As southern California cities and property owners were seeing high surfs from a hurricane off Mexico, and less than two weeks after a 6.0 magnitude earthquake in the Napa Valley, the Urban Land Institute was holding a conference in San Francisco on September 4-5 on “Rebuilding the Resilient City: Risks and Opportunities.” This topic joins and complements two other major initiatives of ULI, Sustainable Communities and Building Healthy Places.

What does resilience mean? One definition used by the Rockefeller Foundation is “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems within a city to survive, adapt and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience… resilient systems share and demonstrate certain core characteristics: constant learning, rapid rebound, limited or ‘safe’ failure, flexibility, and spare capacity.”

Much of the discussion by the 250 representatives of the federal, state and local governments and the private developers, insurers, lenders and investors and their consultants who attended the conference focused on the impacts of climate change and the threat of rising sea levels. Following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the federal government, ULI and many other government and private sector organizations, including foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, began studying ways to rebuild for resiliency, and not just replace what was lost or damaged.

Resiliency was also discussed in the context of strategies for regional and community preparedness and the ability to rebound after natural disasters.

Several strong themes have emerged, including:

• Both governments and the private sector have a vital interest in creating resiliency in designing and maintaining critical infrastructure and protecting private investment.
• “Partnerships between the private and public sectors are key to ensuring that private and public assets are protected and made resilient.” (“Real Estate Industry Needs Better Integration of Resilience,” Urban Land, September, 2014)
• Most losses from a natural disaster (95 percent) are uninsured — and the poor and their communities are disproportionately hurt.

Another huge issue is how government money is being spent. HUD has spent more than $50 billion on disaster relief since 2000, most of it to rebuild what was already there. A new approach, the purpose of HUD’s $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition, is to stimulate the creative use of partnerships at all levels to build and rebuild resilient and sustainable communities, and for governments to cross boundaries and adapt their ways of doing business to coordinate programs and infrastructure with private investment.

A historic example of rebuilding for resiliency came after the 1861-62 floods of biblical proportions (more than 40 days of continuous rain in the western states). Such a storm was officially named the “Arkstorm,” and is now unofficially called “The Other Big One.” The City of Sacramento was inundated and the State Capitol was temporarily moved to San Francisco. It was estimated that approximately one-quarter of the taxable real estate in California was destroyed. Dependent on property taxes, the State of California went bankrupt. The governor, Legislature and state employees were not paid for a year and a half. Rather than simply rebuild and reinforce the levees along the Sacramento and American rivers, the City of Sacramento rebuilt its downtown area an entire story above the former ground level, and it remains so to this day.

In California, in addition to risks of earthquakes and forest fires, coastal lifelines are at risk from climate change and rising sea levels, threatening economic disruption, uneven social vulnerability and vulnerable ecosystems. The Digital Coast Partnership states that more than 50 percent of Americans, 164 million people increasing by 1.2 million annually, live in the nation’s coastal areas, together with another 180 million visitors to the coasts each year. Despite the fact that leaders and residents are increasingly aware of these risks, there remains significant institutional, political, social and economic obstacles to implementing adaptive actions.

There is a great deal of activity on the subject of resilience, reflecting the sense of urgency that the increasingly intense natural disasters are the “new normal” and that the time for action is now. The costs of inaction is estimated to be four to 10 times greater than the costs associated with taking adaptive actions to mitigate disasters.

What actions can be taken now by cities and their regions? There is no common playbook because of the diversity of regions and the kinds of disasters. The following are some suggestions for cities and their regions to build resiliency into their preparedness and responses to disasters which may put them at risk:

1. Create a regional disaster response consortium involving all stakeholders in which both the area of the region and the character of the stakeholders may change depending on the nature of the disaster under consideration (i.e. earthquake, flood, rising sea levels, utility outage, etc. will vary based on magnitude and area affected). Include the private sector: property owners, developers, investors, lenders, insurers. If a consortium is already in existence, consider expanding it.

2. Structure the work of the consortium. A place to start might be to study the five pillars of resilience identified by the Rockefeller Foundation in its 100 Resilient Cities Challenge.

3. Prioritize the risks facing your city and region. Understand both the opportunities and limitations, including governance and financing, to mitigate those risks.

4. Analyze and evaluate disaster response actions in other regions: What could have been avoided? What could have been done better?

5. Develop a flexible preparedness and response plan with priorities and funding sources, and update it continuously. Understand the role of behavioral economics in encouraging change in populations and businesses.

6. Participate in the grant process, such as HUD’s Natural Disaster Resilience Competition; Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Challenge; NOAA’s Sea Grant Program. The exercise of applying for a grant, whether approved or not, will provide some baseline references and valuable insights into how to go about your local governance and collaborative planning process.

7. Tell the story in clear, compelling terms. Explain the risks – what could happen, or is happening, and the consequences of inaction.

Additional sources

• Publications and papers at ULI’s website, including:
  • “Coastal Development – Searching for New Ways to Manage the Visitudes of Nature” Urban Land, September 2014
  • “The Art of Resilience,” Urban Land Magazine, September 2014
  • “Resilient Strategies for Communities at Risk,” white paper
  • “The Cost of Retrofitting Multifamily for Resilience,” Urban Land Magazine, July 2014
  •  “Housing In America – Integrating Housing, Health, and Resilience in a Changing Environment,” Urban Land Magazine, September 2014)
  • “Real Estate Industry Needs Better Integration of Resilience,” Urban Land Magazine, September 2014
  • “Creating Resilient & Livable Cities,” Pacific Cities Sustainability Initiative – Insights From The 2014 Annual Forum
  • “Risk and Resilience in Coastal Regions,” Report, May 2013
• Federal government: Rebuild by Design
• Natural Disaster Resilience Competition
• National Climate Assessment
• Digital Coast Partnership
• Rockefeller Foundation: 100 Resilient Cities
• University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies, Building Resilient Regions; Resilient Capacity Index