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

Before joining the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, I covered the Detroit beat for almost a decade for the Ford Foundation. There I was able to witness firsthand the unprecedented challenges involved in reversing the fortunes of the most powerful and important U.S. city of the mid-20th century. The enormity of these challenges called forth a coalition of some of the best and brightest community rebuilders with whom I’ve had the privilege to work. The quality and commitment of this strident group of public servants, civic and community leaders, and private-sector visionaries helped Detroit reclaim a bright future.

Signature efforts of this unique public-private-philanthropic partnership (a P4!) included the planning, construction, and funding of Detroit’s first public transit investment in more than five decades—the M1 Rail, which broke ground in July 2014 using a pooled private investment of more than $100 million. Leadership for the effort did not simply build a symbolic 3.3-mile light rail line along Woodward Avenue, the spine of the city, it also leveraged the private investment to secure a commitment from state and national governments to launch the region’s first transit authority.

Local and national philanthropic leaders also assembled more than $125 million to launch the New Economy Initiative—a decade-long effort to rekindle an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region through strategic incubation of hundreds of new businesses, thousands of new jobs, and enduring long-term collaboration among employers and workforce developers. And, in what might be their most controversial and heroic collective effort, these philanthropies worked with the State of Michigan to assemble more than $800 million for “the Grand Bargain,” which saved both the legendary collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts from the auction block and the future pensions of Detroit’s public servants.

Stunningly, while social entrepreneurs did gymnastics to bring hundreds of millions of dollars in support to Detroit, the city reportedly returned similar amounts in unspent formula funds to the federal government. A city with more than 100,000 vacant and abandoned properties and unemployment rates hovering close to 30 percent could not find a way to use funds that were freely available; the city needed only to ask for them and monitor their use. Beleaguered Detroit public servants, whose ranks were decimated by population loss and the city’s fiscal insolvency, did not have the capacity or the systems to responsibly manage or comply with federal funding rules. And, in this regard, Detroit is not unique among legacy cities or other fiscally challenged places.

A March 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office, Municipalities in Fiscal Crisis (GAO-15-222), looked at four cities that filed for bankruptcy (Camden, NJ; Detroit, MI; Flint, MI; and Stockton, CA) and concluded that the cities’ inability to use and manage federal grants was attributable to inadequate human capital capacity, staffing shortages, diminished financial capacity, and outdated information technology systems. The report lamented that not only were the cities unable to use formula funds—like Community Development Block Grants that are distributed according to objective criteria such as population size and need—but they routinely forwent applying for competitive funding, as well. A separate 2012 analysis by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), Money for Nothing, identified some $70 billion in federal funds that were unspent “due to poorly drafted laws, bureaucratic obstacles and mismanagement, and a general lack of interest or demand from the communities to which this money was allocated.”

How can it be that the neediest places are unable to use the assistance that is available? It’s unsurprising that a city like Detroit, which lost almost two-thirds of its population over six decades, would see diminished staffing and staff capacity in city offices. It is also unsurprising that Detroit did not have state-of-the-art IT systems. When a municipality faces fiscal challenges, infrastructure always gets short shrift. The inability to make use of allocated funding probably isn’t a sin of commission, but a regrettable omission that runs deeper, and needs fixing. But where to start? Let’s see what the data tells us. Which formula programs have the weakest throughput? Where are the places with the worst uptake? By all accounts, we don’t know. If federal agencies know which programs and places might make the best and worst lists, they are not reporting it. Moreover, most citizens in Detroit, who bear one of the highest property tax rates in the country, don’t know that their city is leaving tens of millions of dollars of federal money on the table each and every year.

Last summer, with little fanfare but great ambition, the Lincoln Institute launched a global campaign to promote municipal fiscal health. The campaign focuses attention on several drivers of municipal fiscal health, including the role of land and property taxation to provide a stable and secure revenue base. In this issue of Land Lines, we consider ways that cities and regions are building new capacities—reliable fiscal monitoring and transparent stewardship of public resources, effective communication and coordination among local, county, state, and federal governments—to overcome major economic and environmental barriers. We focus on how places are looking inside and outside their borders to enlist the assistance of others. Hopefully, these stories will inspire us to work toward broader, deeper, and more creative ways to thrive together rather than struggling alone.

Two technology-based tools featured in this issue are changing the way municipal finance information is organized and shared. They empower citizens and voters to hold their community leaders accountable and ensure that once we throw the assistance switch, the circuit is completed. PolicyMap (p. 18) was founded with the goal of supporting data-driven public decisions. Researchers there have organized dozens of public data sets and developed a powerful interface where users can view the data on maps. It includes thousands of indicators that track the use of public funds and their impact. The city of Arlington, Massachusetts, has demystified its city finances through the Visual Budget (p. 5), an open-source software tool that helps citizens understand where their tax dollars are spent. PolicyMap and the Visual Budget have the potential to follow all revenue sources and expenditures for a city and make them transparent to taxpayers. For cities or federal agencies willing to disclose this information, these social enterprises stand ready to track and report on the use, or non-use, of public funds.

Vertical alignment of multiple levels of government toward the goal of municipal fiscal health is not only a domestic remedy. Our interview with Zhi Liu (p. 30) reports on the efforts of the central government of the People’s Republic of China to build a stable revenue base under local governments through enactment of a property tax law, an action to help municipal governments survive the shifting sands of land reform.

In our report on the Working Cities Challenge (p. 25), researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston identify what is possibly the most important capacity needed to promote not only municipal fiscal health, but thriving, sustainable, and resilient places: leadership. Leadership—which might come in the form of visionary public officials, bold civic entrepreneurs, or gritty peripatetic academics—is at the core of other inspiring cases reported in this issue. Leaders in Chattanooga (p. 8) made a big bet on infrastructure—low-cost, ultra-high-speed Internet, provided through a municipal fiber-optic network—to help the city complete its transition from polluted industrial throwback to clean, modern tech hub. And it’s working.

The Super Ditch (p. 10) is another example of multiple governments working with private parties to forge creative solutions to joint challenges. The Super Ditch is innovating urban-agricultural water management through new public-private agreements that interrupt the old “buy and dry” strategies practiced by water-starved cities—continuing to meet municipal water demand without despoiling prime farmland.

Before we endure endless partisan bickering about whether national governments should rescue bankrupt cities, perhaps we should find a way to ensure that they don’t go bankrupt in the first place, by using the help that we’ve already promised. Only a sadist or a cynic would intentionally dangle resources out of the reach of needy people or places. If we invest only a fraction of unspent funds to build the right local capacities, communities will be able to solve their own problems. Whether it is a P4, an innovative technology tool, or a new way of working among governments and the private sector, social entrepreneurs are amplifying human ingenuity to help us overcome the biggest challenge we face: finding new ways to work together so that we do not perish alone.

Los seres humanos han tenido una relación de amor y odio con la urbanización desde hace cientos de años. A mediados del siglo XVIII, en los albores de la Revolución Industrial, los campos y las tierras de pastoreo de uso común estaban cercados con el fin de obligar a los campesinos a realizar trabajo asalariado y vivir en los asentamientos informales de las ciudades industriales europeas. Estas personas, arrastradas en contra de su voluntad a la vida urbana, vivían en pésimas condiciones, hacinadas en viviendas de mala calidad y ahogadas por el humo que emanaba de las fábricas que utilizaban el carbón para funcionar. En el verano, las familias con recursos económicos se retiraban al campo para evitar los ineludibles brotes de peste, cólera, y otras enfermedades. Afortunadamente, al mismo tiempo, muchas de las características negativas de la urbanización comenzaron a tratarse por parte de un nuevo invento: el sector público o gobierno municipal. Las obras públicas se crearon para construir caminos y sistemas de alcantarillado, encontrar y proporcionar agua potable y segregar los usos del suelo para que las viviendas estuvieran separadas de las fábricas contaminantes.

Este progreso desembocó en una época, a mediados del siglo XIX, en la que las ciudades del mundo se vieron pobladas con una creciente ola de residentes voluntarios que eran atraídos por las comodidades y el entusiasmo de la vida urbana. Las obras públicas proporcionaban agua y energía directamente a las viviendas. Los nuevos sistemas de transporte trasladaban alimentos y materiales desde las granjas y minas, además de llevar a los trabajadores desde sus hogares al trabajo. Las ciudades florecieron y se convirtieron en la fuerza motriz de las economías nacionales; sin embargo, este nuevo modelo urbano se vio debilitado por dos contradicciones básicas. A medida que reorganizamos nuestro espacio con el fin de alimentar y brindar combustible a las ciudades, también ejercimos una creciente presión sobre nuestros sistemas naturales. Además, como países urbanizados, redujimos la miseria pero aumentamos la desigualdad. Asimismo encontramos nuevas formas de aislar a los ricos de los aspectos negativos de la vida urbana, creando barrios o suburbios urbanos exclusivos.

Durante la primera etapa de la urbanización, innovamos con el fin de resolver el problema de las pestes y enfermedades que eran resultado del hacinamiento de las personas en espacios mal organizados. Durante la segunda etapa, convertimos a nuestras ciudades en lugares brillantes que atraían a nuevos residentes, pero agotamos nuestros sistemas naturales. Redujimos la pobreza, pero aumentamos la desigualdad y la distancia social entre las personas que habitaban el mismo espacio. Tal vez, en el siglo XXI podamos ser lo suficientemente inteligentes para marcar el inicio de una tercera etapa de urbanización, en la que las ciudades brinden respuestas al estrés mundial por el medio ambiente y los países continúen experimentando una reducción de la pobreza, y también un menor nivel de desigualdad. No obstante, para lograr esto, necesitaremos recalibrar nuestra comprensión de la importante función que cumplimos como individuos a la hora de financiar esta evolución: debemos reafirmar el contrato social mediante el cual pagamos nuestros impuestos al gobierno municipal, quien, a su vez, nos recompensa con bienes y servicios públicos que definen una calidad de vida excepcional.

Fue un reconocimiento a la enorme reputación del Instituto Lincoln y un honor personal que me invitaran a liderar, junto con el Banco Mundial, una de las diez unidades de gestión de políticas dedicadas a la creación de un Nuevo Programa Urbano, que se anunciará en la segunda mitad de este año en Hábitat III, la Tercera Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Asentamientos Humanos. Con la ayuda de más de una docena de expertos en políticas a nivel mundial designados por sus respectivos Estados miembro, elaboramos el Documento de Políticas sobre Finanzas y Sistemas Fiscales Municipales, que contiene recomendaciones sobre la forma en que el mundo puede financiar el Nuevo Programa Urbano.

Si usted nunca ha oído hablar de las reuniones de ONU-Hábitat, no se sorprenda: se realizan muy esporádicamente. Estas reuniones tienen lugar cada 20 años y su objetivo es brindar asesoramiento para elaborar políticas nacionales que den como resultado ciudades más seguras, más saludables y más habitables. En 1976, la Primera Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Asentamientos Humanos, realizada en Vancouver, tuvo como oradores a ilustres pensadores a nivel mundial, como Margaret Mead, Buckminster Fuller y la Madre Teresa. El resultado de la conferencia fue el Plan de Acción de Vancouver, que brindó 64 recomendaciones de políticas para que los gobiernos nacionales “adoptaran políticas relativas a los asentamientos humanos y estrategias de planificación espacial que fueran audaces, significativas y efectivas”, con el fin de facilitar un desarrollo urbano de calidad.

En 1996, la conferencia Hábitat II se celebró en Estambul y siguió los pasos de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo (Cumbre para la Tierra) de 1992. Hábitat II se centró en conectar el programa de urbanización con las medidas a nivel mundial dirigidas a promover el desarrollo sostenible. En aquel entonces, los urbanistas se encontraban desilusionados debido a que la Agenda 21 (el plan de acción de políticas elaborado por la Cumbre para la Tierra) casi ni mencionaba a las ciudades y, cuando sí lo hacía, estas se consideraban como parte del problema, no de la solución, para la sostenibilidad mundial. La Agenda de Hábitat que surgió de la conferencia de 1996 propuso un marco de políticas para orientar las medidas nacionales en las próximas dos décadas, con el fin de promover asentamientos urbanos sostenibles. Un avance significativo de Hábitat II consistió en la creación de un marco de compromiso de información, para que los gobiernos nacionales se responsabilizaran de dar cuenta sobre los avances de los objetivos establecidos en la Agenda de Hábitat, un aspecto que se había omitido en el Plan de Acción de Vancouver.

Aunque las anteriores conferencias de Hábitat fueron muy importantes, no generaron el impacto o la divisa cultural a la que aspiraban. Este año, existen varios motivos para creer que Hábitat III, que se realizará en octubre en Quito, Ecuador, será diferente. En primer lugar, hoy en día el planeta es predominantemente urbano: alrededor del año 2007, más de la mitad del mundo ya estaba urbanizada, y las tendencias actuales señalan que el planeta estará urbanizado en un 70 por ciento para el año 2050. La totalidad del crecimiento de la población mundial durante las próximas tres décadas tendrá lugar en las ciudades, lo que añadirá unos dos mil millones y medio de personas. Además, a menos que escojamos otro enfoque, se duplicará la cantidad estimada de 850 millones a 1.000 millones de personas que viven en todo tipo de asentamientos informales en las ciudades de todo el mundo.

En segundo lugar, los gestores de políticas internacionales están comenzando a tomar en serio la urbanización. Este cambio puede verse claramente en los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (SDG, por su sigla en inglés) recientemente elaborados por los Estados miembro de la ONU, con el fin de actualizar los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio (MDG) adoptados en el año 2000 para regir las políticas mundiales de desarrollo económico hasta el año 2015. Los SDG establecerán un marco a nivel mundial con la finalidad de promover un desarrollo más efectivo y responsable para 2030. A diferencia de los MDG, los SDG contienen objetivos e indicadores específicos referidos a la urbanización.

En tercer lugar (y más importante), debido a que las naciones miembro tendrá la obligación de informar anualmente el progreso que han alcanzado para lograr los SDG, se tomará muy en serio el proceso de urbanización. Este acuerdo incluye la admisión tácita de que entender la urbanización de forma correcta es un factor clave para lograr un futuro humano sostenible en el planeta. Entender la urbanización de forma correcta requiere el compromiso de proporcionar servicios básicos a todos los residentes, tanto antiguos como nuevos, de utilizar los recursos naturales de manera más eficiente, y de reducir nuestra huella de carbono. Por último, aunque no menos importante, entender la urbanización de forma correcta significa encontrar formas de financiarla. Tal como se establece en el Documento de Políticas: “La salud fiscal de las ciudades es una condición necesaria para gestionar nuestro futuro urbano mundial. La salud fiscal permite a los gobiernos municipales invertir en la infraestructura social y económica que promueve una mayor calidad de vida, sostiene el crecimiento económico y ayuda a los municipios a prepararse ante cualquier crisis natural o financiera y mitigar sus efectos”.

Con el fin de lograr esto, necesitamos incrementar las fuentes de recaudación existentes y encontrar otras nuevas. Y la mayor fuente —antigua y nueva— de generación de ingresos municipales para financiar la urbanización puede encontrarse en el suelo.

Cuando invertimos en infraestructura urbana, posibilitamos los asentamientos urbanos densos y multiplicamos exponencialmente el valor de dicho suelo. La base fiscal que genera este suelo con más valor, así como las mejoras realizadas en el mismo, es la mayor y más antigua fuente de recaudación municipal que tienen las ciudades, instrumentada mediante el impuesto sobre la propiedad. No obstante, una nueva fuente de ingresos casi no explotada es la recuperación del incremento del valor del suelo que la infraestructura pública genera a favor de los propietarios privados, lo que se conoce como “recuperación de plusvalías”. Como hemos observado en América Latina, el incremento del valor del suelo generado por la inversión pública casi siempre multiplica la inversión en sí. La recuperación de una parte del incremento del valor del suelo puede ser muy útil a la hora de financiar la infraestructura que necesitaremos para recibir en nuestras ciudades a otros dos mil millones y medio de residentes hacia mediados del siglo.

Paradójicamente, nos resistimos mucho más a los impuestos basados en el suelo que a otras fuentes inferiores de ingresos. Aunque el impuesto sobre la propiedad es la fuente de ingresos municipales más estable, continúa representando una parte relativamente pequeña de los presupuestos municipales; además, debido a que este impuesto generalmente es el mayor tributo directo que pagan los propietarios, sufre constantemente el ataque del público. Los electores captan el apoyo de los gobiernos estatales, provinciales y nacionales para limitar la capacidad que tienen los municipios de recaudar el impuesto sobre la propiedad, imponiendo límites a las tasas, jugando con las valuaciones del suelo, o ambas cosas. Y cuando lo logran, socavan el avance del que puede decirse que es el más importante para alejarnos de nuestro pasado salvaje: el gobierno municipal.

El desafío del financiamiento municipal puede resumirse en una simple pregunta: ¿Quién pagará nuestras futuras ciudades y pueblos? Y la respuesta es bastante simple: nosotros, tal como siempre lo hemos hecho. Podríamos pedir prestados billones de dólares para invertir en nueva infraestructura, desarrollar nuevas asociaciones entre entidades públicas y privadas, mejorar las transferencias intergubernamentales u obtener los fondos del suelo (como creo que deberíamos hacerlo). Sin embargo, a la larga, todo gasto que realicemos se pagará con fondos que recaudamos de nosotros mismos de una u otra forma. Presumiblemente, estaremos felices con la calidad de la vida urbana que paguemos. Pero esto requerirá nuestro compromiso colectivo para pagar lo que cuesten los servicios que deseamos y necesitamos, y esto será posible cuando comencemos a recordar la función esencial que cumple el gobierno municipal para proporcionar estos beneficios.

Humans have had a love-hate relationship with urbanization for hundreds of years. In the mid-18th century, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, common fields and pastures were enclosed to force peasants into wage labor and life in the slums of the industrial cities of Europe. These involuntary urbanites lived in abysmal conditions, crowded into substandard dwellings and choked by fumes belched from coal-fired factories. Wealthy families retreated to the countryside in summers to avoid inevitable outbreaks of pestilence, cholera, and other diseases. Fortunately, at the same time, many of the negative attributes of urbanization were being addressed by a new invention—the public sector or local government. Public Works were created to build roads and sewers, to find and deliver potable water, and to segregate land uses so that residences were separated from dirty industries.

This progress ushered in an epoch, in the mid-19th century, during which the cities of the world grew with voluntary inhabitants who were drawn to the amenities and excitement of urban life. Public Works delivered water and power directly to residences. New transport systems moved food and materials from farms and mines, and moved workers from their homes to jobs. Cities flourished and became the economic powerhouses of national economies, but this new urban model was undermined by two basic contradictions. As we reorganized our space to feed and fuel cities, we put increasing pressure on natural systems. And, as countries urbanized, we reduced abject poverty but increased inequality. We also found new ways to insulate the wealthy from negative aspects of urban life in exclusive urban neighborhoods or suburbs.

During the first round of urbanization, we innovated to address the disease and pestilence that resulted from crowding people into poorly managed space. During the next round, we turned our cities into shiny places that attracted new residents, but we stressed out natural systems. We reduced poverty but we increased inequality and the social distance between people inhabiting the same space. Perhaps, in the 21st century, we can be clever enough to usher in a third round of urbanization, where cities provide the answers to global environmental stress, and countries continue to see declining poverty but also reductions in inequality. To do this, however, we’ll need to recalibrate our understanding of the important role we as individuals play in paying for this evolution—reaffirming the social contract through which we pay our taxes to local government, and it rewards us with the public goods and services that define an exceptional quality of life.

It was a testament to the outsized reputation of the Lincoln Institute and a personal honor to be asked to lead, with the World Bank, one of the ten policy units tasked with drafting a New Urban Agenda, to be announced this fall at Habitat III, the Third United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. With the assistance of more than a dozen global policy experts nominated by their member states, we wrote the Policy Paper for Municipal Finance and Local Fiscal Systems, which recommends how the world will pay for the New Urban Agenda.

If you have not heard of the UN Habitat meetings, it is not surprising. They rarely occur. The convenings happen every 20 years and seek to advise national policies that lead to safer, healthier, and more livable cities. In 1976, the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, held in Vancouver, involved such illustrious global thinkers as Margaret Mead, Buckminster Fuller, and Mother Teresa. The Vancouver Action plan generated at the conference provided 64 policy recommendations for national governments “to adopt bold, meaningful, and effective human settlement policies and spatial planning strategies” that would facilitate high-quality urban development.

In 1996, Habitat II, held in Istanbul, followed on the heels of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit). Habitat II focused on connecting the urbanization agenda with global efforts to promote sustainable development. At the time, urbanists were disappointed that Agenda 21, the policy action plan from the Earth Summit, barely mentioned cities. And where it did, cities were considered part of the problem, not a solution, for global sustainability. The Habitat Agenda that emerged from the 1996 conference proposed a policy framework to guide national efforts for the next two decades to promote sustainable urban settlements. An important advancement of Habitat II was the creation of a reporting framework to hold national governments accountable for achieving the goals set forth in the Habitat Agenda, something missing from the Vancouver Action Plan.

As important as previous Habitat conferences were, they did not generate the impact or the cultural currency to which they aspired. This year, there are several reasons to believe that Habitat III, to be convened in October in Quito, Ecuador, will be different. First, the planet is predominantly urban now. We passed the halfway point for global urbanization around 2007, and current trends suggest that the planet will be 70 percent urbanized by 2050. All global population growth in the next three decades will occur in cities, which will add some 2.5 billion people. And, unless we choose a new approach, we will double the estimated 850 million to one billion people living in slums, favelas, and other informal settlements in cities around the world.

Second, international policy makers are beginning to take urbanization seriously. This shift is best illustrated in recently penned Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drafted by UN member states to update the Millennial Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in 2000 to govern global economic development policy through 2015. The SDGs will establish a global framework to promote more effective and responsible development through 2030. Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs include specific goals and indicators that reference urbanization.

Third, and most importantly, because member nations will be required to report annually on their progress toward the SDGs, they will be taking the process of urbanization seriously. Built into this arrangement is a tacit admission that getting urbanization right is critical to achieving a sustainable human future on the planet. Getting urbanization right will require a commitment to deliver basic services to all residents, new and old, to use natural resources more efficiently, and to reduce our carbon footprint. And, last but not least, getting urbanization right means finding ways to pay for it. As stated in the Policy Paper: The fiscal health of cities is a necessary condition for managing our global urban future. Fiscal health enables local governments to invest in the social and economic infrastructure that supports a higher quality of life, sustains economic growth, and helps localities prepare for and mitigate the effects of natural and financial crises.

To accomplish this, we will need to grow existing sources of revenue and find new ones. And the biggest old and new source of local revenue to finance urbanization can be found in land.

When we invest in urban infrastructure, we make dense urban settlement possible and we increase the value of that land by many multiples. The tax base that is built from this more valuable land, and the improvements built on it, is the biggest old source of local revenue for cities, through the property tax. But a mostly untapped new source of revenue is the reclamation of land value increments that public infrastructure generates for private landowners, known as value capture. As we’ve seen in Latin America, the increase in land value through public investment is almost always a multiple of the investment itself. Capturing a share of land value increments can help us fund the infrastructure we’ll need to welcome another 2.5 billion residents to our cities by mid-century.

Ironically, we resist land-based taxes more than other inferior revenue sources. While the property tax is the most stable local revenue source, it still accounts for a relatively small share of local government budgets, and, because it is usually the biggest direct tax paid by property owners, it is constantly under attack. Voters enlist the support of state, provincial, and national governments to constrain the ability of localities to collect property tax revenues by imposing rate limitations, or monkeying around with land value assessments, or both. And when they succeed, they undermine the advancement that is arguably the most important for separating us from our barbarian past—local government.

The municipal finance challenge can be summarized in one simple question: Who will pay for our future cities and towns? And the answer is quite simple. We will—just as we always have. We might borrow trillions of dollars to invest in new infrastructure, engineer new public-private partnerships, enhance intergovernmental transfers, or leverage funding from the land, as I think we should. But, in the end, whatever expenditures we make will be covered by revenues we collect from ourselves in one form or another. Presumably, we’ll be happy with the quality of the urban life that we purchase. But that will require our collective commitment to pay what it costs for the services we want and need—and that will start by reminding ourselves of the essential role that local government plays in delivering these benefits.

Después de que Karin Brandt obtuvo su título de Maestría en el Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts, notó cierto nivel de frustración en sus antiguos compañeros de planificación. “La idea de generar un cambio, de la que tanto habíamos hablado en la escuela de posgrado, no se estaba concretando”, recordó. Una de las razones era el hecho de que hacer participar al público en general en el proceso de planificación a menudo constituía un desafío.

Mientras tanto, siguió Brandt, sus amigos de otros departamentos de MIT estaban “creando empresas, resolviendo problemas, haciendo cosas realmente interesantes” con la tecnología. Quizás, concluyó, había una superposición útil entre estas dos tendencias divergentes. Quizás se podrían usar tecnologías innovadoras para mejorar los elementos públicos del proceso de planificación. De manera que, en 2013, después de dejar su puesto de analista de investigación en el Instituto Lincoln, Brand fundó coUrbanize junto con su compañero del programa de posgrado de MIT David Quinn, un científico de datos. Este emprendimiento, financiado por capital de riesgo, ofrece una plataforma de comunicaciones enfocada en la planificación y diseñada para facilitar y mejorar la manera en que los planificadores, emprendedores y el público interactúan en proyectos específicos.

El desafío subyacente en este caso era conocido, por supuesto, por cualquier persona involucrada en la profesión, “Una reunión de planificación tradicional, con el micrófono y la lista de oradores, y tres minutos por orador, es importante”, dice Amy Cotter, una veterana del Consejo de Planificación del Área Metropolitana de Boston, y ahora gerente de los programas de desarrollo urbano en el Instituto Lincoln. “Pero su valor es limitado”. En pocas palabras, sólo algunos miembros de la comunidad tienen el tiempo o la predisposición para participar en este tipo de foros, lo cual limita la perspectiva de lo que la comunidad piensa realmente sobre un emprendimiento inmobiliario o una iniciativa de planificación, y deja muchos comentarios y opiniones potencialmente útiles sin expresar.

En el pasado, algunos consideraban que este paso del proceso de planificación era “más bien un ejercicio técnico”, en el que los datos de los expertos tenían prioridad por sobre la opinión de la comunidad, continúa Cotter. “Pero el área de planificación ha estado pasando por una transición. En este momento, la mayoría de los planificadores piensa que sus planes son mejores y más valiosos si la gente participa”. Pero no es fácil conseguir esta participación.

Ken Snyder, fundador y Director Ejecutivo de la organización sin fines de lucro PlaceMatters, con sede en Denver, observa que en los últimos cinco o diez años se ha generado un movimiento creciente alrededor de la innovación que ha aumentado la participación comunitaria, utilizando nuevas tecnologías. Un ejemplo es la plataforma llamada Engaging Plans (Planes participativos) de Urban Interactive Studio. Otro es CrowdGauge.org, desarrollada por Sasaki Associates y PlaceMatters. Esta última es una “herramienta abierta basada en la web para crear juegos educativos en línea” que pueden ayudar a “resumir, comunicar y clasificar ideas que emergen de un proceso de visualización e incorporarlas en el proceso de toma de decisiones”. (Snyder ha compilado una lista informal pero muy útil de herramientas e iniciativas de planificación creativas en bit.ly/placematters-tools).

Brandt dice que sus propias investigaciones la han llevado a concluir que los tres actores principales en la mayoría de los proyectos —los planificadores, los emprendedores y la comunidad en general— querían esencialmente lo mismo: mayor transparencia de las otras dos partes. En otras palabras, al mismo tiempo que los planificadores querían más comentarios del público, los ciudadanos frecuentemente sentían que no recibían información suficiente y verdaderamente accesible.

CoUrbanize fue desarrollado con contribuciones directas de planificadores y emprendedores, y la plataforma ofrece una página principal en línea para difundir información pública sobre cualquier proyecto. Esto quiere decir que es al mismo tiempo un foro para recoger las opiniones de la comunidad y un lugar que permite acceder ampliamente a planes y propuestas. Lo más importante es que se propone ser un punto de contacto flexible que suplementa, sin reemplazar, los mecanismos tradicionales y de otro tipo para recabar los comentarios del público.

Uno de los ejemplos más interesantes hasta la fecha ha sido el Plan de Renovación Urbana de Kendall Square en Cambridge, Massachusetts. La Autoridad de Revitalización de Cambridge y la empresa inmobiliaria Boston Properties están colaborando en un esfuerzo público-privado que abarca 100.000 metros cuadrados de nuevos emprendimientos comerciales y residenciales. La empresa de desarrollo inmobiliario, en colaboración con coUrbanize, ha distribuido carteles que preguntaban a los usuarios reales su opinión sobre los usos potenciales del espacio correspondiente. Esto significaba que cualquiera podía enviar sus respuestas por mensaje de texto, y que estas se recopilaran en un foro comunitario en línea de coUrbanize.

“La gente tiene ideas mucho más interesantes cuando están en un espacio físico”, dice Brandt. “Y la mayoría de la gente no sabe lo que puede decir. Así que es muy útil que se les hagan preguntas específicas”. Este experimento recogió más de 200 comentarios, más datos adicionales de los usuarios del foro que apoyaban o criticaban estos comentarios. El equipo de planificación y desarrollo “realizó cambios en el plan gracias a los comentarios recibidos”, dice Brandt, como el agregado de una cantidad sustancial de viviendas sociales y la inclusión de un “espacio de innovación” que ofrecía precios más bajos que el mercado a empresas en formación (startups) calificadas. Y añade que dentro de poco se concretarán también algunas ideas derivadas de la plataforma para espacios abiertos.

Desde la perspectiva de planificación, la clave está en ampliar la base de opinión. Esto puede dar lugar a ideas que nunca hubieran surgido en una reunión comunitaria tradicional. Pero es más importante aún comprender claramente lo que “la comunidad” desea, respalda u objeta sobre un proyecto en particular, y no recoger sólo lo que piensan las personas que asisten a una reunión pública.

Cotter apunta, con el acuerdo enfático de Brandt, que las reuniones presenciales siguen siendo importantes. Pero una plataforma como coUrbanize brinda un foro para aquellos que no pueden (o simplemente no quieren) participar en este tipo de reuniones: un trabajador del turno de noche, padres que tienen que quedarse en casa o jóvenes de la generación del milenio, a quienes el contexto en línea les resulta más fácil y conveniente. Según Brandt: “Uno de nuestros clientes dice que nuestra plataforma es una reunión comunitaria de 24 horas”. (Es de hacer notar que coUrbanize publica “directrices comunitarias” que requieren que los usuarios/ciudadanos se inscriban con sus nombres reales, para reducir al mínimo los comentarios de planificación equivalentes al spam. “Nuestros socios municipales nos han dicho que los comentarios que reciben de coUrbanize frecuentemente son más apropiados”, dice Brandt).

Para aprovechar al máximo esta accesibilidad, las ciudades o emprendedores inmobiliarios que usan coUrbanize o una plataforma equivalente tienen que volver a pensar en cómo presentar sus ideas. Cotter señala que incluso los términos más básicos como “contratiempo” o “densidad” pueden no significar nada para una persona no experta en la materia. (Como orientación para recoger opiniones de la comunidad, PlaceMatters ha utilizado métodos creativos como la instalación de ventanas emergentes (popups) para demostrar los beneficios de una ciclovía protegida en Portland, Oregón, ubicada en un lugar físico real). CoUrbanize ofrece a los planificadores y emprendedores un marco de referencia intuitivo para presentar ideas, tanto con imágenes como con palabras; casi como la página principal de una campaña de Kickstarter.

Por supuesto, los usuarios son los que tienen la responsabilidad de aprovechar la plataforma al máximo. Y como el modelo de negocios de coUrbanize depende en parte de la participación de los emprendedores, Brandt remarca que este tipo de plataforma puede revelar más rápida y eficientemente problemas que en circunstancias normales podrían haber provocado demoras costosas en el proyecto. La mayoría de los clientes y proyectos iniciales de la firma está concentrada en Massachusetts, pero coUrbanize también ha trabajado en Atlanta y otros lugares donde se lo han solicitado. Este año la compañía ampliará su radio de acción a Nueva York y San Francisco.

El objetivo, según Brandt, es que “ganen todos los jugadores”. Sin duda, la ganancia potencial para los miembros de la comunidad (los usuarios de coUrbanize, pero también de otras plataformas que intentan ampliar el proceso de planificación con herramientas tecnológicas) es particularmente intrigante. Y eso, dice Cotter, es algo que los planificadores han estado buscando durante años y que será cada vez más práctico a medida que la tecnología mejore. La clave, dice, está en “brindar a la gente la confianza de saber que se la escuchó y que su opinión será tenida en cuenta”. E incluso si su opinión no se tuviera en cuenta, se debería explicar por qué, y cuáles son las ventajas y desventajas de su propuesta.

“Hay tanta gente que no sabe que puede influir sobre su barrio”, dice Brandt. “No sabe qué es la planificación, y no ha asistido nunca a una reunión”. Quizá la generación actual de plataformas tecnológicas pueda ayudar a cambiar esto: “Hay mucha más gente en línea”, argumenta Brandt, “que los que tienen libres los martes a las 7 de la tarde”.

Rob Walker (robwalker.net) es colaborador de Design Observer y The New York Times.

Fotografía: Karin Brandt

After Karin Brandt finished her Master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she noticed some frustration among her former classmates in planning. “The idea of creating change that we talked about in grad school wasn’t being realized,” she recalls. One of the reasons was that the process of engaging with the broader public often proved to be a challenge.

Meanwhile, she continues, friends from other MIT departments were “starting companies, solving problems, doing really interesting things” with technology. Perhaps, she concluded, there was a useful overlap in these two divergent trends. Maybe innovative technology could be used to improve some public-facing elements of the planning process. So in 2013, after leaving a position as a research analyst at the Lincoln Institute, Brandt founded coUrbanize along with data scientist and fellow MIT grad David Quinn. The venture-backed startup offers a planning-centric communications platform, designed to ease and enhance the way that planners, developers, and the public interact around specific projects.

The underlying challenge here was, of course, familiar to anyone involved in the profession. “The traditional planning meeting, with the microphone, and the signup list, and three minutes per speaker, is important,” says Amy Cotter, a veteran of Boston’s Metropolitan-Area Planning Council who is now manager of urban development programs at the Lincoln Institute. “But it’s of limited value.” In short, only some members of a community have the time or inclination to participate in such forums—resulting in a limited perspective on what a community really thinks about a development or planning initiative, leaving potentially useful feedback and input unexpressed.

In the past, some treated this step of the planning process as “a more technical exercise” that privileged expert data over community input, Cotter continues. “But the planning field has been undergoing a transition. At this point, most planners feel their plans are richer and better if people are engaged.” But securing that engagement is easier said than done.

Ken Snyder, founder and CEO of the Denver-based nonprofit PlaceMatters, observes that, over the past five or ten years, there has been a growing movement around innovation that increases community engagement, and it very much includes new technologies. Urban Interactive Studio’s EngagingPlans platform is one example. Another is CrowdGauge.org—developed by Sasaki Associates and PlaceMatters. The latter is an “open-source, web-based tool for creating educational online games” that can help “summarize, communicate, and rank ideas that emerge from visioning processes and incorporate them into decision making.” (Snyder has compiled an informal but highly useful list of creative planning tools and initiatives at bit.ly/placematters-tools.)

Brandt says her own research led her to conclude that the three major actors in most projects—planners, developers, and the community at large—really all sought the same thing: more transparency from the other two parties. In other words, as much as planners wanted more public input, citizens often felt they weren’t getting enough information in a truly accessible form.

CoUrbanize was developed with direct input from planners and developers, and the platform provides a central online home for public information on any given project. That means it serves as both a forum for community feedback, and as a spot where plans and proposals are widely accessible. And importantly: This aims to be a flexible touchpoint that supplements, but does not mean to replace, real-world feedback mechanisms, both traditional and otherwise.

One of the most interesting examples so far has involved the Kendall Square Urban Renewal Plan in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority and developer Boston Properties are collaborating on a public/private effort that will entail a million square feet of new commercial and residential development. Working with coUrbanize, the developer distributed poster-style signage asking real-world users of the relevant space for thoughts on its potential uses. This meant anyone could text in their answers, which were collected in an online coUrbanize community forum.

“People have much more interesting ideas when they’re in a physical space,” Brandt says. “And most people don’t know what they can say. So prompting them with specific questions really helps.” The exercise drew more than 200 comments, plus additional data from forum users supporting or disagreeing with those comments. The planning and development team “made changes to their plan, based on feedback,” Brandt says—including the addition of more substantial affordable housing, and the inclusion of “innovation space” that offered below-market rates to qualified startups. Work on some of the ideas for open space that evolved on the platform will be underway soon, she adds.

The key here from a planning perspective is to broaden the range of input. Maybe that means hearing an idea that would never have surfaced in a traditional community meeting. But arguably more important is a clearer sense of what “the community” around a particular project—not just the people who turn up at a public meeting—really wants, supports, or objects to.

Cotter points out—and Brandt emphatically agrees—that those in-person hearings still matter. But a platform like coUrbanize provides a forum for people who can’t (or just don’t want to) show up for such gatherings: a worker with a night shift, parents who need to be home during a scheduled meeting, or millennials who just find the online context easier and more convenient. “One of our clients,” Brandt says, “calls us a 24-hour community meeting.” (Notably, coUrbanize includes “community guidelines” that require citizen-users to register with their real names, which has minimized the planning-feedback equivalent of spam. “We hear from our municipal partners that the feedback they get on coUrbanize is often a lot more on point,” Brandt says.)

To make the most of this accessibility, cities or developers using coUrbanize or any such platform must give some fresh thought to how they present their ideas. As Cotter notes, even basic terms like “setback” or “density” may mean little to a layperson. (As a prompt for community feedback, PlaceMatters has used such creative means as a “pop-up” installation to demonstrate the benefits of a protected bike lane in Portland, Oregon, in real, physical space.) CoUrbanize offers planners and developers an intuitive template for presenting ideas in both images and words—almost like a Kickstarter campaign’s home page.

Of course, it’s really up to users to make the most of the platform. And because the coUrbanize business model depends in part on developers signing on, Brandt emphasizes that this sort of platform can more quickly and efficiently reveal problems that under normal circumstances could have led to costly project delays. Most of the firm’s early clients and projects are concentrated in Massachusetts, but it has also worked with others in Atlanta and elsewhere who have sought out coUrbanize. This year, the firm will expand its focus to New York and San Francisco.

The ideal is a “win win win,” as Brandt puts it—benefiting all players. Certainly, the potential payoff for actual community members—users of coUrbanize, but also of other efforts to broaden the planning process with technological tools—is particularly intriguing. And, as Cotter says, that is something planners have sought for years, and it’s becoming more plausible as technologies improve. The key, she says, is to “give people the confidence that they’ve been heard, and that their input will be considered.” Even if that input isn’t followed, it should be made clear what tradeoffs were involved and why.

“So many people don’t know that they can shape their neighborhoods,” Brandt says. “They don’t know what planning is, and they’ve never been to a meeting.” Maybe the current wave of tech-driven platforms can help change that: “A lot more people are online,” Brandt argues, “than those who are available at 7 o’clock on Tuesday night.”

Rob Walker (robwalker.net) is a contributor to Design Observer and The New York Times.

Photograph: Karin Brandt

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

50 Years of Disaster Recovery Planning

Laurie Johnson is an internationally recognized urban planner who specializes in disaster recovery and catastrophe risk management. She is a visiting project scientist at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center at the University of California-Berkeley, chairs the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Earthquake Hazards Reduction, and serves on the steering committee of the Geotechnical Extreme Event Reconnaissance organization.

Robert Olshansky is professor and head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His teaching and research cover land use and environmental planning, with an emphasis on planning for natural hazards. He has published extensively on post-disaster recovery planning, planning and policy for earthquake risks, hillside planning and landslide policy, and environmental impact assessment.

Over the years, Laurie and Rob have coauthored several publications, including Opportunity in Chaos: Rebuilding After the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe Earthquakes and Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans. In this article, they discuss their collaboration and their work on a forthcoming Lincoln Institute book and Policy Focus Report, After Great Disasters: How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery.

LAND LINES: Together, the two of you have more than 50 years of experience working in the field of disaster recovery planning. What led each of you into this specialty?

Robert Olshansky: I have always been interested in the urban planning aspects of disasters—how to design cities to coexist with these forces, how to be more strategic and pragmatic in creating policies to reduce risks, and how to respond appropriately to natural events when they occur. But up until the mid-1990s, my focus was always on pre-disaster planning and policy.

All that changed after the twin January 17 earthquakes, in 1994 in Northridge, California, and in 1995 in Kobe, Japan. I was closely observing the recovery process in Los Angeles, when, on the first anniversary of the Northridge disaster, the Kobe earthquake provided a glimpse of what a truly large event could do to a modern urban area. A month later, I ran into Laurie Johnson at a conference, where we discovered common interests in learning from these two events, and my path was set.

I soon realized that recovery is, paradoxically, the most effective path for long-term hazard mitigation, because disasters increase awareness of natural forces and bring resources to bear on the problem. I also discovered that disasters provide planners with unusual opportunities for urban betterment. Conversely, if we are not prepared for these opportunities, we might find ourselves stuck with our new mistakes for years. As a planner, I see recovery as one of our profession’s greatest challenges. It encompasses all the multidisciplinary complexities of our field, and provides some of our greatest opportunities to right past wrongs. But the process transpires in a compressed time frame amid considerable tensions and frustration, which makes it particularly hard to manage. Each new recovery situation is a multifaceted case study of its own.

Laurie Johnson: Before Rob and I began collaborating, I studied geophysics and then urban planning. Shortly after graduation in 1988, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work for William Spangle and George Mader, pioneers in land use planning for geologically hazardous areas. When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck in 1989, we became more actively engaged with Bay Area cities on post-disaster recovery and rebuilding issues.

With support from the National Science Foundation, we hosted one of the first-of-its-kind conferences on rebuilding after earthquakes, at Stanford University in 1990. Planners from cities prone to earthquakes across the United States came to learn from planners who led rebuilding efforts following some of the world’s major urban earthquakes, in Skopje, Macedonia (then Yugoslavia, 1963); Managua, Nicaragua (1972); Friuli, Italy (1976); El Asnam, Algeria (1980); Mexico City (1985); and Armenia (1988). It was in those years that I became interested in rebuilding communities—and particularly in enhancing local government capacity to manage and lead post-disaster recovery.

LL: Laurie, you have a doctorate degree in informatics from Kyoto University. Why did you decide to go there to study?

LJ: I had tried to start work on a doctorate a couple of times earlier in my career, but in 2006 the stars finally aligned when Professor Haruo Hayashi invited me to join his disaster research center at Kyoto University. I was delayed again when I went to work on the post-Katrina recovery plan in 2006–2007. But it turned out that the New Orleans recovery experience offered an opportunity for a richer exchange with Japanese colleagues who had been deeply involved in Kobe’s recovery. I initially hoped to compare the U.S. and Japanese approaches to large-scale disaster recovery management for my dissertation, but eventually settled on doing a comparative analysis of recovery management in three U.S. cities: Grand Forks, North Dakota; Los Angeles, California; and New Orleans, Louisiana. I really valued the opportunity to reflect on the U.S. approaches with my Japanese colleagues, who, coming from a different governance system, helped me to see many elements of conflicting policy and gaps that I may not have appreciated otherwise.

LL: Rob, after Hurricane Katrina, you and Timothy Green conducted research for the Lincoln Institute on the Road Home Program, which dispensed more than $8 billion to New Orleans home owners to either repair their homes or sell them to the state. You found that residents in the worst-flooded areas were most likely to move away (see Green and Olshansky, “Homeowner Decisions, Land Banking, and Land Use Change in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” 2009). Do you know if that pattern, which suggests a very rational response to risk, has held up over time?

RO: We did find that flood depth was the variable most correlated with the decision to sell and move. Home value, income, race, and years of occupancy were not significant factors, at least at the scale of our data. This is a positive finding in terms of flood policy, and it is certainly better than finding that flood depth had no effect at all on home owner behavior. But whether actual reconstruction patterns have changed is unclear, because the data are simply not available. Visually, however, the parts of the city with the least rebuilding are generally at the lowest elevations, where the most damage occurred. So, yes, this does appear to reflect a rational response to flood risk.

But the reasons for that response may vary among different income groups. I suspect that many low-lying lots in the wealthier areas were subsequently acquired by buyers who built homes on them, whereas many lower-income owners who intended to rebuild were not financially able to do so. So the assertion that most people behaved “rationally” in the face of flood risk needs to be seen in a broader context. Furthermore, although flood depth was positively correlated with the decision to sell, the majority of home owners in the most flooded parts of the city—52 to 79 percent, depending on location—still opted to stay and rebuild.

LL: What are the challenges faced by buyout programs like the Road Home Program and other relocation strategies aimed at avoiding repeated catastrophic losses?

LJ: In the United States, the practice of post-disaster floodplain buyouts is fairly well established. Voluntary buyout programs typically target single-family homes that are more than 50 percent damaged by flood or within the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year flood zone. But federal post-disaster funding streams, like FEMA’s hazard mitigation grant program, also require that the buyout areas remain as open space or have some other nonoccupied use. Thus, if flooded communities have few available houses or infill opportunities, both rental and for-sale housing prices in the area may rise sharply and residents may decide to move away, creating a drag on local economies.

By their very nature, large disasters disrupt the physical, social, economic, and institutional systems of the communities affected. A major buyout program can create another wave of disruption that ripples through all these systems if it’s not designed and managed properly. In normal times, these systems are not as stressed or tightly coupled, so the disruption caused by a land redevelopment or retreat project is typically not as acute as in post-disaster times.

Grand Forks, North Dakota, provides one of the better examples of comprehensive recovery planning and stewardship of both people and place. After the 1997 flood, the city worked with federal and state partners and the private sector to acquire land and install infrastructure and services for a new residential neighborhood on higher ground, and they gave priority to the buyout property owners to relocate there. This helped to keep residents in the community and stabilize housing prices. Grand Forks also partnered with its neighbor, East Grand Forks, Minnesota, as well as federal and state agencies, to aggregate more than 2,200 acres of land obtained through the buyouts and levee protection projects. Subsequent construction of a permanent greenway along the Red River has helped change the downtowns of both cities and their economies for the better. But I should emphasize that this transformation was by no means easy. It took over a decade to accomplish, requiring sustained leadership, collaboration, and support.

LL: Laurie and Rob, the Lincoln Institute has been concerned for some years with two global forces: climate change and urbanization. Are climate events and urban development in hazardous locations likely to increase exposure to disasters? Are we prepared to deal with this?

RO: Disasters, particularly in coastal areas, are a significant international problem right now, regardless of these driving forces. This is a present-day problem, not a future problem. Many of the world’s most populated cities are ports on river deltas or estuaries, and many parts of these cities are below sea level. Many people also live on coastal barrier islands. Large storms strike each of these coastal areas several times each century, and after each storm we learn important lessons that we quickly forget. Meanwhile, cities worldwide are growing through both population growth and increasing urbanization. This makes the problem worse because more people are exposed, much of the urban growth occurs in the lowest places, and rapid, dense construction in many cities is of low quality. Although climate change exacerbates all of this, I would use climate change as the exclamation point to this argument rather than its starting point. So no, most places are not well prepared for either present-day storms or for the elevated number of coastal storm surges expected in the future.

LL: The two of you have just finished work on a major research project for Lincoln based on case studies of disaster recovery in six countries. Tell us about the cases you selected and why you chose them.

RO: We focused on recovery efforts in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. The common thread is that these were extremely large disasters that severely affected urban areas, and they offer lessons that are relevant for other countries, particularly the United States. With the exception of China, the countries we focused on have democratic institutions, in which a variety of governmental and nongovernmental organizations participate in carrying out recovery. I was especially interested in cases of relocation, which are always difficult to accomplish in democratic societies. We chose the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India both because of the land readjustment process and because of the widespread damage in rural areas similar in scale to the central United States. India is also of interest because its history of disasters illustrates a process of policy learning over time in a large and hazard-prone country. Indonesia is of interest for the same reason—it is probably the best example of rapid evolution of policy and practice as a result of learning from multiple disasters. In addition, the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Banda Aceh, occurring in the midst of armed conflict, is one of the greatest disasters in modern history. At the time it occurred, we decided to investigate the Indian Ocean tsunami, because it provided an opportunity to view recovery efforts taking place simultaneously in several countries. In China, we were drawn to the immense scale of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province and its relationship to ongoing processes of urbanization and land use change.

LJ: Rob and I had already written extensively about post-disaster recovery planning in many U.S. and Japanese cities. So, for this book, we decided to take a longer view of both countries’ approaches to recovery management. In the United States, we look at the evolution of recovery policy following the World Trade Center attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Sandy—all of which involved considerable federal funding and a centralization of federal and state authority. For Japan, we look briefly at the rebuilding of Tokyo after the devastating earthquake and fire of 1923, which made an indelible mark on the country’s disaster management philosophy and policy, and how that experience influenced the government’s approach to funding and managing recovery from the 1995 earthquake and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Our book also includes a look at disaster recovery in Christchurch, New Zealand, following the devastating sequence of earthquakes in 2010–2011 that caused repeated and widespread liquefaction, rockfalls, and ground subsidence. Researching this case study brought me back to my original professional passion: land use planning approaches in geologically hazardous areas. New Zealand’s government has taken a very active leadership role in the recovery, which provides a very good case for comparison with other national approaches that we describe.

LL: Drawing on these case studies, what are some of the key things planners and policy makers can do to better prepare for recovery after disaster strikes?

RO: In each of the cases, governments faced considerable uncertainty and had to balance the tensions between quickly restoring what was there before and deliberately creating betterment. Planners and policy makers need to reduce this uncertainty by finding funds, establishing clear procedures, streamlining bureaucratic processes, providing public information, and involving all stakeholders so that they can help inform good decision making and policy design. We provide several recommendations in the book that reflect a common set of principles: primacy of information, stakeholder involvement, and transparency.

LJ: Recovery after a major disaster is always complex and never fast enough for affected residents. However, the process can be improved by setting realistic expectations at the outset and by working to restore communities and economies quickly and equitably, empowering the full range of stakeholders—residents, businesses, land owners, insurers, utilities, and others—to participate in the process. In this way, governments can resolve preexisting problems, ensure governance for recovery over the long term, and reduce the risk of future disasters.

RO: Even better than smart recovery, however, is thinking ahead about strategies to manage future disasters. This is a good way to improve community resilience—the ability to survive, adapt, and recover from extreme events.

Photograph: Ikuo Kobayashi