In December 2018, I made myself a self-guided driving and walking tour of East Boston. The purpose was to orient myself to one of Metro Boston’s most unique and diverse neighborhoods while wrapping my head around their relationship to the waterfront and familiarizing myself with the sites of some recent projects related to the Climate … Read More
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‘Retreat’ ≠ ‘surrender’
During the 1993 Mississippi River flooding, while watching the national nightly news with my mother, a reporter stuck a microphone into the face of a resident whose family home was quite literally floating away, asking “What will you do now?” The stoic response was something to the effect of “Well, guess we’ll just start over.” … Read More
Apalachicola, Florida
Excellent story on NPR Here and Now that helps the listener feel one family’s struggle to maintain their way of life at the water’s edge. #storytelling #climatechangeadaptation
Colihaut: Making land before making plans?
“There is already a plan for reconstruction, indelibly stamped in the perception of each resident – the plan of the predisaster city. The new studies, plans, and designs compete with the old.” – Haas, Kates, and Bowden (1977), Reconstruction Following Disaster This post-disaster tension between change and normalcy hangs in the air in some of … Read More
Coulibistrie
The town of Coulibistrie, Dominica lies partially in a floodplain and after Tropical Storm Erica (2015), and is slated by the government for relocation. #dominica#dominicastrong
A river runs through each
Dominica has 365 rivers – one for each day of the year. Communities ring the coast, with at least one river making its way through each on its way from the steep, mountainous interior to the ocean. While sea level rise is a real threat to island nations, the effects of riverine flooding … Read More
Attribution vs. contribution, and ‘wild’fire or urban fire?
Attribution and contribution With ‘wild’fires still raging across southern California, Gov. Jerry Brown warns that megafires may be the new normal. A cursory glance at media coverage over the past few years shows a trend of (thankfully) moving past “does climate change exist?” toward “is climate change to blame for this disaster?” Recent examples include VOX’s … Read More
Housing as Critical Urban Infrastructure in Resilience Planning
Representing re:ground llc, I joined the Affordable Housing Institute, Build Change, MIT Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement (SIGUS), and Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities (Latin America) in presenting “Housing as Critical Urban Infrastructure in Resilience Planning”, a conversation about rethinking the critical role that housing might play in cities. More to come soon… … Read More
Measuring Socioeconomic Vulnerability
‘Measuring Socioeconomic Vulnerability: Customized Indicators for Better Public Policies’ an MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) course gave a great overview on how to interpret – and design – better data for understanding populations at risk. In other words… it’s more an art than a science to determine: who is at risk, of … Read More
Resilient Bridgeport
Project: Resilient Bridgeport Date: 2014 Role: Team member, re:ground llc Team: Waggonner Ball Architects / unabridged Architecture / ARCADIS / Yale School of Forestry Management Resilient Bridgeport grew out of the Rebuild by Design competition initiative, which leveraged HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds towards developing community- and policy- based proposals to protect … Read More