, that can be challenging. “Having a diversity of opinions is really important,” says Oliver, who is now a village planner in Phoenix. “Because the stuff you get out of the workshops is only as good as what goes in.”

Some southwest Colorado participants suggest that framing the exercise more directly around economic development or a more specific infrastructure issue (opposed to drought) might have attracted more participation from policy makers. “It’s sometimes hard to get your board members to buy into that kind of pie-in-the-sky type of thing,” says Willow-Giles, “versus something more tangible like ‘What do we do with our population growth in terms of transportation 25 years from now?’”

Likewise, White cautions that the ability to create momentum and community energy is not a given. “If I had a lesson to draw,” he notes, it’s that “you have to really work hard to make sure that you continue to have appropriately diverse representatives at both ends of the process.”

The southwest Colorado region has its share of political hot-button issues—including the politics of climate change and the dynamics of the fossil fuel companies there—but participants report that they steered clear of the land mines during the XSP process. (Drought, many note, has long afflicted the region, even prior to the Industrial Revolution; indeed, the ancient Puebloans likely left their famed cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde because of dry conditions.)

Pollock says that one of the virtues of XSP is that it allows in and even encourages conflicting views that can make it more inclusive, both in terms of process and outcomes. It minimizes arguments about which future is “right,” and it helps build support for action among the diverse group that has come together to develop the strategies. “We think it is a way to defuse some of the political questions that make our public process overly rancorous and difficult,” he says.

By bringing diverse ideas into the process early and openly embracing uncertainty, exploratory scenario planning can yield fewer surprises in the end for a community, according to Uri Avin, research professor and director of the Center for Planning and Design at the National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland. “The opponents of your end-state vision may, at the end of your visioning plan, come out of the woodwork and fight you,” he says. “Whereas exploratory scenarios explicitly tend to invite dissention and debate, and the construction of scenarios that embrace other viewpoints.”

One of the stark truths that can emerge from such a candid process is the reality that negative change may be likely under very plausible future conditions. Oliver says that participants in fact came to the realization that certain linear assumptions about the region’s economic future may need to be scrutinized.

“I think what struck them is the understanding that the oil and gas industry may not be around forever,” says Oliver. One of the biggest things they realized was how much they relied on money from natural gas production for basic services, she says. “They realized they might not be able to offer as many services if oil and gas were gone.”

Avin says that XSP operates as a kind of antidote to the traditional notion of plans-as-silver bullets. But, politically, that realism can be a challenging sell. “It may include accepting decline or change that may not be palatable but may be inevitable if certain things happen,” he says. “So the initial hurdle for planners is getting their arms around it and persuading their bosses who are elected officials that this is a good way to plan, and the payoff is in the long run.”

Armando Carbonell, chair of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute, says that, in an era when factors like climate change are now in play, planners and the public must increasingly rethink the way they conceptualize the future. “The key is how one thinks about uncertainty,” he says. “We’re better off to accept uncertainty, and the fact that uncertainty is irreducible. We need to learn to live with uncertainty, which is not at all a comfortable position for people and planners.”

The process can be, so to speak, “longer in the short run,” Avin notes, yet it’s “shorter in the long run,” as communities strategize based on realistic conditions. “It may be more rigorous and difficult, but it pays off because you have explored a range of outcomes that protect you from the future to some degree,” he says.

The Lincoln Institute’s 2014 working paper “Exploratory Scenario Planning: Lessons Learned from the Field,” authored by Eric J. Roberts of the Consensus Building Institute, provides some preliminary insights gleaned from a variety of other projects nationally, focusing both on what worked well in other contexts and typical challenges encountered. The process design and scenario framing work are often rated highly by participants, Roberts finds, but the capacity of the convening organization must be up to the demanding challenges.

An Adaptive and Evolving Tool

Step back from the Colorado project and other recent pilot applications, and it becomes clear that the migration of exploratory scenario planning into mainstream land planning is still far from complete, despite its power and potential. Part of the solution is wider dissemination and increased access to the method’s instruments. The Lincoln Institute’s 2012 report Opening Access to Scenario Planning Tools surveys the evolving landscape. It notes, “The emergence of new and improved scenario planning tools over the last 10 years offers promise that the use of scenario planning can increase and that the goal of providing open access to the full potential of scenario planning tools is within reach.”

One of the report’s coauthors, Ray Quay, a researcher with the Decision Center for a Desert City at Arizona State University, says that he has been using the exploratory scenario planning methodology for 20 years now. While he sees it being used by planners in the resource, water, and forestry communities, it has not yet taken hold among land planners and urban planners. “I think there are certainly situations where it can be very useful,” Quay says.

Another barrier to wider adoption is the general failure to distinguish the methodology from other, more familiar kinds of scenario planning, according to Carbonell of the Lincoln Institute. “When you say ‘scenario planning’ to most people in the planning world, they think of Envision Utah—the big regional vision plans that got people to agree on some preferred vision of the future,” he says.

The intellectual “genealogy” of XSP traces back to the Global Business Network in the early 1990s, and its deepest roots lie in the scenario planning work of Royal Dutch Shell—which, as legend has it, produced very successful strategies, Carbonell notes. “The challenge is taking it out of the world of corporate planning and business strategy and getting participation by more than a few wonks,” he says. “That’s why working on the method, making it more accessible and efficient, is important.”

Overall, the challenge remains to bring the methodology fully into the planning world. “I think we’re primarily trying to do two things,” says Carbonell. “We’re trying to transfer a business planning model to a community planning model, so there are definitely differences in governance and the number of people to deal with. The other thing is scale, the size of the community and the area you deal with. Scenario planning has really come more out of the regional level.”

The pertinent questions will be whether or not smaller-scale communities have the expertise, data, and willingness to participate; but ultimately it will be about whether XSP is “appropriate to the decisions being made,” Carbonell says.

As exploratory scenario planning is used more often in regional and urban planning, further best practices will certainly emerge. And the methods of devising strategies in the final phase of XSP may vary from situation to situation. Summer Waters, program director of Western Lands and Communities, says, “The resulting strategies have to be politically acceptable. That is to say, the people we work with have to be able to convince their constituents to buy in.”

Quay says the process leading to the production of scenarios through XSP has been largely “perfected” at this point. But there’s work to be done on the final step of identifying actions that address multiple scenarios and formulating an appropriate strategy. “The problem is that distilling the strategic insights … has been different on all the projects I’ve worked on,” Quay says. “There’s both structure and art within it.”

Avin, of the University of Maryland, agrees that some aspects of these powerful methods are still being worked out. But that’s no reason, he argues, to delay their adoption. “XSP is not supported by tools and models in the way that visioning is supported,” he says. But enough scenarios have been developed that planners can benefit from considering them and adapting them, rather than starting from scratch, he says.

For examples of parallel work in another field, experts note some of the advanced scenario work by the Transportation Resource Board and the associated software tool developed, Impacts 2050. Planners interested in more context and examples will find a diversity of deep sources in the Lincoln Institute’s 2007 book Engaging the FutureShaping the Next One Hundred YearsJournal of the American Planning Association.

Holway, Jim. C. J. Gabbe, Frank Hebbert, Jason Lally, Robert Matthews, and Ray Quay. 2012. Opening Access to Scenario Planning Tools. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Hopkins, Lewis D., and Marisa A. Zapata. 2007. Engaging the Future: Forecasts, Scenarios, Plans, and Projects. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lempert, Robert J., Steven W. Popper, Steven C. Bankes. 2003. Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis. RAND.

Quay, Ray. 2010. “Anticipatory Governance: A Tool for Climate Change Adaptation.” Journal of the American Planning Association 76(4).

50 años de planificación para la recuperación ante catástrofes

Laurie Johnson es una planificadora urbana internacionalmente reconocida, especializada en la recuperación y gestión de riesgos por catástrofes. Es científica visitante encargada de proyectos en el Centro de Investigaciones de Ingeniería Sísmica del Pacífico de la Universidad de California-Berkeley; es presidente del directorio del Comité Nacional de Asesoramiento de los EE.UU. para la Reducción de Riesgos Sísmicos; y forma parte del comité directivo de la organización Geotechnical Extreme Event Reconnaissance.

Robert Olshansky es profesor y director del Departamento de Planificación Urbana y Regional de la Universidad de Illinois en Urbana-Champaign. Su campo de docencia e investigación gira en torno al uso del suelo y la planificación medioambiental, con énfasis en la planificación ante catástrofes naturales. Ha publicado gran cantidad de material sobre planificación para la recuperación posterior a las catástrofes; planificación y políticas para el riesgo sísmico; planificación de laderas y políticas sobre deslizamiento de tierras; y evaluación del impacto medioambiental.

A lo largo de los años, Laurie y Rob han sido coautores de varias publicaciones, tales como Opportunity in Chaos: Rebuilding After the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe Earthquakes (Una oportunidad en medio del caos: la reconstrucción después de los terremotos de Northridge en 1994 y Kobe en 1995) y Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans (Tan claro como el barro: Planificación para la reconstrucción de Nueva Orleáns). En el presente artículo, los autores hablan sobre su colaboración y su trabajo en un libro y en el informe sobre Enfoque en Políticas de Suelo del Instituto Lincoln de próxima aparición, After Great Disasters: How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery (Después de una gran catástrofe: cómo hicieron seis países para gestionar la recuperación de sus comunidades).

Land Lines: Ustedes dos juntos suman más de 50 años de experiencia trabajando en el campo de la planificación para la recuperación ante catástrofes. ¿Qué los llevó a cada uno a especializarse en esta área?

Robert Olshansky: Siempre he estado interesado en los aspectos de la planificación urbana en las catástrofes: cómo diseñar ciudades que coexistan con estas fuerzas, cómo ser más estratégicos y pragmáticos a la hora de generar políticas de reducción de riesgos, y cómo responder adecuadamente a los acontecimientos naturales cuando ocurren. Sin embargo, hasta mediados de la década de 1990, siempre me enfoqué en la planificación y las políticas previas a las catástrofes.

Todo cambió con los “terremotos gemelos” que tuvieron lugar el 17 de enero de 1994 en Northridge, California, y el 17 de enero de 1995 en Kobe, Japón. Observaba detenidamente el proceso de recuperación en Los Ángeles cuando, al cumplirse un año de la catástrofe de Northridge, el terremoto de Kobe me ayudó a entrever lo que una catástrofe de verdaderas grandes proporciones podría infligir a un área urbana moderna. Un mes más tarde, me encontré con Laurie Johnson en una conferencia, donde descubrimos nuestros intereses en común en aprender algo de estas dos catástrofes, y así comencé este camino.

Pronto me di cuenta de que la recuperación es, paradójicamente, la manera más efectiva de mitigar los riesgos a largo plazo, ya que las catástrofes aumentan la conciencia sobre las fuerzas naturales y ayudan a generar los recursos para atacar el problema. También descubrí que las catástrofes brindan a los planificadores oportunidades únicas para mejorar el entorno urbano. A la inversa, si no estamos preparados para estas oportunidades, podríamos llegar a atascarnos en nuestros nuevos errores por años. Como planificador, veo la recuperación como uno de los mayores desafíos de nuestra profesión, ya que abarca todas las complejidades multidisciplinarias de nuestro campo y nos brinda algunas de las mayores oportunidades para corregir nuestros errores del pasado. Sin embargo, el proceso transcurre en un marco de tiempo muy estrecho, en medio de tensiones y frustraciones de consideración, lo que lo vuelve particularmente difícil de gestionar. Cada nueva situación de recuperación representa un caso de estudio multifacético en sí mismo.

Laurie Johnson: Antes de comenzar a colaborar con Rob, estudié Geofísica y, luego, Planificación urbana. Poco después de graduarme en 1988, me mudé al área de la Bahía de San Francisco, donde trabajé para William Spangle y George Mader, pioneros en la planificación del uso del suelo en áreas geológicamente peligrosas. Cuando ocurrió el terremoto de Loma Prieta en 1989, nos involucramos más activamente con las ciudades del área de la Bahía en la recuperación posterior a la catástrofe y las cuestiones de reconstrucción.

Con el apoyo de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias, realizamos una de las primeras conferencias de su clase sobre la reconstrucción posterior a un terremoto, que tuvo lugar en la Universidad de Stanford en 1990. Asistieron a la conferencia planificadores de ciudades de todos los Estados Unidos con probabilidad de sufrir terremotos, quienes aprendieron de planificadores que habían liderado las medidas de reconstrucción posteriores a los mayores terremotos urbanos del mundo, ocurridos en Skopje, Macedonia (antigua Yugoslavia, 1963); Managua, Nicaragua (1972); Friuli, Italia (1976); El Asnam, Argelia (1980); Ciudad de México (1985); y Armenia (1988). Fue precisamente durante esos años cuando comencé a interesarme por la reconstrucción de las comunidades, particularmente por cómo mejorar la capacidad de los gobiernos municipales para gestionar y liderar la recuperación posterior a una catástrofe.

LL: Laurie, usted tiene un doctorado en Informática por la Universidad de Kioto. ¿Por qué decidió ir a estudiar a ese lugar?

LJ: Ya había intentado comenzar con un trabajo de doctorado un par de veces a comienzos de mi carrera; sin embargo, finalmente las estrellas se alinearon en 2006, cuando el profesor Haruo Hayashi me invitó a unirme al centro de investigación de catástrofes que él lideraba en la Universidad de Kioto. Me retrasé nuevamente cuando fui a trabajar con el plan de recuperación posterior a Katrina durante el período 2006–2007. No obstante, resultó que la experiencia de recuperación en Nueva Orleáns ofreció una oportunidad de intercambio enriquecedor con colegas japoneses que habían estado profundamente involucrados en la recuperación de Kobe. Al principio, mi idea era comparar los enfoques que los Estados Unidos y Japón tenían sobre la gestión de la recuperación ante catástrofes de gran escala y utilizar este análisis para mi tesis, pero finalmente realicé un análisis comparativo de la gestión de recuperación en tres ciudades de los Estados Unidos: Grand Forks (Dakota del Norte), Los Ángeles (California) y Nueva Orleáns (Louisiana). Realmente valoré la oportunidad que tuve de reflexionar sobre los distintos enfoques adoptados por los Estados Unidos con mis colegas de Japón, quienes, debido a que provenían de un sistema de gobierno diferente, me ayudaron a identificar varios elementos conflictivos derivados de las políticas y otros vacíos que, de otra manera, no hubiera podido apreciar.

LL: Rob, después del huracán Katrina, usted y Timothy Green llevaron a cabo una investigación para el Instituto Lincoln sobre el programa Road Home, que entregó más de 8 mil millones de dólares a propietarios de viviendas en Nueva Orleáns para reparar sus hogares o vendérselos al estado. En esta investigación, ustedes observaron que los residentes de las áreas más inundadas eran los que con mayor probabilidad se mudarían de esas zonas (ver Green y Olshansky, “Homeowner Decisions, Land Banking, and Land Use Change in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina”, 2009). ¿Sabe usted si ese patrón (que sugiere una respuesta muy racional ante el riesgo) ha permanecido en el tiempo?

RO: De hecho, observamos que la profundidad de la inundación era la variable que mayor correlación tenía con la decisión de vender y mudarse. El valor de la vivienda, los ingresos, la raza y los años de ocupación no fueron factores significativos, al menos a la escala de los datos que manejamos. Este es un resultado positivo en términos de políticas destinadas a las inundaciones y, ciertamente, es mejor que haber descubierto que la profundidad de la inundación no tenía efecto alguno sobre el comportamiento de los propietarios. Sin embargo, aún no queda claro si los patrones reales de reconstrucción han cambiado, ya que los datos sencillamente no están disponibles. No obstante, visualmente, las áreas de la ciudad que presentan un menor nivel de reconstrucción se encuentran, generalmente, en las zonas más bajas, donde se produjo la mayor cantidad de daños. Así que puedo responder que sí: esta situación parece reflejar una respuesta racional ante el riesgo de inundación.

Por otro lado, los motivos de dicha respuesta pueden variar entre los diferentes grupos de ingresos. Creo que muchos de los lotes en zonas bajas pero de altos ingresos fueron adquiridos posteriormente por compradores que construyeron viviendas en ellos, mientras que muchos propietarios de bajos ingresos que intentaron reconstruir sus hogares no tuvieron los recursos económicos para hacerlo. Por lo tanto, para poder afirmar que la mayoría de las personas se comportó de manera “racional” frente al riesgo de inundación deberíamos tener en cuenta un contexto más amplio. Además, aunque la profundidad de la inundación tuvo una correlación positiva con la decisión de vender, la mayoría de los propietarios de viviendas en las zonas más inundadas de la ciudad (del 52 por ciento al 79 por ciento, dependiendo del lugar) optaron aun así por permanecer en el lugar y reconstruir sus hogares.

LL: ¿Cuáles son los desafíos que enfrentan los programas de compra de propiedades, como Road Home, y otras estrategias de reubicación destinadas a evitar la recurrencia de pérdidas catastróficas?

LJ: En los Estados Unidos, la práctica de la compra de propiedades en terrenos inundables posterior a una catástrofe está bastante establecida. Los programas de compra voluntarios están dirigidos por lo general a hogares unifamiliares que se encuentran dañados en más del 50 por ciento a raíz de una inundación, o que se encuentran dentro de la zona inundable con proyección de 100 años establecida por la Agencia Federal de Gestión de Emergencias (FEMA). Sin embargo, las fuentes federales de financiamiento para catástrofes, como el programa de subsidios para la mitigación de riesgos de FEMA, también requieren que las áreas en las que se encuentran las viviendas que se comprarán permanezcan como espacios abiertos o tengan algún otro uso sin ocupación. De esta manera, si las comunidades inundadas tienen pocas viviendas disponibles o pocas oportunidades para construir en terrenos baldíos, tanto los precios de alquiler como de venta de las viviendas en esa área pueden aumentar de manera considerable, y los residentes pueden tomar la decisión de mudarse, lo que representaría un freno a las economías municipales.

Por su propia naturaleza, las grandes catástrofes trastornan los sistemas físicos, sociales, económicos e institucionales de las comunidades a las que afectan. Un programa de compra de propiedades de gran alcance puede crear otra ola de trastornos que se propague a todos estos sistemas si no se diseña y gestiona de manera adecuada. En tiempos de normalidad, dichos sistemas no se encuentran bajo tal estrés ni están tan estrechamente relacionados, por lo que los trastornos causados por un proyecto de redesarrollo o abandono del mismo generalmente no son tan graves como en los tiempos de catástrofe.

El caso de Grand Forks, en Dakota del Norte, es uno de los mejores ejemplos de planificación y administración integral de la recuperación, tanto de lugares como de personas. Después de la inundación de 1997, la ciudad trabajó junto con socios federales y estatales y con el sector privado con el fin de adquirir terrenos e instalar infraestructura y servicios para un nuevo barrio residencial que se construiría en tierras más altas, y los propietarios de las viviendas sujetas a compra tuvieron la prioridad de reubicarse en dicho barrio. Esto ayudó a mantener a los residentes dentro de la comunidad y estabilizar los precios de las viviendas. Grand Forks también se asoció a su municipio vecino, East Grand Forks, en Minnesota, así como también a agencias federales y estatales, para agregar más de 890 hectáreas de suelo que se obtuvieron mediante la compra de viviendas y los proyectos de protección de diques. La posterior construcción de áreas verdes permanentes a lo largo del río Rojo ha posibilitado un cambio a mejor en los centros administrativos y económicos de ambas ciudades. Sin embargo, debo enfatizar que esta transformación de ninguna manera fue fácil: llevó más de 10 años lograrla, y requirió un liderazgo, una colaboración y un apoyo sostenidos.

LL: Laurie y Rob, el Instituto Lincoln ha estado preocupado durante algunos años por dos fuerzas a nivel mundial: el cambio climático y la urbanización. ¿Es probable que los acontecimientos climáticos y los desarrollos urbanos en lugares de riesgo aumenten la exposición a las catástrofes? ¿Estamos preparados para enfrentar esto?

RO: Las catástrofes, particularmente las que se dan en las áreas costeras, actualmente representan un problema internacional importante, independientemente de estas dos fuerzas impulsoras. Es un problema actual, no futuro. Muchas de las ciudades más pobladas en todo el mundo son puertos en deltas fluviales o estuarios, y muchos sectores de estas ciudades se encuentran por debajo del nivel del mar. Además, muchas personas viven en islas barrera costeras. Estas zonas costeras son azotadas por grandes tormentas varias veces en un siglo. Después de cada una de estas tormentas, aprendemos importantes lecciones que luego olvidamos rápidamente. Mientras tanto, las ciudades de todo el mundo están creciendo (tanto en población como en una mayor urbanización), lo que empeora el problema, ya que muchas más personas están expuestas, gran parte del crecimiento urbano se da en las zonas más bajas y, en muchas ciudades, la construcción rápida y densa es de baja calidad. Aunque el cambio climático exacerba toda esta situación, permítanme utilizar el cambio climático como un signo de exclamación que cierra este argumento, en lugar de abrirlo. Así que mi respuesta es no: la mayoría de los lugares no están preparados adecuadamente, ni para las tormentas que experimentamos actualmente ni para la creciente cantidad de marejadas ciclónicas costeras que se esperan en el futuro.

LL: Ustedes han concluido recientemente un importante proyecto de investigación para el Instituto Lincoln, partiendo de casos de estudio relacionados con la recuperación ante catástrofes en seis países. ¿Podrían comentarnos algo acerca de estos casos y la razón por la que los seleccionaron?

RO: Nos enfocamos en las medidas de recuperación implementadas en China, India, Indonesia, Japón, Nueva Zelanda y los Estados Unidos. El punto que tienen en común estos casos es que se trató de catástrofes de grandes proporciones que afectaron gravemente las áreas urbanas, y todos ellos ofrecen lecciones que resultan relevantes para otros países, particularmente los Estados Unidos. Con excepción de China, todos los países con los que trabajamos poseen instituciones democráticas, en las que participan una gran variedad de organizaciones gubernamentales y no gubernamentales para llevar a cabo la recuperación. Mi interés particular tenía que ver con los casos de reubicación, que siempre son difíciles de lograr en sociedades democráticas. Elegimos el terremoto de 2001 en Gujarat, India, debido al proceso de readjuste de suelo que llevaron a cabo y la cantidad de daños que provocó en las áreas rurales, a una escala similar a la de la zona central de los Estados Unidos. India es también un caso interesante porque sus antecedentes de catástrofes ilustran un proceso de aprendizaje en cuanto a las políticas, en un país de grandes proporciones sujeto al riesgo de catástrofes. Indonesia es interesante por la misma razón: probablemente es el mejor ejemplo de una evolución rápida de las políticas y la práctica como resultado del aprendizaje obtenido de muchísimas catástrofes. Además, el terremoto y el tsunami ocurridos en 2004 en Banda Aceh, en medio de un conflicto armado, es una de las mayores catástrofes sufridas en la historia moderna. Al momento de ocurrir esta catástrofe, decidimos investigar el tsunami en el océano Índico, ya que nos proporcionaba una oportunidad para observar cómo se llevaban a cabo medidas de recuperación en varios países simultáneamente. En China, nos atrajo la gran escala del terremoto ocurrido en 2008 en la provincia de Sichuan y su relación con los procesos continuos de urbanización y cambios en el uso del suelo.

LJ: Tanto Rob como yo ya habíamos escrito numerosos trabajos sobre la planificación de la recuperación ante catástrofes de muchas ciudades de los Estados Unidos y Japón. Por lo tanto, para este nuevo libro, decidimos adoptar un punto de vista más amplio de los enfoques de ambos países acerca de la gestión de la recuperación. Con respecto a los Estados Unidos, abordamos la evolución de las políticas de recuperación posteriores a los ataques al World Trade Center, al huracán Katrina y al huracán Sandy; todos estos casos involucraban una considerable cantidad de fondos federales y la centralización de las autoridades federales y estatales. En el caso de Japón, consideramos brevemente la reconstrucción de Tokio después del terremoto y el incendio que devastaron la ciudad en 1923, los cuales marcaron a fuego tanto la filosofía como las políticas de gestión de catástrofes del país. Analizamos, además, de qué manera esta experiencia influyó en el enfoque adoptado por el gobierno para financiar y gestionar la recuperación posterior al terremoto de 1995 y al terremoto y el tsunami de 2011.

En nuestro libro también revisamos la recuperación ante catástrofes adoptada en Christchurch, Nueva Zelanda, a raíz de la devastadora serie de terremotos ocurridos entre 2010 y 2011, que causaron una continua y generalizada licuación del suelo, desprendimientos de rocas y hundimiento del suelo. Al investigar acerca de este caso de estudio, recordé cuál había sido mi primera pasión profesional: encontrar distintos enfoques en la planificación del uso del suelo en áreas geológicamente peligrosas. El gobierno de Nueva Zelanda ha adoptado un liderazgo muy activo en la recuperación, lo que convierte a este país en un muy buen caso de estudio para compararlo con otros enfoques nacionales que describimos en el libro.

LL: Teniendo en cuenta estos casos de estudio, ¿cuáles son los aspectos clave que pueden mejorar los planificadores y gestores de políticas con el fin de prepararse para la recuperación después de una catástrofe?

RO: En cada uno de estos casos, los gobiernos enfrentaron una gran incertidumbre y tuvieron que equilibrar las tensiones entre restaurar rápidamente lo que ya existía y realizar mejoras de forma deliberada. Los planificadores y gestores de políticas deben reducir dicha incertidumbre mediante la búsqueda de diferentes formas de financiamiento, la elaboración de procedimientos claros, la simplificación de procesos burocráticos, la divulgación de información al público y la participación de todas las partes interesadas, con el fin de brindar fundamentos para tomar buenas decisiones y diseñar buenas políticas. En el libro proporcionamos varias recomendaciones que reflejan ciertos principios en común: prioridad de la información, participación de las partes interesadas y transparencia.

LJ: La recuperación después de una catástrofe de grandes proporciones siempre es compleja y nunca es lo suficientemente rápida para los residentes afectados. Sin embargo, este proceso puede mejorarse estableciendo expectativas realistas desde el principio de una catástrofe y trabajando para restaurar las comunidades y sus economías de manera rápida y equitativa, mediante la convocatoria de todas las partes interesadas (residentes, comerciantes, propietarios, aseguradoras, empresas de servicios públicos, etc.) para que participen en el proceso. De esta manera, los gobiernos pueden resolver los problemas preexistentes, garantizar la gobernabilidad de la recuperación a largo plazo y reducir el riesgo de futuras catástrofes.

RO: No obstante, antes que pretender una recuperación inteligente, deberíamos pensar de antemano las estrategias para gestionar futuras catástrofes. Esta es una buena manera de mejorar la resiliencia comunitaria: la capacidad de sobrevivir, adaptarse y recuperarse de acontecimientos extremos.

Fotografía: Ikuo Kobayashi