Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
and supply authorities, environmental conservation agencies, health departments, social services, and educational departments. They all contribute to the mix of rural, suburban, or urban development. None has ever worked together to pool their mandates to contribute to post-disaster rebuilding. Since every state is geographically and culturally unique, how each state designs its disaster recovery regimes will vary. A coastal region faces different challenges than a mountainous place. From a national perspective, the resilience of the American economy would be enhanced if all states were to develop their integrated disaster re-development plans. Encouragement by the federal government could motivate action nation-wide at state and local levels. For example, Congress and the president could design a federal program of grants to fund statewide planning. Such federal assistance programs to stimulate nationwide planning launched the successful Coastal Zone Management (CZM) Program under the Department of Commerce in 1976. The CZM systems prepared coastal communities to anticipate storm surges and prepare for coastal floods at the same time as planning for the economic development of their coastal zones. The CZM Program engaged both local governments and state agencies. An earlier and also successful federal program was the U.S. Soil Conservation Service under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The SCS worked directly with local land owners and governments during the huge disaster of the "Dust Bowl" during the Great Depression and then for another 50 years. The SCS restored the soils of America and helped instill new parameters for land development that averted a repeat of the natural disaster, and state soil conservation programs continue this work. So there is a role for the federal government in enabling local and state governments and property owners to cope, but ultimately the locals need to act. In an exploratory essay such as this, one can only scope out the issues in each of the four dimensions that belong to local and state authorities. Follow-up studies to the Pace Summit could usefully address each of these four distinct challenges. Adaptive Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery Land use planning involves multiple participants. How shall potable water and sewer waste-water systems be designed? What transportation systems should be provided? Where should parks and wildlife corridors and habitats be sustained? What sources of electricity can serve the regions? How will food be delivered and from where? Where will different types of housing, school systems, and recreational areas be situated? Sophisticated land use planning techniques have emerged to mediate between these often competing demands, such as the use of environmental impact assessment procedures. Traditional land-use planning, zoning ordinances, and spatial development laws have matured greatly since the Second World War, and have strong professional foundations in practice, and yet many localities still do not yet have comprehensive plans. Few have enacted local laws adequate to the economic demands that confront them in the Great Recession of 2008, and virtually none have plans for post-disaster redevelopment. Moreover, existing specifications for building codes and spatial planning have been rendered obsolete by changing physical environmental conditions. The rising sea levels require a retreat from the coasts in all coastal regions; New York City has promulgated PlaNYC, a plan and planning process designed to make initial preparations for sea level rise, but Albany and all other coastal communities largely ignore this present challenge. Perhaps state and local governmental leaders mistakenly assume the coastal threats like only in remote future. Yet predicted the storm surges enhanced by higher sea 39