Houston and Harvey, as well as the several other disasters of 2017 and prior, are continuing to bring to light this larger need of assessing and addressing hazards in conjunction with development plans, which is an ongoing challenge within the practice of planning. Increasingly vulnerable existing development would greatly benefit from local practitioners more aggressively tackling this perpetuated lapse in judgement, and, thus, it is essential to understand what the barriers are and how planning can overcome them.
FEMA defines hazard mitigation as “sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate the long term risk to human life and property from hazards.”3 Mitigation differs from preparedness, which is action typically taken in the short-term prior to an adverse event, and recovery, which is partly short-term and reactionary to an adverse event. Adaptation, defined as “adjustment to environmental conditions”,4 is hard to distinguish from mitigation as both can achieve similar outcomes utilizing similar tools, but an important distinction is that mitigation focuses on reducing risk, which is not necessarily inherent in adaptation. Thus, mitigation as a process should be distinctive to the practice of planning, which also sets out to minimize negative outcomes recurrent in the built environment.
The power of land use management to mitigate flood hazards was famously written as early as the 1930s and 1940s by the late geographer Gilbert F. White. White considered changes in land use “a more reliable readjustment” that “permanently remove[s] damageable property and services beyond the reach of floods.”5 There was recognition that this process would occur over long periods of time, but that “there was little doubt that public powers can and should be exercised in greater degree to prevent an extension of unwise floodplain occupance.”6
Around the same time, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was established in 1933, contributing many flood control projects for its region (Tennessee River Basin). “[A]fter sobering experience with investment in flood control works without substantial reduction in total flood hazard in the area, ...[the TVA] became the first construction agency to pay systematic attention to the possibilities that losses could be reduced by other means than levees, channels and reservoirs.”7 By the early 1950s, the TVA began exploring the “possible application of flood data to planning programs,” coining the term “flood management,” and, by the end of the decade, submitting a report to Congress emphasizing that “‘local communities have the responsibility to guide their growth so that their future development will be kept out of the path of floodwaters.’”8
Ian L. McHarg, the late professor in the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, published his seminal book Design with Nature (1969), which documented his ecology- based planning techniques. His “ecological inventory” was a tool to help designers “understand current functions and states in addition to identifying problems and opportunities that would otherwise be missed.”9 Through his writings and his work, McHarg positioned the planner and designer as having the ability and responsibility to work with the environmental context, integrating knowledge from the natural sciences, in order to develop designs that did not contribute to the degradation of the environment. One of his exemplary professional projects of this nature was planning The Woodlands, Texas in the early 1970s, which his inventory technique revealed flooding issues that were appropriately considered throughout the design of the community.
These historical examples demonstrate the power of attentive land use management for mitigating hazards, and that the discussion of these concepts are not new. Even today, advocating for flood hazard mitigation as being a larger part of local land use management stems for the recognition that the local level is on “the frontlines of flooding” and can “readily control land use to manage floodplain development, a key strategy for reducing flood damage.”10 Understanding how hazard mitigation can be achieved through land use planning is an ongoing endeavor for practitioners, despite the acknowledgement of its critical role.
In addition to the recognition that changes in land uses can mitigate hazards, and given that land uses are predominantly managed through planning, it is necessary to discuss how planning contributes to hazard mitigation. In Cooperating with Nature: Confronting natural hazards with land-use planning for sustainable communities, Raymond J. Burby et al. write in-depth about what planning can contribute to mitigating hazards. Planning involves the “systematic evaluation of alternative courses of action” which can lead to an approach that not only reduces vulnerability but also considers “a community’s present circumstances, future prospects, and the goals and aspirations of its residents.”11
In fact, land use planning and hazard mitigation are quite similar:
“Hazard mitigation and land use planning share a future orientation. They are concerned with anticipating tomorrow’s needs, rather than responding to yesterday’s problems. Both are proactive rather than reactive. Both seek to gear immediate actions to longer-term goals and objectives. Together they can be powerful tools for reducing the costs of disasters and increasing sustainability of communities.”12 [emphasis in original]
Hazard mitigation adds a technical specification to plans. “Having a specific flood policy contained within a comprehensive plan has the strongest statistical correlation with damage reduction.”13 In turn, planning adds a comprehensive vision to hazard mitigation strategies. “Comprehensive plans consider a broad range of growth and development issues so that a specific flood policy would be embedded into the overall future land use pattern of a community, where it will most likely be more effective in attaining intended mitigation goals.”14 Research has also shown that plans are more effective and communities better prepared when flood mitigation strategies are integrated into comprehensive planning.15
Professional organizations such as the American Planning Association (APA) have also weighed in on this contribution, as a means of signifying how necessary it is for planners to actively incorporate hazard mitigation. Planners have the ability to “think comprehensively about the challenges facing a community, how to address them with the resources available, and how to steer the public and its decision makers toward goals and objectives that are reasonably constructed to achieve the desired ends.”16 These skills are essential for pushing hazard mitigation strategies that might not otherwise be pursued.
Now as clear and unquestionable the integration of hazard mitigation into local land use planning may appear to be, there are specific challenges that have continually hindered progress. Through use of other loss reduction mechanisms, e.g. structural interventions, stricter design standards and evacuation measures, governments at all levels have instilled a level of protection that seemingly rivals that of land use management. Areas that are still very much hazardous to occupy are then deemed “safe” and “profitable”, making land use planning approaches “a threat” to economic interests and growth.17 The proposal of land use changes post-disaster become highly dependent on “public and political willingness.”18 As time from the event increases, the motivation for change decreases.
Another challenge is that often communities have a stand-alone hazard mitigation plan, as it is a requirement to be eligible for federal mitigation grants.19 Stand-alone hazard mitigation plans can be drafted by the community itself or a wider range document that covers multiple communities or a whole region. It has been thoroughly debated the comparable efficacy of stand-alone hazard mitigation plans to comprehensive plans that incorporate hazard mitigation, and, ultimately, incorporation into comprehensive plans leads to reaching more areas of community development and relate the strategies to other issues dealing with housing, public infrastructure, economic development, transportation and more.20
There is also a tension between whether to plan before or after a disaster. While integrating hazard mitigation into local land use planning is important, there is a distinction as to when that process happens and why. In its recent report Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation, the APA encourages local planners to engage in pre-disaster planning because, without incorporation of hazards into long- term planning, communities will not “confront the fact that land use choices greatly affect the outcomes with their resulting losses of lives and property.”21 Planning ahead of a disaster can afford “opportunities to achieve complementary goals and objectives such as reducing hazards exposure while achieving smart growth and sustainable development policies.”22 Post-disaster planning has its benefits, but for a price. The post-disaster setting allows for generation of new ideas and alternative strategies, but this occurs under a compressed time frame and decisions made during this period may be hard to justify with the public. For example, in post-Katrina New Orleans, the Bring Back New Orleans Commission developed a plan that clustered rebuilding at high elevations within the city and identified potential future parkland in lower, more damaged areas.23 However, the planning process, hastily done post-disaster, did not involve public participation and was met with backlash by citizens who interpreted it as a means to push out marginalized groups within the city. Had the proposals made in the infamous “Green Dot Map” been part of the visioning of the city before the disaster with public input, the recovery of New Orleans could have had potentially stronger outcomes.
Despite the extensive writings reinforcing the significance of integrating hazard mitigation into local land use planning and the few local success stories, it is still yet to be done in wider practice. In order for this to be achieved, planners need to have “the courage to make tough decisions.”24 This means planning for the most-likely scenario and the worst-case scenario. This means strengthening the existing hazard mitigation strategies as well as developing new ones to better fit community needs. This means “removing the built environment from harm’s way to the extent possible.”25
3 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), “Integrating Hazard Mitigation Into Local Planning: Case Studies and Tools for Community Officials” (Washington D.C., 2013), 1-1.
4 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “Adaptation,” accessed May 6, 2018, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adaptation.
5 Gilbert F. White, Human Adjustments to Floods, 182.
6 Gilbert F. White, Human Adjustments to Floods, 182-3.
7 Gilbert F. White, Strategies of American Water Management, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 49.
8 “A Chronology of Major Events Affecting The National Flood Insurance Program” (FEMA Contract Number 282-98- 0029, Washington D.C., 2005), 4, 7.
9 Spirn, Ann. “Landscape Architecture, and Environmentalism: Ideas and Methods in Context.” In Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan and Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2000), 108.
10 Dan A. Tarlock and Deborah M. Chizewer, “Living with Water in a Climate-Changed World: Will federal flood policy sink or swim?” Environmental Law 46, no. 3 (2016): 491.
11 Raymond J. Burby and Timothy Beatley, Cooperating with Nature: Confronting Natural Hazards with Land Use Planning for Sustainable Communities, (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 1998), 2.
12 Raymond J. Burby et al., Cooperating with Nature, 85.
13 Samuel D. Brody, Wesley E. Highland and Jung Eun Kang, Rising Waters: The causes and consequences of flooding in the United States, (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 120.
14 Samuel D. Brody et al., Rising Waters, 120.
15 Samuel D. Brody et al., Rising Waters, 83.
16 James Schwab and American Planning Association, Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning, Report (American Planning Association, Planning Advisory Service No. 560, Chicago: American Planning Association, 2010), 4.
17 Raymond J. Burby et al., “Unleashing the Power of Planning to Create Disaster-Resistant Communities,” Journal of the American Planning Association 65, no. 3 (1999): 249-50.
18 Allison Boyd, J. Hokanson, Laurie Johnson, James Schwab, and Kenneth Topping. “Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation.” Planning Advisory Service Report, no. 576 (2014): 76.
19 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), “Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000,” (Public Law 106–390, Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2000), Accessed May 3, 2018, https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1524-20490-1790/dma2000. pdf.
20 Samuel D. Brody et al., Rising Waters, 83.
21 Allison Boyd et al, “Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” 7.
22 Gavin Smith, “Involving Land Use Planners in Pre-Event Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” Journal of the American Planning Association 80, no. 4 (2014): 306.
23 Allison Boyd et al, “Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” 79.
24 Allison Boyd et al, “Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” 7.
25 Allison Boyd et al, “Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” 14.