Wanted: Cities Considering “Retreat” in Anticipation of Devastating Climate Risks
After climate-driven devastation hits a community--storm & sea surges, river flooding, earthquakes, wildfires--a lot gets said about where development should never have been allowed to occur because the risks were too great--and a lot gets decided about rebuilding as much as possible to make things just as they were. In a few cases in the U.S., governments buyout some of the damaged properties and consider removing or preventing other development in especially at-risk areas. But consideration doesn't usually lead to action.
Here's how that retreat vs. rebuild tension played out in Louisiana and New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis in a chapter in The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change:
"Owners of damaged properties were eligible to receive $150,000 in assistance but were given the option to rebuild or repair their homes in place or be bought out. Of 128,000 property owners who received assistance, only 10 percent opted to sell. The program did not effectively implement retreat, especially in New Orleans. this was because homeowners opting to be bought out were typically undercompensated and buyouts were not targeted based on a property's vulnerability to future flooding. Because damage to the city's housing stock was so widespread, it was also difficult for property owners to find affordable places to relocate. Finally, because the program was voluntary and governments could not resell properties with low vulnerability, the buyout program created a checkerboard of vacant lands interspersed with redeveloped properties. . . . In New Orleans, the public was not adequately involved in early phases of redevelopment planning. one major point of contention was the release of a redevelopment plan for the city that showed some developed areas as future open space. This caused significant political backlash, and, as a result, the mayor backpedaled on implementing a retreat strategy and announced that the city would rebuilt to the pre-Katrina footprint."
The authors conclude that since retreat after a disaster is hard to pull off, "retreat policies may be easier to implement when they are instituted as part of a pre-emergency plan that is created with significant public involvement." Maybe, maybe not. We are conducting research to identify the "pathways" that cities follow, or reject, when they do consider managed retreat as a part of a climate adaptation strategy before disaster has already hit. If you read the scores of city adaptation plans that exist, managed retreat is almost never a part of the discussion, much less the decision. Maybe that's because the anticipated climate risks don't warrant going through the pain of retreat, but maybe the omission is due to other reasons.
If your city has considered managed retreat as part of its adaptation approach, we'd like to know about it and learn more about what did or didn't happen as a result. Please contact me at pete@in4c.net.
Watch "How a Community Was Sacrificed" about the Houston-area development that was flooded--according to a 70 year old plan--to protect the downtown.
