One BRIC at a Time

One of the long-standing questions concerning national disaster policy is why a state or community needs to suffer a presidentially declared disaster in order to be eligible for federal hazard mitigation grants to help improve its resilience against storms, floods,...

Unequal Exposure

On April 29, I will be moderating “Demanding Equity: Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” a 45-minute session in a special three-day virtual conference of the American Planning Association, NPC20 @HOME. The online conference is an attempt to replace the experience of...

Costly Coastal Arrogance

In the days shortly after World War II, writes Gilbert M. Gaul in The Geography of Risk, Morris Shapiro and his family were busy building their own version of Levittown, the famed suburban tract housing development of Long Island, on a barrier island in southern New...

Climate News from Florida and California

Warning to readers: This is not my usual single-focus essay. It is a collage of news from two coastal states with an assortment of serious natural hazards challenges—Florida and California. In recent years, their politics has tended to diverge widely, but perhaps we...