Planning for Resilience

Disaster Recovery Information

Exchange, June 23rd 2011

� The Evolving Nature of Disaster

� Planning and Crisis: a Problematic Relationship

� A New Narrative: From Sustainability to ResilienceResilience

� A “New Urban Operating System”

� Planning for Resilience

Sascha Grant, flickr

RaeA, flickr

Extreme weather / Climate change

Technological failures / Limits of technology

Inhabitat.com

Americablog

Pt. 1: The Evolving Nature of DisasterPt. 1: The Evolving Nature of Disaster

Japan Prepared for Disaster – but not to Respond?“Japan’s Full — and Perplexing — Recovery Needs” by Edward J. Blakeley

� Reputation for disaster preparedness

� Unable to respond effectively

� Strongly hierarchical, insular and conformist society

� …Decentralized, spontaneous response

� Lack of flexibility and adaptability

Nature of disaster risk must be continually be

redefined with changes to urbanization and socio-

economic conditions(Mitchell 1999)

Creativity+Timothy Hamilton [flickr]

Bekbek 75, flickr

The Evolving Nature of Disaster

� Increasingly urban: uncontrolled, inappropriate and conventional

� Governance: Incommensurate with � Governance: Incommensurate with growing demands

� Political Economy: Economic crisis, decline of the State

Seven Attributes of Crisis Situations (Alterman 2002)

� High degree of uncertainty and dependence on exogenous variables

� High degree of change � High degree of change

� High magnitude of risks and perceived threats

� System wide and complex anticipated impacts

Seven Attributes of Crisis Situations (Alterman 2002)

� Low degree of knowledge and understanding; existing solutions inadequateinadequate

� Challenge to the “symbolic” level [goals, norms and values]; low degree of goal consensus

� Urgency; high cost to delay

Pt 2: Urban planning and crisis:

A problematic relationshipA problematic relationship

Urban Planning

(Hayden & Warr)

Rational Process Planning

� Assess Alternative Plan Scenarios

� Select the Preferred Alternative

� Implement the Plan� Implement the Plan

� Monitor, Evaluate and Revise the Implementation

� Identify New Problems and Begin the Process again

Five questions of urban planning

� What is the justification of planning?

� What values are incorporated within planning?

� What ethical dilemmas do planners face?� What ethical dilemmas do planners face?

� How can planning be effective within a mixed economy?

� Style of planning: what do planners do?

Who Does Planning?� City and County Planners

� City Council members

� Board of Supervisors

Redevelopment Agencies� Redevelopment Agencies

� Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development

� Local Non-profit Organizations

� International Organizations

� Community Activists

� Community Business Leaders

Where does Planning Occur in the Development Process?

� Home & Community Development

� Neighborhood Revitalization Planning

� Economic Development Planning� Economic Development Planning

� Response to Economic, Political and External Activities.

� Land Use Decision Making

� General Overall Change in Local and World Activities.

Assumptions of Rational Planning

Only Facts Exist

� No values (subjective belief systems)

� All variables exist within an interconnected and closed system (no unforeseeable variables)

A Rational-Deductive sequence of events

� If ‘A’ happens, then ‘B’ will follow

� No need for political strategies

� Not suited for crisis or unforeseen events

What is the Justification of Planning?

� It is possible to rationally plan for the future by analyzing and integrating as many variables as possiblemany variables as possible

� Planning is primarily technical, professional and apolitical

� There is a unitary public interest; The goals of planning are universally shared

What is the Justification of Planning?

To Serve the “Public Interest” (or “Public Good”) -- this is the Legal justification for PlanningPlanning

Social Equity = Fair access and distribution of public goods -- this is the Principal moral justification guiding public/governmental actions

Ethical Dilemmas in Planning

� Planning is inherently distributional

� Planning is inherently political

� Planning as a profession cannot adopt a cohesive political philosophy, but planners as individuals do

Dominant Paradigm

� Comprehensive / Rational model of problem solving

� Sense of scientific “detachment” and unaffected Sense of scientific “detachment” and unaffected objectivity

� Non-political

� Efficiency: e.g., circulation of people and commodities

� Normative middle-class aspirations

Rational Process Planning

Basic Steps:

� Identify a Problem

� Identify a Goal

� Collect Background Data� Collect Background Data

� Identify a Means of Assessing Alternative Plan Scenarios

� Identify Alternative Plan Scenarios

Pruitt-Igoe

“Wicked Problems” (Rittel & Webber 1973)

Goals and objectives, as well as means to achieve them, are often uncertain

� “wicked problems”� “wicked problems”

� concerned primarily with public issues

� broadly defined groups/clients

� diverse interests

“Wicked Problems” (Rittel & Webber 1973)

� There is no definitive problem formulation

� Every problem is unique

� Every problem a symptom of another � Every problem a symptom of another problem

� Problems can be explained in numerous ways; each explanation leads to different approaches

“Wicked Problems” (Rittel & Webber 1973)

� No stopping rule

� Solutions not right or wrong, but better or worseworse

� No ultimate test of solutions

� Every attempt counts

� Planner has no right to be wrong

Source: parmo [flickr.com]

Postmodern response:

• Discontinuity

• Complexity

• Contingency

• Diversity

Pt. 3: A new narrative: From “Sustainability” to “Resilience”“Sustainability” to “Resilience”

Resilience(Summarized in Dudley 2010)

� self-organization

� flexibility and adaptation through redundancyredundancy

� distribution of resources

� the development of learning capacity

� loosening of interconnections

Resilience vs. SustainabilityAndrew McMurray, “The Rhetoric of Resilience” Alternatives 36: 2 1010, p. 22.

“Resilience implies action: to be resilient. Resilience implies an inner toughness: the strength, as its etymology tells us, to jump back to a previous state. Sustainability, by contrast, suggests a state. Sustainability, by contrast, suggests a defensive posture, a desire to stay the same, to resist change without the…ability to push back against change and win out. Resilience also connotes a measure of risk, while sustainability suggests that systems are set: they simply need to be cared for and so carried forward...”

Coast guard News [flickr]Coast guard News [flickr]

Adrian DP [flickr]

ChrisGoldNY [flickr]

Renewable Energy

BoyReale [flickr]

Belfinger berger [flickr]

ThinkGeoEnergy [flickr]

Dispersed Utilities

Gadjo Sevilla [flickr]

Local Agriculture

Edibleoffice [flickr]

Local/Regional Economies

Leo Reynolds [flickr]

Hierarchy of Sustainable Transportation

Payton Chung [flickr]

ACTransit [flickr]

Ecolabs [flickr]

“A Paradise Built in Hell”Solnit, 2009

� Spirit of cooperation under crisis and disaster situations

� “Disaster utopias”� “Disaster utopias”

� Over-reaction by panicked authorities

� Contrast: “Slow-motion disaster” of everyday life

Ron Sombilon [flickr]

William Hutton Jr. [flickr]

Charlie Essars [flickr]

Building with Natural ProcessesHough, “Cities and Natural Process” 2004

� Process-oriented: dynamism, change over time, rather than frozen

� Economy of meansEconomy of means� Connectedness – regional – watershed,

bioregion� Awareness of natural processes� Diversity� Development as environmental

enhancement� Make life-sustaining processes visible

Resurgence 241 March April 2007 p. 6

Pt. 4: A New “Urban Operating System”

(Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope)

Faceless b [flickr]

Faceless b [flickr]

Faceless b [flickr]

Faceless b [flickr]

Planning for Resilience� Anticipate discontinuity � Self-organization� Increased learning capacity� Adaptive strategies: Improvization and invention� Adaptive strategies: Improvization and invention� Loosening of interconnections� Contingency: Procedures must always be open to

change� Renewed narrative of community, cooperation

and common purpose� Anticipate generosity and mutuality

Faceless b [flickr]

Michael Dudley

m.dudley@uwinnipeg.ca

SourcesAllmendinger, Philip (2002). Planning theory. New York : Palgrave, 2002.

Allmendinger, Philip (2001). Planning in postmodern times. New York : Routledge,.

Alterman, R. (2002). Planning in the Face of Crisis: Land and Housing Policies in Israel. London: Routledge.

Boyer, M. Christine. (1986, c1983). Dreaming the rational city : the myth of American city planning. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press,

Campbell, Scott & Fainstein, Susan (Eds). (2003). Readings in planning theory 2nd ed. Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub.

Dudley, M. (2010). “Resilience.” In N. Cohen, (Ed). Green Society: Green Politics. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Hayden, D. & Warr, J. (2004). A Field Guide to Sprawl. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.Hayden, D. & Warr, J. (2004). A Field Guide to Sprawl. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Jepson, Edward J., Jr. (2001). Sustainability and Planning: Diverse Concepts and Close Associations. Journal of Planning Literature 15 (4). pp. 499-510.

Mandelbaum, Seymour J. Mazza, Luigi & Burchell, Robert W. (Eds) (1996). Explorations in planning. New Brunswick, N.J. : Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

McDonald, Geoffrey. (1996). Planning as sustainable development. Journal of Planning Education & Research 15. Pp. 225-236.

Mitchell, J.K. (1999). Crucibles of Hazard: Mega-Cities and Disaster in Transition. Tokyo: UNU Press.

Ritel, H. & M. Webber. (1973) “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4, p. 155-169.

Sandercock, Leonie. (1998). Towards cosmopolis : planning for multicultural cities. Toronto : J. Wiley.

Stein Jay M. (Ed) (2004). Classic readings in urban planning, 2nd ed.Chicago, Ill. : American Planning Association.