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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, earthquakes, and wildfires, or other possible calamities. Ever since passage of the Stafford Act in 1988, most or all federal support for hazard mitigation projects has depended on a disaster happening first, which then triggered a spigot of grants for risk-reduction projects under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It was almost a perverse twist on the famous alleged Willie Sutton justification for robbing banks....
Plotting Post-Pandemic Recovery
In recent years, the development of local or regional recovery plans following major natural disasters has become increasingly common. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has long encouraged such planning, and I led the production of two major FEMA-funded reports from the American Planning Association on the topic—Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction (PAS 483/484, 1998) and Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation (PAS 576, 2014). I’ve spoken repeatedly on the topic, trained planners, and valued the collective knowledge of the two teams we assembled to make those projects happen. The underlying idea is to help a community assess its losses, reassess its goals, and find the silver lining in the dark cloud...
Community Planning and Pandemics Podcast
Periodically, I have linked blog readers directly to a new podcast in the Resilience Roundtable series, produced by the American Planning Association and hosted by the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. Last fall, I became the moderator of this series, and the last, pre-pandemic podcast interviewed Florida planning consultant Julie Dennis about her experiences in recovery planning for Hurricanes Irma and Michael. Earlier this month, however, we shifted gears, and I interviewed Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. Our topic was community planning and pandemics, and she shared numerous insights into the public health and...
The Need for Resilient Infrastructure
This summer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is at last rolling out its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, and its first Notice of Funding Opportunity will likely be issued in September. In July, FEMA is airing a series of five weekly webinars to introduce BRIC to communities and state officials around the nation. BRIC is the practical result of provisions in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2018, to create a secure funding stream for what was formerly the Pre-Disaster Mitigation program. I plan to discuss all that in coming weeks on this blog. But the personal impact on me was to remind me to attend to an egregious oversight on my part that began earlier this year with...
A Taste of Reopening
People in the Chicago area, and many beyond, some well beyond, are familiar with the city’s decades-old Taste of Chicago, featuring booths in Grant Park from dozens of the city’s iconic restaurants. Wandering the closed streets within the park, you can get pizza, jerk chicken, Indian foods, and a wide variety of other edibles while listening to entertainment and enjoying the sun, as long as the weather holds. The event has spawned numerous imitators throughout the suburbs, such as Taste of Aurora and Taste of Evanston. But not this year. Big festivals are out, social distancing is in, masks are de rigueur, and the restaurants offer take-out or delivery, if anything. Some are now adapting to offering outside dining when weather permits,...
Weep for America, but Build Leadership
I weep for my neighborhood. I weep for Chicago. I weep for the state of criminal justice in America when a police officer, hand in his pocket, a look of utter indifference on his face, feels the sense of impunity that empowers him to kneel on a black man’s neck in broad daylight for more than eight minutes until he dies. I cheer for America’s resilient sense of justice when bystanders train their cell phone cameras on this officer and refuse to back down in documenting injustice while they plead for the man’s life. These mixed feelings have haunted me for more than a week now, as events have evolved across the nation. I am glad that the state of Minnesota has arrested and charged officer Derek Chauvin for murder, not out of a desire for...
Well Done, Faithful Servant
Starting this summer, John Fuller will find something new to do with his time. He is retiring after 41 years on the faculty of the University of Iowa, where he has been a professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) since 1979. But he has been much more. He had cross-postings in the Departments of Economics and Geography. He was the resident expert on transportation planning. At times, he chaired the planning school, and from 1979-1995, he was executive director of the Legislative Extended Assistance Group (LEAG) of the Iowa Legislature, which initiated policy research on issues of legislative importance. He also directed the Institute of Urban and Regional Research from 1979-1983. That is where I began working for him. I...
Inside the Hospital in the Time of Coronavirus
It started last Thursday evening after dinner. By 8 p.m., suffering shivers and chills and fatigue, I retreated to bed, unsure what was affecting me but hoping a solid night of sleep might provide some respite. I was near the end of two busy weeks. The previous week, I had been deeply involved in a huge experiment by the American Planning Association, which it called NPC20 @Home, a three-day online professional conference that would replace its canceled National Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston April 25-28. Instead, on opening day, April 29, I was moderating a session with three speakers[i] on “Demanding Equity: Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery.” We had rehearsed our approach, and it came off seamlessly...
Make America Mature Again
What follows is an adapted, re-edited version of a Facebook post from today that seems to have struck a nerve, attracting dozens of likes, comments, and shares. As a result, I concluded that perhaps I should add it to this blog. No pictures here, just observations: We as a nation come from ancestors who nearly starved to death at Valley Forge but stuck it out to ensure the success of a revolution that created a new nation built on liberty, imperfectly at first, but expanding its range over centuries. Some of the toughest Americans come from ancestors who endured slavery over centuries to help build upon that legacy of liberty when they finally won their freedom. We come from ancestors who endured four grueling years of civil war to...
Doing the Left Undone
Often in this blog, I employ my professional expertise in urban planning to illuminate issues for readers, as I have tried to do with aspects of the pandemic in recent weeks. But in this post, my aim is far simpler and more mundane. I will apply the most generic form of personal planning to an issue that perhaps is needling your thoughts in coronavirus-imposed isolation. Perhaps you are working from home if you are lucky. Perhaps you are retired but unaccustomed to having nowhere to go. Or perhaps you are struggling with sudden job loss or taking care of another family member. If I help anyone to sort through the opportunities and silver linings within the dark clouds, then I will have served a function. And there is nothing I love better...
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 the canceled National Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston, April 25-28. For the first time in APA history, the annual event will not go forward as planned. Like numerous other conferences, it was untenable to assemble thousands of participants in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is possible to provide a decent educational opportunity in its place by broadcasting and recording distance learning and letting participants ask questions...
Test of Moral Imagination
Okay, now I’m angry. I had not intended to produce another blog article quite so soon, but false prophets are rampaging through the vineyards of the Lord. Fortunately, there are only a few of them reported so far, two of whom have been cited for certain misdemeanor offenses. But with the coronavirus, it takes only two megachurch pastors calling hundreds of people to live church services to let loose the plague on not only their own followers but everyone around them. They need to get some common sense and knock it off. In addition, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia, has called students back to the campus after spring break, ignoring the actions of almost every other college in...
Isolated Adjustments
I miss my gym already, closed just two weeks ago. There was a profusion of equipment to keep anyone in shape, whether you were working on legs, biceps, core, cardio, some combination, whatever. Here at home, I have small barbells, some ankle weights, and perhaps most importantly, a newly tuned 26-inch bicycle. There are other bicycles in our garage, mostly to accommodate grandchildren but also one my wife uses. We were out briefly yesterday for a ride in the neighborhood before the blustery spring winds brought more rain. Closed entrance to the 606 Trail at California Ave. A friend joked a few days ago that, after closing the Lakefront trail, adjacent parks, and beaches, and the 606 Trail plus park district field houses and playgrounds,...
Weak Links in the Chain
Resilience has become almost a buzzword with regard to how communities handle adversity and disasters, albeit a very useful buzzword. It focuses our attention on how we can better prepare for and cope with such events. The question of the moment is how the concept of resilience applies to our response to coronavirus. One of many hospitals in Chicago, all of which have visitor restrictions in place due to the coronavirus pandemic. I am not and never have been a public health expert, though, as an urban planner and adjunct planning professor, I have often worked with such people. I say this because I want to be clear about the prism through which I am viewing the coronavirus pandemic as a public health disaster. What I bring to the task is...
For the Love of Public Spaces
If the doctor’s office had not called, I would not even have been here writing. I would perhaps have been on the CTA Blue Line on the way to my appointment, or more likely walking from the train station to his office. But they called less than an hour before the appointment. The urologist merely needs to follow up on a February 26 procedure, so could we just do a telephone consultation? Frankly, I had wondered why they had not offered that option already, so I accepted. The only difference it would make, I noted, was that I had planned to use the opportunity to shoot photos of the empty “el” cars, the empty streets as I moved up Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River, and perhaps the empty Millennium Park downtown, if it was in fact...
America’s Public Health Disaster
Every day seems to bring shocking news. Restaurants and schools close, conventions are canceled, overseas travelers face unexpected obstacles in coming home. The United States of America, like much of the rest of the world, is facing a crisis unlike any in our lifetimes. While I understand many of the protocols because of a background in disaster recovery, my intellectual and professional focus has dealt with natural disasters, not pandemics, so I will not claim any special expertise. I’d rather listen to the medical experts who have studied the issue in depth. But at 70, I can relate on a personal level to the concerns of older citizens who are most at risk in a way that I know I never could have done at a younger age. While I remain...
Awesome Natural Attraction in Nebraska
Last week, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, for three days, attending and speaking at the Nebraska Planning and Zoning Association annual conference. But that is merely an excuse for being in the right place at the right time, for once in my life, to see one of nature’s more spectacular wonders—the migration of the sandhill cranes. I was told that a nature reserve had estimated their total presence at about 600,000 birds. In their annual migration from South America, they all funnel through about a 90-mile stretch of the Platte River in Nebraska each spring, right around this time. They come by the thousands. It is easy to see what may attract them. The river is very wide but shallow, just inches deep. Away from predators such as coyotes, they...
Planning Hurricane Recovery in Florida
An example of wind mitigation in action in Marathon, Florida: The remnants of the home in the foreground were from an older structure, while the homes in the background were built to code. The home in the foreground was sadly unable to withstand the destruction of Hurricane Irma. Photo courtesy Julie Dennis. Once again, as with previous short blog notes introducing podcasts, I will let the podcast speak for itself but offer an introduction. It has been my pleasure to know and work with Julie Dennis for the past decade. During most of that time, she was working for the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, formerly the Department of Community Affairs, assisting Florida communities with disaster recovery. More recently, she left to...
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 Jersey known as Long Beach Island. The place had largely been the preserve of fishing villages in earlier years, but Shapiro had a vision, one he passed along to his son, Herbert, in due time. Shapiro drained and built on what we now call wetlands, but in the 1940s, environmental values were a weak reed for resisting the onslaught of developers who believed in the next big real estate trend and the willingness of small villages to grow with them. And so, Morris persuaded...
Now Is the Time
In the mid-1960s, before the advent of the personal computer, when a manual typewriter was the state of the art in original document production, I took a high school typing course in which I learned the QWERTY keyboard and how to manipulate my fingers to put words on paper more rapidly. There were some curious practice exercises that people used to gain such mastery, memorized phrases that one might type repeatedly in order to build digital agility. One of them was this gem: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Even as I wrote this now, I did not make it to the end of the sentence without a stumble. Unlike my teenage days, however, I now can simply back up and overwrite mistakes or even just rely on...
Returning to Blogging as Usual
This blog has gone quiet for weeks until now, the second time since last May. My last post was about a month ago, linking readers to a newly released podcast in the Resilience Roundtable series for the American Planning Association. I will be doing more of those in coming months and will keep readers posted. After that, of course, followed the holidays, and some of my hiatus was associated with taking a little time off. But as in the seven-week break early last summer, the extended break this time was primarily for medical reasons. Without going into details, I had some difficult surgery January 3 that was immediately followed, in post-op, by some complications from a pre-existing condition that made for a difficult release. I am just...
Details on Puerto Rico’s Struggle after Maria
The most important feature of this post is simply the link. Clicking here will lead you to a newly published podcast about the recovery struggles of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in the fall of 2017. The recording--an interview between me and Professor Ivis Garcia, of the University of Utah, lasts just over an hour, so set aside some time. What you learn will make that investment worth it. The podcast is the seventh in a series called Resilience Roundtable, produced by the American Planning Association and hosted by the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. As of this fall, I have assumed the duties of moderator and interviewer, and this interview is my first. I hope you will find it worthwhile and a great...
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 are seeing a welcome convergence to some degree around climate issues. It is about time: Both face severe and unrelenting challenges, and there is little time to waste in identifying and implementing effective solutions. Let’s start with Florida. For starters, they are getting significant help from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), an organization that has long performed great work in preserving open space and researching the values of green infrastructure. For years, I have heard...
“We’re Yesterday’s News”
That headline is a quote from Mayor Tommy Muska of the town of West, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News of November 21, regarding the Trump administration’s rescission of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for disaster prevention in chemical facilities, issued that day. Aerial photo of the west explosion site taken several days after blast (4/22/2013). By Shane.torgerson - Aerial photo taken from my plane Previously published: Facebook and Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25727808 So much news passes under the bridge in one month these days that readers can be forgiven if they do not immediately recall what happened in West on April 17, 2013, but my guess is that many do. Or they may if I...
Facing Waterfront Hazards in Wilmington
Wilmington, a charming city of just over 100,000 on the far southern edge of the North Carolina coast, has taken some hits from coastal storms in recent years, most notably Hurricane Florence in 2018. Hurricane Dorian this year posed a minor threat but mostly left a trail of 14 identified tornadoes in its wake, a phenomenon familiar in the Southeast, though their association with hurricanes may be less well known elsewhere. Wilmington Planning Director Glenn Harbeck, who I was told was one of the most knowledgeable people in town for the purpose, on October 8 took me on a boat tour of much of the city’s interior waterfront to let me see and photograph the area along Hewletts Creek, a stream feeding into the Atlantic Ocean behind the...
Small Gestures Matter
Sometimes, it is worth remembering that the simple act of reaching out to say we care and stand behind others is enough to establish lasting and meaningful bonds between otherwise disparate groups of human beings.
About Blowing That Whistle
For the last four weeks, I have failed to find adequate time to write a respectable blog post. Events and past commitments have gotten the best of me. I spent four days in Iowa during the first week of this month, and two days in North Carolina the following week. In between, I was racing to stay ahead of the demands of my online teaching for the University of Iowa. One surprise request for consulting work intervened on a very short-term basis. Why do I mention this? Because, despite that drought of blog production, this blog has been gaining new subscribers by the hundreds weekly, a trend still underway. It seems logical to conclude, without any new posts, that the most recent article, “If You See Something, Say Something,” from...
If You See Something, Say Something
National Park Service photo We have become so accustomed to a certain Homeland Security phrase since the events of September 11, 2001, that we have never seriously contemplated its larger meaning. “If you see something, say something,” for most people simply means that, if you notice something strange, someone leaving a package on a train platform and walking away, for instance, you need to call 911 or point it out to a nearby security official. Having done our civic duty, we can go on about our lives and hope for the best. We may save someone’s life, or we may simply be exercising caution. Check it out. But suppose we interpreted that phrase in the context of our duties as citizens of an endangered, or even potentially endangered,...
Discovering a Piece of Chicago
It is possible to live in a city as large as Chicago and be blissfully unaware of some wonderful things. Chicago, after all, includes 2.7 million people spread over 227 square miles. My wife and I have lived here since 1986, but we do not spend much of our time traversing unfamiliar neighborhoods. Like most people, we have well-worn paths, and at times we visit new areas where we know people and learn from them. Also, like most people with cars, we drive by certain areas without taking time to really see all that they contain, as one might on foot. Because I walk through my own neighborhood, I know a great deal about what is happening. But there are others where I have not a clue. Chicago is nothing, however, if not full of pleasant...
Twenty Thousand and Rising
What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this blog continued to find new subscribers—and their numbers just yesterday crossed the 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen. I would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I can only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my lack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling. I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4 holiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical history concerning the...
Simple Gifts
I wasn’t even supposed to usher on Sunday. My wife and I are part of the usher team at Augustana Lutheran Church in Chicago, but our usual commitment is for the fourth Sunday each month. Jean was elsewhere that day, but I came with our grandson, Alex. I promptly learned from another usher that two men expected to serve were missing. She asked if I could assist her. Why not? I agreed. Later, she asked if I could be the one who stayed outside in the narthex. One of us usually remains out there to greet late-arriving visitors, distribute bulletins, and take a count of the attendees. During the offering, two more ushers join to assist in passing the collection plates. All in all, it is a relatively easy way to be of service. Sometimes, there...
I Can See Clearly Now
Some readers may have noticed that it has been seven weeks since I last posted to this blog (May 13). That delay was not by design but resulted from circumstances. For two weeks immediately after that last item, I was largely on the road, but that has happened before without slowing my pace. What followed most certainly did. In early April, after sensing some eye strain in late winter, I responded to notices from Pearle Vision that it had been more than two years since my last eye exam. My last prescription for glasses was in 2016. I figured an updated prescription would cure the problem, as it had before. This time, the optometrist noted some indications of cataracts, though he stated that an ophthalmologist would have to determine...
Ghosts in the Schoolyard
In 2013, the board of education of the Chicago Public Schools succeeded in closing 50 neighborhood schools, an action fully supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Of these, 90 percent had a majority of African American students, who comprised 80 percent of students in the closed schools. These, in turn, comprised fully one-fourth of the city’s schools with a majority of both African American students and African American faculty. Chicago is not a city where people take abuse and discrimination lightly. Predictably, many parents in the affected neighborhoods rose up in civic rebellion. At Dyett High School, they launched a hunger strike to make their feelings known. Protesters succeeded in keeping Dyett open, but overall, little of this had any...
Breaking Our Hearts
This week, it seemed as if the world was determined to break my heart. I am sure I am not the only one who felt that way, but I may be the one who puts two seemingly unrelated events together and wonders how we come to such a pass. I often write about how we can minimize losses from natural disasters, but today’s topic is tragedy wrought by humans upon others. Illinois Let me start closer to home. In Crystal Lake, an outer-ring Chicago suburb, a five-year-old boy, “AJ” Freund, was found in a shallow grave in an isolated site near his home. Police found him during an investigation triggered by the boy’s father, who called 911 to report that he was missing. Police dogs tracing his scent at home found no evidence that he had walked out the...
Gratitude on Parade #10
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparadeOne of the finest assets of any city or region is its cultural organizations, particularly for the arts. I've long been a member and officer of the Society of Midland Authors, a Midwest home for authors that is based in Chicago. And I've learned that these organizations don't just maintain themselves. Dedicated people do hard work to sustain them. In the case of SMA, such people have done this for nearly 105 years since the group's founding in 1915 with the likes of Harriet Monroe, Sherwood Anderson, and others. What a legacy. In the current day, Thomas Frisbie, like his father, Richard, before him, has invested years of his life and countless hours of time as president, newsletter editor, and...
Great Lakes Merit Protection
I grew up near the shores of Lake Erie, in suburban Cleveland. After a seven-year stint in Iowa and Nebraska, I ended up in Chicago, where I have lived since 1985. The Great Lakes have been part of my ecological and geographic consciousness for essentially 90 percent of my lifetime. As an urban planner, that means I am deeply aware of their significance on many levels. It will surprise no one, then, that as a planner who has focused heavily on environmental and natural hazards issues, I have been involved in projects aimed at protecting that natural heritage. As manager of the Hazards Planning Center at the American Planning Association (APA), I involved APA as a partner with the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) as ASFPM...
Gratitude on Parade #9
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparade Kristin Hoskin had been on my list for these tributes, but I thought it wise to let the dust settle after the Christchurch terrorist attack before saluting her in Gratitude on Parade. Most certainly, however, her gracious reaction to my blog post about the incident two weeks ago confirmed the very reason for including her here. She reaffirmed the New Zealand commitment to human decency. I met Kristin in late 2007 after speaking on a panel in Reno, Nevada, at a conference of the International Association of Emergency Managers. Her question was whether I might entertain an invitation to New Zealand as a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ) at the University of...
Romping through South Florida
Two weeks ago, I spun a narrative about hazard mitigation in Hillsborough County, Florida, based on both prior knowledge and a personal tour conducted by long-time colleague Eugene Henry. Today, a full month or more after that visit, I add notes about touring the Sarasota area with my personal friend and high school classmate, David Taylor. David is a Vietnam veteran and professional photographer who was part of the Brecksville (Ohio) High School class of 1968. Yes, we graduated in the middle of it all in the late 1960s. Unlike me, David was drafted into the army. I maintained a student deferment initially, then went untouched by the draft lottery, which reached 125 the year I surrendered my deferment. Numbers were based on the...
Gratitude on Parade #8
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparade I got off track with these tributes in large part because of the amount of planning work I was doing including work with or for APA, including the APA Division - Hazard Mitigation/Disaster Recovery Planning Division. One person who would have approved is someone who passed away on February 22, which unfortunately means I did not write this soon enough for him to enjoy his own tribute. I learned of Frank So's untimely death just recently. I was able to obtain a photo from APA just today. Frank spent many years as either the deputy director or the executive director of the American Planning Association before retiring in 2001, in large part because of his wife's declining health at that time. Frank was...
Reacting to Terror in Christchurch
New Zealand is a nation that counts its annual totals of gun homicides in single digits, as a friend of mine who just returned from a visit Down Under accurately notes. It is, by comparison to most of the world, an incredibly peaceful, peace-loving country. Yet two days ago, on Friday, March 15, an Australian white nationalist allegedly killed 50 people and wounded 39 others in a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island. This same city lost 185 people in a series of earthquakes in 2011, but that was a natural disaster. While it delivered painful lessons about building standards and preparedness, it did not hang the specter of evil over the city or the nation. Brenton Harrison Tarrant is alleged to...
Mitigation Challenges on the Florida Gulf Coast
Hillsborough County is a dense metropolitan area, anchored by the city of Tampa. Tampa and nearby St. Petersburg, in Pinellas County, sit on opposite shores of Tampa Bay, a 400-square-mile expanse of water connected to the Gulf of Mexico. Across that gap sits the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a magnificent and scenic section of I-275. On a sunny day, it displays coastal Florida in all its glory. Eugene Henry, like anyone else, enjoys those sunny days, but he also worries about what may happen when the region suffers inclement weather. As Hillsborough County’s Hazard Mitigation Program Manager, it is his job to think about how well the area will fare under the impact of natural and other disasters, which can include hurricanes, floods,...
Gratitude on Parade #7
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparade The size of the American Planning Association's loss when Stuart Meck departed can be measured easily by the size of Rutgers University's gain when he joined their staff, a fact immortalized by the Rutgers decision to name a lecture series after him. Marya Morris, who probably worked most closely with him at APA, got the opportunity recently to present the eulogy at the opening of that series. She shared some memorable stories, including his near death in the early 2000s when he was struck with an intestinal infection while they both were in Prague. It seems the Czech government felt it could learn a great deal about planning law reform by having Stuart Meck lead a 12-session workshop on the subject...
Gratitude on Parade #6
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparadeMichael J. Stanch, who likes to describe himself humorously as a "recovering attorney," has returned with his family to his home state of Minnesota after 24 years in Illinois. He has been an invaluable asset to a program that has produced dozens of energy efficiency retrofit projects for Chicago-area churches. He operated his own energy firm, Stanch Lighting and Energy, but more importantly for this tribute, was a central figure in the success of the Environmental Concerns Working Group of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). From 1989-2010, in its formative period, I chaired this group, but Mike came along at a critical time. I had already worked out a...
Gratitude on Parade #5
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparadeAlong with John Erickson, Maryanne Salcetti played a key role in my early journalistic development. As the co-editor with her husband of the weekly news, a regional newspaper in Iowa City, she took me on as a part-time cub reporter while I was still in graduate school. That gave me some valuable early experience in local news reporting, mostly about small town government in the area. But she also knew and could see I had larger ambitions, and she encouraged them. Later, after she had moved on to become an instructor in journalism at John Carroll University in east suburban Cleveland, she remained supportive when Raising Less Corn and More Hell came out from University of Illinois Press, and at one...
Reducing Risk from Natural Hazards
Eroded hillsides have helped push New Zealand to adopt its own approach to risk reduction. Late in 2017, I received an inquiry from Oxford University Press. Professor Ann-Margaret Esnard at the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University had recommended me for an assignment they had in mind to add an article to their growing specialty encyclopedia on natural hazards, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. They needed someone to write a peer-reviewed article about “Planning Systems for Natural Hazard Risk Reduction,” using roughly 10,000 words plus appropriate graphics and illustrations. We discussed why they saw me as an appropriate candidate for the job, and I accepted the assignment. Over the following few...
Gratitude on Parade #4
GRATITUDE ON PARADE#gratitudeonparadeI am devoting much of this week to people who contributed in significant ways to my early publishing career. For the last 35 years or more, I have mixed journalism and writing skills with technical and professional knowledge to fulfill my aspirations. Many people helped make that possible. One of them was my advisor for the master's program in journalism at the University of Iowa, John Erickson. I have no photo to offer from way back then or more recently. He is now emeritus professor, and I hope enjoying a well-earned retirement, but I have not heard from him in a long while. Nonetheless, way back in early 1984, when I needed to decide on a master's project to complete my degree requirements, I met...
Prisoners of Profit
Cover photo provided by Random House It is hard to know where to start in describing why the privatization of prisons is a terrible idea. The effective abandonment of public responsibility for the fate and welfare of people sentenced to incarceration after being convicted of various crimes—some of whom, in recent years, have been exonerated because of revelations of sloppy or corrupt police work—should speak deeply to the conscience. Apparently, in some legislative circles, however, money counts for more. The lobby for private prisons has made headway over time at both the federal and state levels. To find out whether and how private prisons are particularly dysfunctional, Shane Bauer, a senior reporter for Mother Jones, went undercover...
Gratitude on Parade #3
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade[Partners of] the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Digital Coast program are hosting a meeting in Washington, D.C., today of the Digital Coast Partnership, an assortment of eight national nonprofit organizations willing to support geotechnical services to coastal communities across the U.S. The Digital Coast staff have been leading this effort for more than a decade, and the result is better decision making on coastal land use and resource management among the communities using Digital Coast tools and resources. I attended these meetings and participated in Digital Coast projects until I left the American Planning Association, one of those partners, in 2017. But as of 2010, when APA...
Gratitude on Parade #2
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Today's late-night entry has no photo because I have none from so long ago, certainly not digitized, anyway--or easily found. That makes Lynn Saunders's contribution to my career no less seminal or memorable. An English teacher at Brecksville High School, she was the willing and required faculty member who became the adviser to our budding Writers Club, a new entity in 1967 that was the brainchild of a handful of aspiring student writers, including me as I entered my senior year. With her encouragement, we produced our own literary journal, "The Tenth Muse Recently Discovered in Brecksville." We young literati were probably not the most popular types in our Ohio school, but we may have been among the...
Gratitude on Parade
Gratitude on Parade #1 Okay, call me a copycat. If an idea is good enough, why not copy it proudly? On New Year's Day, I read in a Chicago Tribune column by Heidi Stevens about a woman, Jen Kramer, who began a daily effort on Facebook a year ago as #yearoflove. Every day she posted about someone who meant something. It occurred to me that we all have many people for whom we should be grateful, and we may not always do a good job of saying so. I thought hard about whether I could sustain a daily effort for a year as Kramer did, and then I thought, you're a professional writer. How hard can one paragraph a day be? So I decided to take the plunge, starting that day, with #gratitudeonparade. Friends will begin learning why I am grateful and...
Gift to the World
As a New Year arrives, perhaps it was the gift-giving season and the story of Christmas that prompted this blog post. Or, perhaps, it was simply lurking in my subconscious mind, awaiting the appropriate opportunity to emerge into the light of conscious deliberation. These are not, of course, mutually exclusive possibilities. Almost any experienced writer can attest that ideas have a way of burrowing into our minds and fermenting through periodic reflection and creative thinking. This one, I confess, has had an especially long period of germination, but I am finally prepared to shape it and share it. (I have no apology for my mixed metaphors.) In my twenties and early thirties, I traveled what I would now consider a rather tortuous route...
Building Codes Matter
Ask Anchorage after last Friday’s 7.0 earthquake. Admittedly, this is not the biggest earthquake the area could have suffered. The famous 1964 earthquake registered at 9.2, triggered a tsunami, and killed an estimated 130 people. Still, by and large, things seemed to work as planned. Ask the mayor. And the governor. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz says building codes and good preparation minimized structural damages. No one died. Berkowitz even stated to PBS that other cities would want to emulate Anchorage “because Anchorage did this right.” Alaska Governor Bill Walker admitted to sometimes grousing about strict building codes but conceded, “Building codes mean something,” stating that his own home suffered only minor water damage. What worked?...
Sobering Portrait of a Fiery Future
Summarizing the major points from a densely factual book like Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future, by Edward Struzik (Island Press, 2018), is about as challenging as understanding precisely what is happening in the midst of a rapidly moving massive wildfire. While California is not the focus of Struzik’s book, I might note that confronting such fires in November, such as we have seen on the news in recent weeks, ought to prod more interest in the recent National Climate Assessment and similar climate change science. The wildfire season most decidedly used to be shorter in California, a point Gov. Jerry Brown has made repeatedly. Put more bluntly, it is time to drop the political knee-jerk reactions and study the findings....
Aligning Planning and Public Health
Just nine days ago, on November 15, I stood in front of two successive audiences of long-term health care practitioners to present workshops at a conference in Wisconsin Dells discussing, of all things, “Fundamentals of Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery.” Where, some might ask, is the nexus between these two subjects? Patients who survived evacuations from New York City area hospitals, six in the city itself and one just outside, during Hurricane Sandy would know. People with disabilities, the elderly, the ill are especially vulnerable during disasters, and moving them out of harm’s way is no picnic. They cannot just grab the keys to their cars and drive out of town ahead of the storm. Evacuating them is a major undertaking that must be...
Housing the Needy after Disaster
This post will be brief. Rather than ask you to read my thoughts, I want you to listen--hard. It has long been known among disaster recovery planners that lower-income citizens are considerably more vulnerable to disasters largely because of the marginal resilience of most low-income housing. The affluent can afford to build fortresses, some of which may still be lost to the elements, but those in second-rate housing, poorly maintained multifamily buildings, and most certainly the homeless, face life-or-death dilemmas when disaster strikes in any form. They live with mold without the resources to make expensive repairs. They face shortages of affordable housing. Federal programs designed to help them often fall short. Few people have...
Why I Agree with Mother Jones
Last night, I read one of those publisher columns that are often boring and laborious, but this one nailed it. Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein recounted a conversation with a veteran editor she admires who inquired about the partisan bias he perceived in the monthly magazine. Unquestionably, the magazine is known for a left-wing tilt, but it should be better known for its investigative reporting and willingness to ask hard questions. Over the years, after all, Mother Jones has not gone out of its way to spare Democrats, but it certainly is riding herd on President Donald Trump. And for good reason, although Trump is a symptom of a problem and not its origin. He is exploiting deep divisions and tribal instincts in a nation that seems...
Fatal Attraction
Explaining the frustrations of first responders in searching Mexico Beach, Florida, for survivors after Hurricane Michael, Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told Associated Press, “Very few people live to tell what it’s like to experience storm surge, and unfortunately in this country we seem not to learn the lesson.” Mexico Beach was ground zero for landfall of the hurricane a few days ago. But then Long was much more direct: “When state and local officials tell you to get out, dang it, do it. Get out.” The desire or willingness to “ride it out” among people who think the storm will never be as bad as they are told is unquestionably one of the most troubling facets of disaster response, especially when...
The Predictable Impact of Florence
It has been a few weeks of drought on this blog, but just the opposite in North Carolina, where Hurricane Florence dropped up to 30 inches of rain in some locations, and floods migrated downstream via numerous rivers to swamp cities both inland and near the coast. Now, Hurricane Michael threatens to compound the damage as it migrates northeast from its powerful Category 4 assault on the Florida Panhandle, with storm surges up to 14 feet in areas just east of the eye, which made landfall near Panama City. The blog drought was the result of both a bit of writer’s block, mostly induced by a busy schedule that included two conference trips over the past three weeks, combined with a bit of fatigue and a few significant diversions of my...
Taking Stock of Recent Disasters
We learn from disasters as we recover from them, but each disaster teaches slightly different things. Sometimes the lessons are significant and historic; in others, one community is learning what others already know or should have learned from their own past events. Some years are relatively quiescent, as 2018 so far seems to be. And some become relentless slogs, like 2017. Adam Smith, lead scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, noted in a plenary panel in July for the 2018 Natural Hazards Workshop, in Broomfield, Colorado, that the tally for 2017 disasters had exceeded $200 billion. This is more than 40 percent of the tally so far of billion-dollar disasters for...
Standards of Public Behavior
Like John McCain’s assuredly final book, The Restless Wave, I read Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, by James R. Clapper, in large part because my wife bought it for me. The usual pathway to my desk for books I discuss in this blog is that they get sent as review copies from a publisher. Not so in this case. Jean follows much more news in her retirement, hears about books by current and former public officials, and occasionally chooses to bring one to my attention by buying it. She knows that I am likely to read it, though it may take a while if I get bogged down with other business. I am also unlikely to read the entire spate of such books in this age of Trump because I don’t have enough time. They seem to be...
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