Qualitative Takes on Post-Disaster Recovery

By Reid Ewing

From January 1980 through June 2019, the U.S. experienced 250 individual weather- and climate-related disasters, each with damage costs exceeding $1 billion when adjusted for inflation. The cumulative cost of these 250 events exceeds $1.7 trillion. Because of climate change, it is hard to imagine how dire things will become in the future, but one thing is for certain: The frequency of major disasters is increasing. The 2018 wildfires in California, floods in Maryland, and Hurricanes Florence and Michael have become the new normal, and planners in many areas will have to plan for the worst-case scenario.

I recently came across two publications that offer some valuable insights to help planners prepare for the future of post-disaster recovery planning.

All about balance

The first publication is After Great Disasters: How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery, a 2016 report written by planners Laurie Johnson, FAICP, and Rob Olshansky, FAICP, and published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The report draws common lessons from six countries: China, New Zealand, Japan, India, Indonesia, and the U.S. The featured case studies in the U.S. are 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Sandy. Through contrasting good and bad planning responses to major disasters, the authors present two key lessons for practitioners:

LESSON 1: As crucial as smart recovery is, so is smart planning for future disasters. "Foresight improves community resilience: the ability of the community to survive, adapt, and recover from extreme events." It is generally much faster to restore and rebuild what existed before the disaster (in two or more years) than it is to make changes in urban development patterns and reconstruct differently in the wake of disaster (in 10 or more years).

But speedy recovery is not always the best answer, especially if communities are susceptible to catastrophic disasters. Planners must balance "speed and deliberation" in recovery; that is, facilitate quick reconstruction while also thinking carefully about the future. This is hard to do when "... new studies, plans, and designs compete with the old," but it is necessary. The authors urge communities to use the recovery moment as an opportunity to rebuild a more resilient region.

LESSON 2: One of the cardinal rules for higher levels of government is to increase local capacity and empower local governments to undertake recovery actions themselves. National governments can and should provide money, technical assistance, and oversight, but they should not dictate recovery actions since they are too far removed from grassroots recovery activity. Recovery is a process, not an outcome, and it is best driven at the local level. While the U.S. has historically taken a decentralized approach with state and local governments managing recovery, "... more recent disasters [have] led to the centralization of post-disaster recovery governance at both the national and state levels." This is exemplified by recent actions of HUD and Congress in Puerto Rico. This shift away from decentralized recovery management can erode the power and authority of local governments and local citizens to guide both disaster and "normal" development agendas.

Billion-Dollar Disasters

The financial toll from weather and climate disasters in the U.S. is rising. Events are included if they have caused more than $1 billion in direct losses. The 2019 data is through June, before the hurricane and wildfire seasons began.

Through June 2019. Credit: GlobalChange.gov.

Crisis as opportunity

The second publication, a case study of post-disaster recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy, was written by planners Donovan Finn, Divya Chandrasekhar, and Yu Xiao. Published online in the Journal of Planning Education and Research last month, the article is titled "A Region Recovers: Planning for Resilience after Superstorm Sandy." On October 29, 2012, Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey. It flooded the New Jersey coast, New York City, and suburban Long Island. New York State and New Jersey suffered losses of $33 billion and $30 billion, respectively. Keep these relative amounts in mind as you read on.

At the time, Sandy was the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history, with $71.5 billion in damages. Katrina was the costliest, with damages totaling $163.8 billion. As some idea what the future holds for us, the cost of Sandy has since been eclipsed by Hurricane Harvey ($126.3 billion) and Hurricane Maria ($90.9 billion), both in 2017.

The JPER article features six case studies, based on interviews (as are most case studies) with 43 municipal, state, and federal recovery officials and civic leaders substantially involved in the recovery planning process. Five of the examples illustrate what they describe as an "emergent recovery planning" approach focused on resilience, while the fifth case, New Jersey, serves as a counterexample showing how a more traditional business-as-usual recovery model works.

Despite comparable federal Community Development Block Grant allocations, the two states approached local community recovery very differently. New York State allocated 50 times more funding to its local planning assistance program than did New Jersey. The New York program also provided technical assistance for planning and implementation and emphasized public participation and resilience. "Communities were given wide latitude to develop their own planning priorities," the article states.

New Jersey provides a stark contrast. Its approach shunned most technical assistance and lacked implementation funding and regional collaboration, which put small communities with no experience in or capacity to do planning at a severe disadvantage. The result was poor-quality or fragmented local recovery planning and poor incorporation of resilience thinking into local plans.

Three of the case study communities, New York City; Hoboken, New Jersey; and Long Beach on Long Island embraced active planning for resilience after Sandy. A Stronger, More Resilient New York, for example, contains "257 action items including infrastructure upgrades, building retrofits, and coastal protections totaling $20 billion." The Office of Recovery and Resiliency, created in 2014, was tasked with implementing the plan and addressing new resilience challenges, including climate change. In contrast, "many other local governments were only interested in federal and state assistance to the degree that it facilitated rebuilding to the pre-disaster status quo." This was because they lacked the political leadership and will necessary to take a transformational approach to disaster recovery. They also lacked strong nonprofit partners who were able to add local capacity, while circumventing bureaucratic red tape.

In sum, using recovery to build long-term resilience requires empowering our local governments to make robust plans, to back their plans with significant investments, to create strong partnerships with nonprofits, and to have strong leaders to drive this agenda forward. Perhaps the most salient lesson from this article, which echoes the After Great Disasters report, is that when disasters strike, and they will, rebuilding will happen — and it must — so the post-disaster recovery period can, paradoxically, create opportunities to address existing social, economic, and environmental challenges. In other words, with resilience-oriented planning and redevelopment, cities and regions can turn lemons into lemonade.

This is my 71st and last column for Planning magazine. It has been a privilege to write this column for you, the professionals in a field that really makes a difference.

Reid Ewing is a distinguished professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, an associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association and Cities, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Planning Education and Research and Landscape and Urban Planning. He is a coauthor of the ULI book, Growing Cooler: The Evidence of Urban Development and Climate Change.