Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Podcast & Photo Gallery: Cedar Rapids Flood Recovery — An Interview with Christine Butterfield

November 9, 2011 - American Planning Association - Recovery News
Christine Butterfield is the director of community development for the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was hit by a record-breaking flood in June 2008. She speaks here about the extensive planning effort to rebuild a city in which more than 10,000 people were evacuated from areas along the Cedar River, historic neighborhoods were inundated, and thousands of residents lost their homes or saw them badly damaged.
At the APA National Planning Conference in Boston in April 2011, she and her staff saw the city’s heroic efforts recognized with an APA National Planning Excellence Award for Best Practices in Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Planning, shared with Sasaki Associates, Inc., for the city’s new River Corridor Development Plan.

Vote nears on new codes for buildings

By Jason Morton, Staff Writer, Tuscaloosanews.com
Published: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 3:30 a.m

TUSCALOOSA | The Tuscaloosa City Council on Tuesday made a final round of tweaks to a proposed set of new building and design codes for commercial areas in the tornado recovery zone.
The changes were made in anticipation of next week’s vote by the City Council to formally introduce the new rules and begin the legally required advertising period.  ...

John McConnell, director of city planning, said the intent of the codes, as influenced by the Tuscaloosa Forward task force and community input, was to create and establish urban and retail areas that are also suitable for walking.  ...
For more information, or to review the proposed code changes and zoning maps, go to http://tuscaloosaforward.com/recovery-planning/zoning.

FULL ARTICLE

Joplin: A city rising from the rubble

By Eric Adler, Laura Bauer and Mike McGraw, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
Dec. 18--JOPLIN, Mo.--Winter creeps closer. Mark Rohr rises for another 13-hour day of work along "the destruction zone."  Some call it "the dig site," "the war zone," "the scar."  More hopeful residents like Rohr, Joplin's city manager, reject all those names as too negative, inasmuch as they fail to recognize what he sees as the speedy and near miraculous clearing of mountains of debris, the businesses returning, the steady thwack of nail guns rebuilding homes....

Last month, Congress approved some $400 million in community development block grants that Missouri can apply for to help rebuild parts of Joplin and flood-ravaged towns. Exactly how much Joplin might get remains unknown.  Insurers, meantime, have already paid out more than $1 billion in claims, with losses estimated at close to $2 billion.

"We would all love to be seven months into this and say everything is rebuilt and we're all done," Rob O'Brian, president of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, said in a measured assessment. "But no one expected this to be a six- or seven-month recovery process. Realistically, we know this is going to be a several-year process.... I would say, by and large, we are even ahead of schedule."

As the year that will define Joplin for decades comes to a close, the city's landscape is already transformed....

Attitude aside, the tornado also heaved up a wave of problems that many acknowledge will take more than bricks, mortar and a can-do spirit to stem.

Exactly what the rebuilt city -- population some 50,000 before the tornado -- will or should look like continues to be debated.

In November, the city's Citizens Advisory Recovery Team, a panel of some 100 residents, community and city leaders -- offered the City Council a menu of recommendations.

The thinking is that the black cloud that tossed homes, schools, businesses and some 15,000 cars into twisted heaps might also offer a silver-lining opportunity -- urban planning by tornado, just as tiny Greensburg, Kan., was reborn as an environmentally friendly town after being wiped from the map.

The recommendations from the team, known as CART, ranged from bike lanes in all areas of new construction to storm shelters in new schools. It included a mixed-use pilot neighborhood that might serve as a model for future urban core construction: energy-efficient homes with underground utilities on a block where retail mixes with residential.
"I don't think we do justice to the lives that were lost, the people who were injured in the storm, if we don't do our part to build back better than what we had before," said Joplin School Superintendent C.J. Huff, a CART member. "If you don't take this opportunity to build back better and stronger, then we weren't the community I thought we were when I decided to come here."

But there lies a tension:
While planning for the future, city leaders also know they must deal with the here and now, striving to rebuild the city as quickly as possible and return to normal knowing "normal" will have to be redefined.

If displaced residents don't return -- and no one knows how many will -- city and school coffers are certain to suffer.

"I have no doubt we're going to lose families," said Huff, who is nonetheless hopeful. "I know we're going to gain some families in the years to come."

Sixty percent of the district's budget comes from property taxes....
FULL ARTICLE