Reflect on 1 page about these two articles, and cite them in the second page. Reflection about climate change.
12/23/2020 Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands? – Yale E360
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T
Yale Environment 360
Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands?
Using citizen science volunteers, researchers are more accurately measuring temperature differences between
city hot spots and their cooler surroundings. With heat waves intensifying , the results are now being used to
develop a range of innovative urban planning strategies.
BY JIM MORRISON • SEPTEMBER 12 , 2019
he volunteers fanned out across cities from Boston to Honolulu this summer, with
inexpensive thermal monitors resembling tiny periscopes attached to their vehicles to
collect data on street-level temperatures. Signs on their cars announcing “Science Project in
Progress” explained their plodding pace — no more than 30 miles-per-hour to capture the dramatic
temperature differences from tree-shaded parks to sun-baked parking lots to skyscraper-dominated
downtowns.
�e work of these citizen scientists is part of a new way of studying the urban heat island effect, with
volunteers mapping two dozen cities worldwide in recent years. Past studies of urban heat islands — in
which metropolitan areas experience significantly higher temperatures than their surroundings — have
relied on satellite data that measures the temperature reflected off rooftops and streets. But Vivek
Shandas, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University in Oregon and a
researcher leading the project, says the urban heat island effect is more complicated and subtler than
satellite data indicates.
“�ere’s much more nuance within the city,” Shandas says. “What we’re finding is that there’s upwards
of 15- to 20-degree Fahrenheit differences within a city. In fact, a city could have the same temperature
reading in one area as its rural or forested counterpart.”
On-the-ground data clearly demonstrate a correlation between
lower-income neighborhoods and higher temperatures.
A Chicago resident struggles with triple-digit temperatures during a heat wave in 2012. AP PHOTO/M. SPENCER GREEN
https://e360.yale.edu/
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-center_80/AP_120706121098_ChicagoHeat2012_web
https://e360.yale.edu/authors/jim-morrison
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/citizen-science-salon/2019/08/09/wicked-hot-boston-urban-heat-island-uhi-mapping/#.XXZOFGandAx
https://www.weathernationtv.com/news/citizen-scientists-take-to-the-streets-to-map-the-hottest-places-in-ten-u-s-cities/
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ALSO ON YALE E360
From high above, a new way of seeing our
urban planet. Read more.
By understanding in detail where hot spots are located, cities can address extreme heat neighborhood-
by-neighborhood, choosing from a variety of strategies that include removing or whitewashing black
asphalt or roof surfaces, adding more trees for shade, requiring developers to vary the heights of new
buildings to increase airflow, and opening more public air-conditioned spaces.
Using Shandas’ research, Portland, the first city Shandas and his team surveyed, has proposed zoning
code amendments and strategies targeting urban heat, including limiting paved neighborhood
parking areas and increasing space for trees. In addition, city officials said that Shandas’ on-the-ground
data clearly demonstrated a correlation between lower-income neighborhoods and higher
temperatures. Shandas’ work also showed that the places where lower-income people often work, such
as the industrial areas along Portland’s rivers, also experience higher-than-average temperatures, the
officials said.
Other urban heat island studies have shown that the hottest places in metropolitan areas are often in
poor, minority neighborhoods with few trees, and this research can provide a framework for city
planners to address the problem.
Shandas and his teams have mapped 24 cities in
the United States and worldwide, including
Albuquerque; parts of the Vancouver
metropolitan area; Hong Kong; Doha, Qatar; and
Hermosillo, Mexico. In the past, urban heat
island studies relied on data from satellites or
stationary sensors, but Shandas’ appears to be
the first enlisting citizen scientists to collect
temperature data using mobile sensors.
Researchers have studied urban heat island
effects in every major country from Australia,
where a government study warned that heat
wave deaths would quadruple by 2050, to China,
which has more than 40 cities with populations
exceeding 2 million people. Globally, heat is the
number one weather-related killer, causing more
deaths each year than floods, tornadoes, or hurricanes. Extreme heat can kill directly via heat stroke
and indirectly through increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Climate models show that in some
cities the number of high-heat days could double by 2040.
�is summer’s heat wave in Europe, with temperatures soaring to a record-breaking 46 degrees Celsius
(115 degrees F) in the south of France, killed 1,500 people in France alone, the French health minister
said this week. Russian officials reported that a 2010 heat wave killed 11,000 people in Moscow. �e rise
in overall global temperature makes extreme heat events, including consecutive days of high heat,
more likely. Mitigating extreme heat, one recent study says, would save lives.
Urban heat islands have been generally understood since large cities began to emerge
in the 19th century, but research by Shandas and others reveals a complicated
patchwork of hot spots and cool spots that change during the course of a day and are
determined by urban design. Satellite data, for instance, showed midtown Manhattan
to be an afternoon hot spot. But mapping unveiled a different picture.
“When you actually go down to the ground, where people are walking and life is
happening, it turns out it’s not the same signal,” Shandas says.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to adapt the landscape to respond to
the increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves,” says one
Researcher Vivek Shandas has mapped street-level temperatures in 24 cities worldwide.
COURTESY OF PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-center_80/VivekShadas_web
https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-high-above-a-new-way-of-seeing-our-urban-planet
https://e360.yale.edu/features/urban-heat-can-white-roofs-help-cool-the-worlds-warming-cities
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221067071630066X
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5923682/
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/645259
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/5/282/htm
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/640/htm
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-07/documents/epa_how_to_measure_a_uhi
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5751017/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212095518300555
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/heatwave-deaths-to-quadruple-government-report-finds-20130730-2qxef.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09628-w
https://www.weather.gov/hazstat/
https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/climatechange/health_impacts/cardiovascular_diseases/index.cfm
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ab27cf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/summer-heatwaves-in-france-killed-1500-says-health-minister
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-18/russian-heatwave-killed-11000-people/2265184
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/extreme-heat-climate-change-19641
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaau4373
12/23/2020 Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands? – Yale E360
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expert.
�e long shadows of Manhattan skyscrapers, for example, can make parts of that borough cooler in
summer than some neighborhoods in Queens, which generally has low-rise buildings. On the other
hand, midtown Manhattan retains heat and starts the day much warmer because the heat that’s
absorbed by buildings, roofs, streets, and sidewalks during the day doesn’t dissipate as well at night.
“It’s the built environment that we’re really trying to understand because, ultimately, we’re trying to
adapt the landscape to respond to this increasing frequency, intensity, and duration of heat wave,”
Shandas says. “We’re trying to get more precise data. And there were so many surprises.” A large
expanse of water, for instance, or grass that is not watered, can be almost as hot as concrete, he says.
Jaime Madrigano, a researcher with the RAND Corporation who has studied urban heat, praised the
way Shandas and his colleagues were using citizen science volunteers and “getting the community
engaged in the issues around extreme heat… I think there are a lot of cities that are trying to make
these changes. �is kind of data is really important to doing that.”
Shandas grew up in Bangalore, and during visits there and to other cities in India he began thinking
about how cities have developed without regard for the increasing incidence of extreme weather
events linked to climate change, including heat waves. He began his research with a bit of engineering,
using a National Science Foundation grant to reach out to engineers who helped create the hand-made
instrumentation that transmits data. With funding from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, he first mapped Portland in 2015.
A breakfast in Portland the next year with Jeremy
Hoffman, who had just accepted a job as the
climate and earth scientist at the Science
Museum of Virginia, led to a partnership and
citizen-science projects mapping Richmond,
Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
�ose partnerships with local groups have been
invaluable, says Hoffman. “It was really useful to
have the local perspective” while creating the
mapping routes, Hoffman says. “Where is the
park that everybody goes to? Where are they
going to redevelop over the next couple of years?
�at kind of knowledge made our campaigns not
only scientifically useful, but publicly attractive.
It was the people themselves getting involved; it
wasn’t just the scientists.”
�e studies correlated data to the tenth of a
degree from sensors on vehicles that followed a
series of one-hour, zigzag routes — early morning,
mid-afternoon, and early evening — driven by
volunteers recruited by local science museums, universities, and non-profits. Fifteen teams mapped
Richmond during a summer weekend in 2017. One park along the James River measured 87 degrees F,
while a few miles away, along a four-lane roadway, it was 103 degrees.
Shandas and Hoffman say their work demonstrates that extreme heat is a social justice issue. In
Richmond’s hottest areas, they found a higher concentration of poverty and of 911 calls for heat-related
illnesses. Mapping last year in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore found a similar correlation, with
higher temperatures in lower-income neighborhoods largely barren of trees and lower temperatures in
more affluent, tree-shaded areas. Shandas and Hoffman recently completed a paper, due to be
published soon, comparing redlined neighborhoods — those once illegally designated by lenders as
A mobile sensor collects temperature data in suburban Sacramento this summer. COURTESY OF
VIVEK SHANDAS
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-center_80/ElkGrove1_web2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4492264/
https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/5/2/41/htm
https://toolkit.climate.gov/case-studies/where-do-we-need-shade-mapping-urban-heat-islands-richmond-virginia
12/23/2020 Can We Turn Down the Temperature on Urban Heat Islands? – Yale E360
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too risky to make home loans — with extreme urban temperatures. “�e big take-home point for the
paper is that 92 percent of the cities that were redlined are now warmer than their A-rated neighbors,”
Hoffman says. “�is seems like it’s predominantly due to a lack of green and a dominance of gray.”
Shandas says the research has uncovered six things that affect urban heat. �ree are living — the
volume of the tree canopy, the height of the tree canopy, and the ground level vegetation. �ree are
human-built — the volume of buildings, the difference in building heights, and the coloring of the
buildings.
The differences in morning and afternoon temperatures in Richmond, Virginia. COURTESY OF JEREMY
HOFFMAN
Poverty levels in Richmond. Lower-income neighborhoods often experience the worst heat in the city. COURTESY OF JEREMY
HOFFMAN
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-center_80/Urban-heat_Richmond_web
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-center_80/poverty_Richmond_web
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/5/282/htm
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ALSO ON YALE E360
Energy Equity: Bringing solar power to low-
income communities. Read more.
�ere were some surprises, he says. �e volume of buildings can have both a negative and positive
effect. Tall buildings that cast shade lower relative afternoon temperatures, while a large volume of
shorter buildings, like the big-box stores in suburban areas, help generate hotter afternoon
temperatures. Ground-level vegetation doesn’t necessarily reduce temperature — it’s not that much
cooler than asphalt — unless it’s watered. Shandas also has found that increasing the difference in
building heights in an area creates more air circulation, which has a cooling effect.
Creating cooler cities doesn’t necessarily mean building at lower densities. What matters, he says, is
varying building heights, the canopy cover, and street widths. “It wasn’t about no buildings and all
green,” he says. “It was about designing our spaces more thoughtfully.”
Some cities are already using the detailed research to guide decisions. In Richmond, a heat map and a
vulnerability map showing those more at risk appear in reports for housing, transportation, and the
climate action plan, and the city’s comprehensive master plan calls for reducing urban heat.
Richmond hasn’t invested in planting trees yet, he adds, but citizen-science groups like Groundwork
RVA and the museum have developed programs such as �rowing Shade in RVA, a program teaching
students about urban heat that has led to them planting peach trees at local high schools and
designing shady structures for neighborhood bus stops.
Some of the deadliest heat waves in recent decades have taken
place in northern cities, where people are not accustomed to
extreme heat.
Groundwork RVA’s parent organization, Groundwork USA, has funding to expand on this work for a
Climate Safe Neighborhoods project exploring the relationship between historical race-based housing
segregation and the impacts of climate change in Denver, Colorado; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Richmond,
California; and Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Even at higher latitudes, heat is an issue. According to the Centers for Disease Control, some of the
deadliest heat waves in recent decades have taken place in northern cities like Chicago, where people
are not accustomed to extreme heat and more residences lack air conditioning. A five-day heat wave in
Chicago in 1995 led to the deaths of 739 people.
In Portland, Shandas has created heat maps containing demographic information including age, race,
education, poverty level, and education. �e city is focusing its efforts in areas where urban heat
islands and indicators of vulnerability, including low-income levels, overlap. Shandas’ work is reflected
in Portland’s Better Housing by Design zoning update, in which the city has proposed zoning
amendments to reduce urban heat island effects, including limiting surface parking areas in
residential neighborhoods and requiring landscaped setbacks between buildings and streets to
provide more space for trees.
His next step is to expand heat island mapping to 50 cities in 2020. �e key question,
he says, is whether cities will begin making the changes necessary to decrease deaths
from extreme heat.
“�ose are very preventable deaths,” Shandas says. “We can identify those locations
and ameliorate some of the effects. It ultimately comes down to how to help these
people. We have the technology.
Jim Morrison writes about the environment, travel, the arts, and business. His stories have appeared in Smithsonian, �e New York
Times, �e Wall Street Journal, National Wildlife, Pacific Standard, �e Washington Post, and numerous other publications. He lives
in Norfolk, Virginia. MORE →
https://e360.yale.edu/features/energy-equity-bringing-solar-power-to-low-income-communities
https://www.groundworkrva.org/
https://groundworkusa.org/climate-safe-neighborhoods/about/
https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/pubs/extreme-heat-guidebook
http://www.capainsights.com/social-vulnerability
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/683878
https://e360.yale.edu/authors/jim-morrison
https://e360.yale.edu/authors/jim-morrison
12/16/2020 Houston’s Flood Is a Design Problem – The Atlantic
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RICHARD CARSON / REUTERS
Floods cause greater property damage and more deaths than tornadoes or hurricanes.
And Houston’s �ood is truly a disaster of biblical proportions: e sky unloaded 9
trillion gallons of water on the city within two days, and much more might fall before
Harvey dissipates, producing as much as 60 inches of rain.
Pictures of Harvey’s runoff are harrowing, with interstates turned to sturdy and mature
rivers. From Katrina to Sandy, Rita to Tōhoku, it’s easier to imagine the �ooding caused
by storm surges wrought by hurricanes and tsunamis. In these cases, the �ooding
problem appears to be caused by water breaching shores, seawalls, or levees. ose
examples reinforce the idea that �ooding is a problem of keeping water out—either
through fortunate avoidance or engineering foresight.
But the impact of �ooding, particularly in densely developed areas like cities, is far more
constant than a massive, natural disaster like Harvey exposes. e reason cities �ood
T E C H N O L O GY
Houston’s Flood Is a Design Problem
It’s not because the water comes in. It’s because it is forced to leave
again.
I A N B O G O S T AU G U S T 2 8 , 2 0 1 7
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http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/floods/faq/
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/disasters-by-type.aspx
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
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isn’t because the water comes in, not exactly. It’s because the pavement of civilization
forces the water to get back out again.
* * *
ere are different kinds of �oods. ere’s the storm surge from hurricanes, the runoff
from snowmelt, the inundation of riverbanks. But all these examples cast �ooding as an
occasional foe out to damage human civilization. In truth, �ooding happens constantly,
in small and large quantities, every time precipitation falls to earth. People just don’t
tend to notice it until it reaches the proportions of disaster.
R E C O M M E N D E D R E A D I N G
Under normal circumstances, rain or snowfall soaks back into the earth after falling. It
gets absorbed by grasslands, by parks, by residential lawns, by anywhere the soil is
exposed. Two factors can impede that absorption. One is large quantities of rain in a
short period of time. e ground becomes inundated, and the water spreads out in
accordance with the topography. e second is covering over the ground so it cannot
soak up water in the �rst place. And that’s exactly what cities do—they transform the
land into developed civilization.
Roads, parking lots, sidewalks, and other pavements, along with asphalt, concrete,
brick, stone, and other building materials, combine to create impervious surfaces that
resist the natural absorption of water. In most of the United States, about 75 percent of
its land area, less than 1 percent of the land is hardscape. In cities, up to 40 percent is
impervious.
e natural system is very good at accepting rainfall. But when water hits pavement, it
creates runoff immediately. at water has to go somewhere. So it �ows wherever the
Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine
A D R I E N N E L A F R A N C E
Dressed for the Plague. No, Not is One.
K A I T LY N T I F FA N Y
A person
dressed in a
17th-
century
plague
e Secret Internet of TERFs
K A I T LY N T I F FA N Y
A series
of browser
tabs, with
flames in
the center
https://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2011.php
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/adrienne-lafrance/
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12/16/2020 Houston’s Flood Is a Design Problem – The Atlantic
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grade takes it. To account for that runoff, people engineer systems to move the water
away from where it is originally deposited, or to house it in situ, or even to reuse it. is
process—the policy, planning, engineering, implementation, and maintenance of urban
water systems—is called stormwater management.
According to my Georgia Institute of Technology colleague Bruce Stiftel, who is chair
of the school of city and regional planning and an expert in environmental and water
policy governance, stormwater management usually entails channeling water away from
impervious surfaces and the structures built atop them. In other words, cities are built
on the assumption that the water that would have been absorbed back into the land
they occupy can be transported away instead.
Like bridges or skyscrapers designed to bear certain loads, stormwater management
systems are conceived within the limits of expected behavior—such as rainfall or
riverbank overrun events that might happen every 10 or 25 years. When these intervals
are exceeded, and the infrastructure can’t handle the rate and volume of water, �ooding
is the result.
Houston poses both a typical and an unusual situation for stormwater management.
e city is enormous, stretching out over 600 square miles. It’s an epitome of the urban
sprawl characterized by American exurbanism, where available land made development
easy at the edges. Unlike New Orleans, Houston is well above sea level, so �ooding risk
from storm surge inundation is low. Instead, it’s rainfall that poses the biggest threat.
A series of slow-moving rivers, called bayous, provide natural drainage for the area. To
account for the certainty of �ooding, Houston has built drainage channels, sewers,
outfalls, on- and off-road ditches, and detention ponds to hold or move water away
from local areas. When they �ll, the roadways provide overrun. e dramatic images
from Houston that show wide, interstate freeways transformed into rivers look like the
cause of the disaster, but they are also its solution, if not an ideal one. is is also why
evacuating Houston, a metropolitan area of 6.5 million people, would have been a
terrible idea. is is a city run by cars, and sending its residents to sit in gridlock on the
thoroughfares and freeways designed to become rivers during �ooding would have
doomed them to death by water.
* * *
Accounting for a 100-year, 500-year, or “million-year” �ood, as some are calling
Harvey’s aftermath, is difficult and costly. Stiftel con�rms that it’s almost impossible to
design for these “maximal probable �ood events,” as planners call them. Instead, the
hope is to design communities such that when they �ood, they can withstand the ill
effects and support effective evacuations to keep people safe. “e Houston event seems
like an illustration that we haven’t �gured it out,” Stiftel says.
https://www.publicworks.houstontx.gov/sites/default/files/all_swat_projects%20_rev_council_district_web_version
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/27/texas-flood-disaster-harvey-has-unloaded-9-trillion-tons-of-water/
12/16/2020 Houston’s Flood Is a Design Problem – The Atlantic
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Many planners contend that impervious surface itself is the problem. e more of it
there is, the less absorption takes place and the more runoff has to be managed.
Reducing development, then, is one of the best ways to manage urban �ooding. e
problem is, urban development hasn’t slowed in the last half-century. Cities have only
become more desirable, spreading outward over the plentiful land available in the
United States.
e National Flood Insurance Program, established in 1968, offered one attempt at a
compromise. It was meant to protect and indemnify people without creating economic
catastrophe. Instead of avoiding the �oodplain, insurance allowed people to build
within it, within management constraints recommended by FEMA. In theory, �ood-
hazard mitigation hoped to direct development away from �ood-prone areas through
the disincentives of risk insurance and regulatory complexity.
Since then, attitudes have changed. For one part, initial avoidance of �oodplains created
desirable targets for development, especially in the middle of cities. But for another,
Stiftel tells me that attitudes about development in �oodplains have changed, too. “It’s
more about living with water than it is about discouraging development in areas prone
to risk.”
Sometimes “living with water” means sidestepping the consequences. Developers
working in �ood zones might not care what happens after they sell a property. at’s
where governmental oversight is supposed to take over. Some are more strict than
others. After the global �nancial crisis of 2008, for example, degraded local economies
sometimes spurred relaxed land-use policy in exchange for new tax bases, particularly
commercial ones.
In other cases, �oodplains have been managed through redevelopment that reduces
impervious surfaces. Natural ground cover, permeable or semi-permeable pavers, and
vegetation that supports the movement of water offer examples. ese efforts dovetail
with urban redevelopment efforts that privilege mixed-use and green space, associated
with both new urbanism and gentri�cation. Recreation lands, conservation lands and
easements, dry washes, and other approaches attempt to counterbalance pavement
when possible. Stiftel cites China’s “sponge cities” as a dramatic example—a
government-funded effort to engineer new, permeable materials to anticipate and
mitigate the �ooding common to that nation.
* * *
But omas Debo, an emeritus professor of city planning at Georgia Tech who also
wrote a popular textbook on stormwater management, takes issue with pavement
reduction as a viable cure for urban �ooding. “We focus too much on impervious
surface and not enough on the conveyance of water,” he tells me. Even when reduced in
quantity, the water still ends up in in pipes and concrete channels, speeding fast toward
https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2016/oct/03/china-government-solve-urban-planning-flooding-sponge-cities
12/16/2020 Houston’s Flood Is a Design Problem – The Atlantic
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larger channels. “It’s like taking an aspirin to cure an ailment,” he scoffs. Houston’s
�ooding demonstrates the impact.
Instead, Debo advocates that urban design mimic rural hydrology as much as possible.
Reducing impervious surface and improving water conveyance has a role to play, but
the most important step in sparing cities from �ooding is to reduce the velocity of water
when it is channelized, so that it doesn’t deluge other sites. And then to stop moving
water away from buildings and structures entirely, and to start �nding new uses for it in
place.
at can be done by collecting water into cisterns for processing and reuse—in some
cases, Debo explains, the result can even save money by reducing the need to rely on
utility-provided water. Adding vegetation, reclaiming stormwater, and building local
conveyance systems for delivery of this water offer more promising solutions.
ough retired from Georgia Tech, Debo still consults on the campus’s local
stormwater management efforts. In one case, the institute took a soccer �eld and made
it into an in�ltration basin. Water permeates the �eld, where it is channeled into pipes
and then into local cisterns.
In Houston’s case, catastrophic �oods have been anticipated for some time. e
combination of climate change, which produces more intense and unpredictable
storms, and aggressive development made an event like this week’s almost inevitable.
e Association of State Floodplain Managers has called for a national flood risk-
management strategy, and the Houston Chronicle has called �ood control the city’s
“most pressing infrastructure need.” A lack of funding is often blamed, and relaxed
FEMA regulations under the Trump Administration won’t help either.
But for Debo and others, waiting for a holistic, centralized approach to stormwater
management is a pipe dream anyway. Just as limiting impervious surface is not the
solution to urban stormwater management, so government-run, singular infrastructure
might not be either. “It’s much more difficult, and a much bigger picture,” Debo insists
to me. “ere is no silver bullet for stormwater management.”
* * *
One problem is that people care about �ooding, because it’s dramatic and catastrophic.
ey don’t care about stormwater management, which is where the real issue lies. Even
if it takes weeks or months, after Harvey subsides, public interest will decay too. Debo
notes that traffic policy is an easier urban planning problem for ordinary folk, because it
happens every day.
So does stormwater—it just isn’t treated that way. Instead of looking for holistic
answers, site-speci�c ones must be pursued instead. Rather than putting a straight
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/16/texas-flooding-houston-climate-change-disaster
https://www.texastribune.org/boomtown-floodtown/
https://www.floods.org/ace-files/documentlibrary/Publications/ASCE_Call_for_National_Flood_Risk_Management_Strategy
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/texas-officials-drafting-wish-list-potential-infrastructure-funding-windfall
12/16/2020 Houston’s Flood Is a Design Problem – The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/why-cities-flood/538251/ 6/6
channel through a subdivision, for example, Debo suggests designing one to meander
through it, to decrease the velocity of the water as it exits.
e hardest part of managing urban �ooding is reconciling it with Americans’
insistence that they can and should be able to live, work, and play anywhere.
Waterborne transit was a key driver of urban development, and it’s inevitable that cities
have grown where �ooding is prevalent. But there are some regions that just shouldn’t
become cities. “Parts of Houston in the �oodway, parts of New Orleans submerged
during Katrina, parts of Florida—these places never should have been developed in the
�rst place,” Debo concludes. Add sea-level rise and climate-change superstorms, and
something has to give.
Debo is not optimistic about resisting the urge toward development. “I don’t think any
of it’s going to happen,” he concedes. “Until we get people in Congress and in the
White House who care about the environment, it’s just going to get worse and worse.”
Even so, there’s reason for optimism. If good stormwater management means good, site-
speci�c design, then ordinary people have a role to play, too. Residential homeowners
who install a new cement patio or driveway might not even realize that they are
channeling water down-grade to their neighbors, or overwhelming a local storm drain.
Citizens can also in�uence stormwater issues within their municipalities. Many folks
know that they have a local city council and school board, but local planning, zoning,
and urban design agencies also hold regular public meetings—unfortunately, most
people only participate in this aspect of local governance when they have an axe to
grind. For the average American concerned with the deluge, the best answer is to
replace an occasional, morbid curiosity with �ooding with a more sophisticated, long-
term interest in stormwater management.
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