Phil found an interesting article here, and these are his extracts from it:
• Harvey is the wettest storm ever to hit the continental US. Over 50 inches of rainfall and 1 trillion gallons of water fell during the event. No one builds a church for Easter, or a gated community for the zombie apocalypse. It’s pretty naive to expect people to expect the unexpected.
• So far, there have been fewer than 50 storm-related deaths. Each of these deaths is tragic, but even if that number creeps higher, it is a stunning low fatality rate for such a major event in such a large city. The Houston region has more than 6.6 million people, and every year more than 40,000 of them die – so Hurricane Harvey increased the annual death tally by about 0.1%. Sad, but not catastrophic.
• An estimated 30,000 people have been forced from their homes. This is approximately 0.5% of the population of the Houston region. In other words, 99.5% of people in the Houston region have been able to stay in their homes. Unfortunate, but not catastrophic.
• The Trump Administration has estimated that 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. While it is unclear how that estimate was obtained – if 30,000 people were forced from their home, then probably 70-90% of those homes did not sustain enough damage to force an evacuation – the Houston region has more than 1.6 million housing units, so about 6% of homes sustained damage of some kind. Lamentable, but not catastrophic.
• Economic impact estimates are all over the map at this point; initial estimates were in the $30-40 billion range, but have been rising since then. Let’s say they end up being comparable to Superstorm Sandy, which caused about $70 billions of damage in today’s dollars. The Houston region GDP is about half a trillion dollars a year, so Harvey’s economic cost would be about 14% of our total economic output. Expensive, but not catastrophic.
A dispassionate weighing of these facts would tell you that while stressful events always help identify areas for improvement, by and large our infrastructure and leadership performed admirably well under extraordinary circumstances. It other words, the facts would tell you that Harvey was not a catastrophe for Houston; it was our finest hour. …
we are not rugged individualists; we are rugged communitarians. We know that when times are tough, you must rely first on family, then friends, then neighbors, and then – and only if you’re one of the few, unfortunate folks who cannot rely on any of those three – on the government. And if we have family, friends, or neighbors who can help, reaching out for government support is actually taking resources away from those who need them more. In short, the best governance to rely upon is self- governance. When the storm hit, I saw these networks in action… …
Houston was able to absorb the wettest storm on record with remarkably little loss of life and property also because of good engineering, informed by the experience of previous storms. A good engineer designs systems that won’t fail when hit with an expected event; a great engineer designs systems that fail gracefully and non-catastrophically when hit with an unexpected event. Hats off to our great engineers. …
Of course, there is always room for improvement. By studying what happened, we will find ways to improve the system for the next storm – and there will always be a next storm. We learned a lot from Ike, Rita, and earlier storms. When I was a child, a couple of inches of rain would flood my neighborhood; today, that same neighborhood absorbed 25 inches of rain and made it through. We have come a long way… …
Houston’s approach is not the “wild west.” We have land use that is managed from the bottom up, through a system of deed restrictions that often include local homeowners’ associations to police those restrictions. What we don’t have is a top-down, expert-driven, bureaucratic system of centralized planning. As a result, it’s easier to develop real estate than most cities, which keeps real estate prices – especially housing prices – low relative to the rest of the country. It is actually a more sophisticated and economically efficient system than the antiquated politically-driven zoning system that generally favors entrenched interests over new entrants.
Over an 18 year period, Houston lost about 25,000 acres of wetlands. But this amounts to about 4 billion gallons of storm water detention capacity. As stated above, Harvey dumped about 1 trillion gallons; so the lost capacity represents about of 0.4% of Harvey’s deluge. But it’s also important to understand that the streets – a huge portion of the paved area – are used as detention, places to hold storm water temporarily when there is nowhere for it to drain. Houston’s strategy for many years has been to use streets as detention and runoff channels, the idea being that it is better to flood a street than a house. And the city’s performance under Harvey confirms the wisdom of that strategy.
This is the most ridiculous of all the claims made by the narrative spinners. Mayor Turner put it best: “Zoning wouldn't have changed anything. We would have been a city with zoning that flooded.”
This Houston conversation was interesting, frustrating, and stimulating all at once (and I've not done justice to it in this post - apologies). I was on the sidelines observing. This is often the lot of the planner – to observe and analyse and to research and critique – and sometimes to act proactively, but most commonly reactively… This conversation provided space for a variety of points of view, a range of assumptions about what happened, different assessments about who or what was to blame for outcomes. However there was a common thread that puts planners and the free market in opposite corners. So I start with this diagram:
There is a common misconception that economics is only concerned with money or market transactions and market forces.
However economics goes beyond market transactions and includes all choices by humans around the use of resources. Thus economics is concerned by outcomes in society (people, labour, wages etc) and the economy (resources, money etc). Much economic research is concerned with ‘market failures’. Which include things that planners are concerned with, negative externalities (pollution, flooding, congestion), positive externalities (agglomeration benefits derived from urban form) and so on. There is a lot of common ground between Planners and (most) Economists. Referring to the diagram, most economists and most planners understand and acknowledge that a function of planning is the achievement of a socially efficient allocation of resources that would not be achieved by free market forces by themselves. The largely uncontested economic point that is illustrated in the diagram is that the free market, left to its own devices, DOES NOT and NEVER CAN, deliver the most efficient economic and social outcomes in a city. Before I get into Houston and Hurricane Harvey, here is a rationale for planning provided by Nicole Gurran (an Australian academic)….
A primary justification for public intervention through the land use planning system relates to the potential negative impacts, or 'externalities' of an individual’s activities in the private use of land upon neighbouring landholders and the broader community (Bramley et al. 1995). In other words, 'one householder's environmental gain from a new or improved dwelling may well signify a loss of amenity for their neighbours' (Blake & Collins 2004, p124)…. .
Therefore, a clear land use plan, developed with public input, and setting out the rules governing future changes and the parameters for assessing particular development proposals, gives members of the community a degree of certainty and involvement about future changes. In other words; (The) certainty provided by a publicly accountable land use plan, supported by consistently applied development controls, may be seen as a social freedom outweighing the traditional right of the individual to develop land anywhere and in any manner (Blake & Collins 2004. p124).
In her review of the land use planning system in Britain, Kate Barker concluded that the planning system plays an important role in managing urban growth and particularly in addressing areas that are not effectively dealt with by the private market (Barker 2006). For instance, if it were solely up to the private market there would likely be an insufficient provision of important community infrastructure or protection of open space, or only those areas able to incorporate these amenities within private developments, such as premium master planned estates, would enjoy access to them, exacerbating social inequalities. The planning system can also directly contribute to socially fair outcomes in urban development, for instance, by structuring strategies to encourage the regeneration of areas suffering economic decline, or the promotion of socially mixed communities within new and changing areas. Planning is intended to provide a key mechanism for public participation and representation to protect all sectors of the community from developments that may have an unjust impact on them. It provides a process for generating and disseminating necessary knowledge needed to inform urban development strategies. Planning also provides a defined methodology and policy framework for coordinating and resolving the different components of urban development - housing, employment opportunities, public space, transportation, water, biodiversity protection, and so on. Often these matters seem to relate to rival objectives - for instance, the need to provide new housing and infrastructure, and the need to protect the environment. Planning provides a process and forum for resolving these competing issues. Finally, the planning system helps overcome blockages to essential development of land that could arise if landowners choose to act in a monopolistic manner (by refusing to sell sites needed for essential urban developments). Planning interventions including the compulsory acquisition of land can help to address this problem (Barker 2006, p26).
Now I can hear the nimby cries from here! However private property rights are a significant issue and raison d’etre for urban planners and urban planning especially when preparing for intensification. I accept that the “property next door” issue is less significant if cities grow out and not up – though the need for high capacity interconnecting transport infrastructure, or larger capacity stormwater drainage systems (to store or channel rainwater away from urban areas) is at least as significant an issue – because of the need for compulsory land purchases. (I note here - in retrospect - that there is a very live debate about the comparative amount of infrastructure and cost (storm and transport) needed per head of population for low density vs high density urban conurbation.)
One of the threads in this Houston conversation has been one about “risk” or risk management, and what role planners might have in that. I mentioned above that planners are typically put in a reactive role. The Christchurch earthquakes provide a good example. Christchurch Council and EQC documents report details of building damage (including Cathedral) and liquefaction incidence due to periodic serious earthquakes (about every 50 years) since the 1850’s. Liquefaction prone land maps were prepared decades ago. Planners all knew about them. But political pressures from land owners over time led to the suppression of this information, and ultimately to the urbanisation of Bexley and of areas in the catchment of the Heathcote River. The pressure from developers was in the face of planning advice of the earthquake risks. In the last couple of months MBIE released new guidance materials formed in association with GeoTech Engineers, by EQC, MBIE and MfE working together. This is a recent example of the emergence of the kind of multi-disciplinary approach to urban planning development that is associated with change.
Another example relates to Climate Change. A lot of advice has emerged in NZ from the Parliamentary Commission for Environment on climate change risks to low lying urban areas in NZ (eg South Dunedin, Wairau Valley North Shore etc etc). This risk is primarily one due to weather pattern change and storm surge related sea level change rather than permanent sea level rise. Again land owner and today’s developer pressures have pushed planning for the future into the too hard basket – despite inconvenient truths.More and more development occupies land that is at risk from flooding that is anticipated. (Again in retrospect - there's been an election, and - under the previous Government - some planning initiatives are underway which will enable a more proactive role to be taken to avoid property damage from climate change storm surge related effects.)
Another thread has been whether Planning is an “art” or a “science”. That is an interesting one. Most academics – if pushed – put planning between engineering and architecture. Auckland’s school of planning sits in NICAI (Creative Industries), though I understand that was hugely contested. There was a school of thought it should be with Engineering and Environmental Science or Geography (which is where planning is located in many planning schools in other parts of the world). Interesting though that the curricula for planning schools in NZ is much the same across the country. Planning education starts with what might be called declaratory learning (can be repeated and tested in essays and exams and suchlike); then moves into practice (which is much more highly valued and cannot be taught – and is for the whole of work experience – and first 5 years needed before able to be full member of Planning Institute); and then reflection (at simplest is the practical wisdom derived from reflective evaluation of the successes and failures of practice and what can be learned and changed). These 3 stages of education/development are what mark planning education and learning.
In my experience of planning (I start with a PhD in Physics) is that the “art” in a planning degree has very little to do with “art” as in design, and much more to do with “liberal arts” which stems more from an understanding of society and politics and policy development aimed at public participation and the delivery of measureable objectives related to social welfare maximisation.
And perhaps to end this reflection, it is useful to recall moments in history when planners have been “given” the painful job of giving effect to a legislative fix intended to patch up a wicked problem that has emerged. Starting with industrial Britain and quality of housing for workers in smokestack industries – this was at least partly driven by the economics of life expectancy and wasted human productivity – housing codes and minimum standards. Think of London’s pea-soup fogs and premature deaths and alternative and cleaner energy sources (gas and reticulation). There is not the space here to do justice to this aspect of planning. A recent eg in NZ has been leaky building problem. This problem was not caused by planners, but they have had the job of reverse engineering out of it. Blame has been allocated by courts conveniently between: architects, developers, Councils and buyers.
While there might be some planners or visionaries who can “see the future”, or have an opinion about it, they are all required to act within legislation. Their jurisdiction is tightly defined. The legislation is prepared at central level. Sometimes it’s to require planners to act in particular ways to avoid risks (earthquake and climate eg), sometimes it’s to require planners to compensate for market failures (eg in NZ through the National Policy Statement on Urban Development Capacity).
Which perhaps brings me to this: planning operates at various scales. Here in NZ Central Government is the national planning agency for the country’s economy (immigration levels, irrigation planning, dairy subsidies, roads of national significance etc); the Productivity Commission recognizes the need for the Regional level of planning – largely spatial planning (balance of conservation estate, horticulture, freshwater, energy generation, transport infrastructure, ports and airports and urbanized areas); and then there is city planning at local level. These all interconnect.
In the end, together these planning systems aim to maximize social welfare, and to regulate against risks arising from known market failures (like property developers building in risk prone areas and selling what are perceived as bargain-priced houses to unsuspecting first-time buyers). But these planning systems are imperfect because we cannot predict the future. And we can’t always protect people from their own imperfect decisions or from the creative or selfish actions of others.
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