Introduction
A community is made up of a group of people living in close proximity to one another and is united by similar goals. The latter part of that statement is actually very crucial because it is what determines whether or not a community can sustain itself for a long time. The strength of the people’s unity and their ability to settle on their community goals are indicators of just how much they can coexist with one another. Coexisting, after all, is the main essence of a community. And there is no better way to demonstrate coexistence than by formulating a comprehensive plan.
Comprehensive Plans
Comprehensive plans are the combined efforts of both the local government and the citizens of the area in addressing their community’s problems and then identifying their goals (Ohm 6). All in all, the main objective of creating a comprehensive plan is to ensure community development. To be able to do this, comprehensive planning involves creating new policies and consists of elements such as housing, transportation, environment, energy, land use and design, economic development, and public facilities (Ohm 6).
Coming up with a highly efficient and systematic comprehensive plan starts with being able to properly accomplish each necessary step of comprehensive planning. These steps are identifying the community’s issues, determining their goals, collecting necessary and relevant data, putting together a concrete plan, creating implementation plans, coming up with and then evaluating alternatives, selecting the best plan, and lastly, implementing and monitoring the plan (Portugali 20).
The first step, identifying the community issues, is deemed by many urban planners to be the most important step because it steers the entire process of comprehensive planning to the direction it is intended to take (Ohm 13). Incorrectly identifying a community’s issues would only prove to be counter-productive and could even cost the community in the long run. This is because the time they are going to spend trying to solve the wrong problems could have been spent solving the right problems instead.
It can be observed that identifying the community’s issues is very much like diagnosing a patient’s sickness. Both rely on being able to recognize problem areas and being able to ask all the right questions in order to arrive at the right answers. Another thing that the two activities have in common—and this is something that is extremely important—is that both can only be successful if they know their subjects very well.
The doctor should have ample knowledge of her patient’s body and health in order to make accurate diagnoses. In the same way, a local government should also have adequate knowledge of the community to be able to correctly identify what its issues are. Knowing all the intricacies of a community will allow its local government to pinpoint its strengths and weaknesses. They can then use this information to formulate a comprehensive plan that would accentuate the community’s strengths and improve on their weaknesses.
Being able to come up with an excellent comprehensive plan is especially important during times of crisis. These times of crisis could take a variety of form such as the sudden emergence of neighborhood gang violence, a devastating economic crisis, or an unforeseen natural disaster.
Two years ago, the city of New York experienced an extremely devastating natural disaster. It was on October 29 that Hurricane Sandy hit the well-known and well-beloved city; New York didn’t stand a chance as 43 New Yorkers lost their lives (Bloomberg 4). The thousands who survived the brutal disaster were left injured, temporarily dislocated, or completely homeless. It was a heartbreaking phenomenon for all; the question is, could all the lives lost and homes destroyed have been prevented? This is what the local government of Manhattan is trying to answer. With that in mind, this paper is going to discuss Manhattan’s comprehensive plan, which aims to better equip the community when it comes to handling natural disasters in the future. This paper will also provide design professionals with important information on changes in the code and zoning standards that affect how buildings damaged in Hurricane Sandy may be repaired. The local government of Manhattan hopes that these new and improved standards will better prepare buildings for extreme weather conditions, consequently protecting people’s homes throughout the whole ordeal.
Manhattan’s Comprehensive Plan
Manhattan’s comprehensive plan is amazingly put together and very detailed. Local engineers and urban developers have worked together to help in the formulation of a comprehensive plan that would prevent flooding disasters in the future. Some elements that were recently changed include rezoning for flood zones and incorporating new design flood elevation boards such as raising the preexisting elevation by at least 1 foot. They took note of the different types of Special Flood Hazard Areas or SFHA in New York City and all the structures located within an SFHA (Colgate and Ackroyd 6). In addition to these, they issued new permits that are required by the local government, the State, and the federal agencies for the construction of new buildings in an SFHA.
They also performed substantial-damage calculations, which estimate all the potential destruction that infrastructures might come into contact with during extreme storms (Colgate and Ackroyd 7). These substantial-damage calculations are significant because they will and should serve as the basis of the New York City Building Code. This new NYC Building Code, along with the practical application of the substantial-damage calculations, includes Flood Resistant Construction Standards (Colgate and Ackroyd 7).
Where Manhattan’s comprehensive plan undeniably succeeds in is identifying their community’s issues so accurately. It acknowledges one of New York City’s biggest disadvantages: the fact that it is a coastal city. The comprehensive plan is also able to recognize that this huge disadvantage was the number one reason as to why the city was devastated by Hurricane Sandy at such a high degree. Being a coastal city, New York is extremely vulnerable to climate risks such as flooding due to heavy storms and sea level rise (PlaNYC, “Community Preparedness” 21). True enough, Hurricane Sandy did cause highly destructive flooding throughout the city.
What makes things worse, and this is another weakness that the comprehensive plan correctly identified, is that there are over 35,500 buildings and more than 376 million square feet of land that are previously thought to be located within the area that was in danger of flooding. However, Hurricane Sandy’s flood waters were able to reach over 88,700 buildings and around 662 million square feet of land (PlaNYC, “Buildings” 8). This means that the previous comprehensive plan of the city was widely inaccurate in their estimate. Unfortunately, their inaccuracies cost the safety of 443,000 residents and 245,000 jobs.
Manhattan’s new comprehensive plan post-Hurricane Sandy acknowledges the grave mistakes of the past and tries to make up for it by revisiting the Flood Insurance Rate Maps released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Now, the local government has not only taken into consideration the geographical aspect of things but the meteorological aspect as well. During the process of comprehensive planning, they included the analysis of the climate in calculating the new flood maps. They took into account relevant things that were overlooked in the past such as the projected sea level rise, potential changes in coastal storms, storm-related wind gusts, and the ever so controversial climate change. In the end, the comprehensive plan has arrived at the result of an estimated 114,000 buildings within the floodplain by the year 2050 (PlaNYC, “Buildings” 9).
The housing element of the comprehensive plan is perhaps more extensive than that of any other US city. This is because New York City has one of the most diverse selections of buildings. Understanding the different types of buildings is the first step to knowing how to repair each one after Hurricane Sandy and how to make them more resilient in case of future disasters. The comprehensive plan categorizes New York City buildings by physical characteristics, building use, and building age. Under physical characteristics, buildings are further categorized based on their height (low-rise, mid-rise, or high-rise); construction type (combustible or non-combustible); and proximity (detached, semi-attached, or attached).
This system of classification is actually very helpful when it comes to making the city’s housing more enduring in times of natural disasters. It also makes for an effective tool in the next step of the comprehensive planning process, which is collecting data. One of the after-effects of flooding, ironically, is fire accidents. Categorizing buildings according to their construction type or discerning which ones are combustible and which ones are not will help the local government prevent rapid fires. If not, then it will inform the local firefighters which parts of the neighborhood are more susceptible to fire disasters. The category of building proximity also helps in this problem because it helps the local government pinpoint the most vulnerable parts of the community, which are the attached combustible buildings. Those are the types of buildings that are most prone to rapid fires; hence, those are the types of buildings that urban planners must avoid.
In addition to the construction type and proximity of the buildings, categorizing them by their height is also another advantageous tool that the comprehensive plan utilizes. By dividing the buildings based on their height, the local government was able to arrive at astounding results. They gathered statistics showing that majority of the destroyed buildings during Hurricane Sandy were low-rise buildings. Meanwhile, there were absolutely no high-rise buildings destroyed during the hurricane. Among the low-rises, 18% were completely destroyed; 39% were structurally damaged; and a tremendous 43% became partly unsafe (PlaNYC, “Buildings” 17).
Upon coming across this extremely helpful data, FEMA published a new set of advisory flood elevation standards. This is a reaction to the city’s discovery that low-rise buildings are acutely fragile when it comes to flooding. As a way to support FEMA’s new standards, the City Council and the Mayor issued Executive Order 230 or “An Emergency Order to Suspend Zoning Provisions to Facilitate Reconstruction in Accordance with Enhanced Flood Resistant Construction Standards” (Beck). To make a long title short, the Executive Order simply suspended height and zoning restrictions in order for buildings to meet FEMA’s new advisory flood elevation standards.
Overseeing the BRTF is the Urban Green Council, which ensures that the proposals of the group promote sustainable development. This is yet another strong point for Manhattan’s comprehensive plan. In the beginning of the process, they identified that one of the city’s issues is the effect of climate change to their city. They determined that the community’s main goal is to repair the city after Hurricane Sandy and create new buildings that would stand strong against future catastrophes.
The local government thought of a plan to achieve this main goal but at the same time, they did not forget the other issue, which is climate change. The comprehensive plan does not sacrifice one issue for the sake of another. Hence, their plan included the Urban Green Council. It is assigned to make sure that the steps that the city takes in improving its housing regulations do not contribute to the problem of climate change.
It can be seen that the city’s comprehensive plan is not only thorough, it is also consistent in implementing the goals of the plan to protect the city from flooding. This consistency is manifested in how different people, organizations, and government agencies are all working together so harmoniously. For example, the Mayor and the City Council redeveloped the zoning and height restrictions so that people can comply with FEMA’s new flood elevation standards. Another example is how the Urban Green Council and the BRTF are working hand in hand to address two different but closely related problems: weak buildings and climate change.
Conclusion
What can be seen here is a perfect example of unity within the community. They all have one goal in mind, which is to repair and protect their city from natural disasters. However, they have different ways of fulfilling that similar goal. Every person or organization has a different role to play and a different contribution that they can put to the table. Despite their differences, they are still able to come up with compromises that not only address the community’s issues but also maximize the potential of every citizen. The love that they have for their city—a love that is stronger than any storm out there—was what enabled an excellent comprehensive plan to come to fruition.
Works Cited
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PlaNYC. “Southern Manhattan.” A Stronger, More Resilient New York: 2013. Web 02 Oct. 2014 <http://www.nyc.gov/html/sirr/downloads/pdf/final_report/Ch18_Southern_Manhattan_FINAL_singles.pdf>.
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