ADAPTATION - William E. Macaulay Honors Collegemacaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/annb13/files/2013/01/Adaptation.pdf · Singapore's two-billion-dollar campaign million, compared with

DEPT OF URBAN PLANNINGdred thousand, making it far safer thanmany of the most affluent neighborhoodson the North Side. Identifying the sourcesof such resilience is important, and not formerely academic reasons. The changingclimate is likely to deliver more severeweather more often; and understandingwhy some neighborhoods fare better in acrisis than others that resemble them canhelp us prepare for the next disaster.

For the past decade and a half, govern-ments around the world have beeninvest-ing in elaborate plans to "clim:ate-proof"their cities-protect~ng people, busi-nesses, and critical infrastructure againstweather-related calamities. Much of thiswork involves upgrading what engineerscall."lifeline systems": thenetwork intra-structurefor power, transit, arid commu-

ADAPTATIONHow can cities be "climate-prooftd"?

BY ERIC KLiNENBERG

InJuly,1995, a scorching heat wave hitChicago, killing seven hundred and

thirty-nine people, roughly seven timesas many as died in Superstorm Sandy.Soon after the heat abated, social scientistsbegan to look for patterns behind thedeaths. Some of the results were unsur-prising: having a working air-conditionerreduced the risk of death by eighty per

hunkering down at home and dying aloneduring the heat wave. At the same time,three of the ten neighborhoods with thelowest heat-wave death rates were alsopoor, violent, and predominantly African-American.

Englewood and Auburn Gresham,two adjacent neighborhoods on thehyper-segregated South Side of Chicago;

The Rockaways, New York, after Hurricane Sandy. The city is beginning toplan for afoture ofextreme weather.

cent. But fascinating patterns did emerge.For the most part, the geography of heat-wave mortality was consistent with thecity's geography of segregation and in-equality: eight of the ten community areaswith the highest death rates were virtuallyall African-American, with pockets ofconcentrated poverty and violent crime,places where old people were at risk of

were both ninety-nine per cent African-American, with similar proportions ofelderly residents. Both had high ratesof poverty, unemployment, and violentcrime. Englewood.proved to be one ofthe most perilous.places.during the disas-ter, with thirty-three deaths per hundredthousand residents. But Auburn Gresh-am's death rate was only three per hun-

nications, which is crucial intheimmedi-ate aftermath of a disaster. Some ofthe solutions arecapital-inrensiveandhigh-tech; some arelow- or no-tech ap-proaches, such as organizing communitiess?t?:atresi~h;nt.s,~ow ""hi,¢h,of their.rleighbofsare Vulfletableat1dhow;to assistthem. The fundamental threat to thehuman species is,~f co~se, our.collective.

32 THE NEW YOI\KER, JANUARY 7, 2013 PHOTOGRAPH BY ADRIAN FUSSELL

inability toreduce our-carbon emissionsand slow the pace of climate change. Yet,even if we managed to stop increasingglobalcflrbonemissions!tomorro"", ,wewould probablyexperience several centu-ries of additional warming; rising-sea lev-els, and more frequent dangerous weatherevents; Ifour.clties are to survive, we haveno choice but to adapt.

Vla,~sJac~bis ~geophysicist at Colum-.l\... bia Umversity whose 2009 r~port onclimate risks ,to New York City containseerily accurate predictions about what

. would happen to the city's infrastructureduring a majorstormsurge. He works atthe university's Lament-Doherty EarthObservatory, a,spra.wlingresearch campusforearth sciencesperchedabove the Hud-son River, on the Palisades. Its drab, boxybWlclingsmake it look more like a militarybase than like a collegiate Arcadia. Jacob'soffice has the familiar academic freight ofbooks, journals, and papers, but there'salso a Day-G 10 hard -hat that has hadsomeuseoverthe years. When Laskedhim how he got interested in urban secu-rity' he; told Ime about his childhood. "IWasborn in Stuttgart in 1936, and whenthe Warstarted my parents moved us to asmall village in Bavaria, because -theyknew we would be safer there," he said."The family that moved into our homewas killed two years later. The build-ing was bombed." Jacob has a thick sil-verbeard and pale-blue eyes, althoughhis foreboding manner makes the effectless Kris Kringle than Old Testamentprophet. He gave me an intent look. "Igrew up in a war environment. And whatLleamed.is.that.you can plan your fate, atleast to .s;qrne,·degree,if you assess yourrisks and do something about it."

Jacob's early research, which wasfunded by the United States Air Force,focussed on~nderground nuclear explo-sions, andhe later studied how structuressuehasrbridges and .high-nse buildingscould survive seismic shocks. In the nine-teen-nineties, Jacob was asked to helpNew York City evaluate its capacity towithstand storms, and since then he hasconducted similar studies for New YorkState and the M.T.A. His findings weresobering. "Much of the subway system isbelow sea level already," Jacob explained.During Sandy, several stations and linesfilled up like bathtubs. Elevating and re-designing access points and the ventila-

tion system would be an-immense un-dertaking. "It will probably cost billions,maybe tens of billions, to protect it."

Jacob's computer screen displayed twomaps of New York City neighborhoods,one color-coded by elevation and the otherby population growth since 2000. "Lookat.the blue zones, which show where we'vebeen developing real estate, and the pinkones, which show where the population isdrqpping," Jacob said. Downtown neigh-borhoods on the Hudson-Battery Park,Tribeca, the West Village, West Chel-sea, and Hell's Kitchen-s-were solidlyblue; neighborhoods uptown, on higherground, were pink "Think, about all theprojects we conceived more than a decadeago, before we knew about rising sea lev-els, in the name of waterfront revitaliza-tion;" he went on, "They've been quitesuccessful, but they've also placed a lot ofpeople at risk."

Genuine adaptation, Jacob believes,means preparing for the inevitable deluge."The ocean is going to reclaim what wetookfi-om it," he said. He thinks that NewYork can learn from Rotterdam, whichhas a long history of Hooding. After en-during a devastating storm surge in 1953,Rotterdam began building a series ofdams, barriers, and seawalls as part of anational project called Delta Works, andfiveyears ago the Dutch government pro-vided funds for an upgrade, the Rotter-dam Climate Proof-Program. ArnoudMolenaar, who manages it, says his teamrealized that they could convert the waterthat comes into the city from the skies andthe sea into "blue gold." "Before, we sawthe water as a problem," Molenaar toldme. "In the Netherlands, we focussed onhow to prevent it from.coming in. NewYorkCity focussed on evacuation, how toget people out of the way. The most in-teresting thing is figuring out what's be-tween these approaches: what to do withthe water once it's there."

In 2005, Rotterdam hosted the Sec-ond International Architecture Biennale.The theme was "The Flood." Designersfrom around the world presented plans forhow cities could cope with water in thefuture, and when the exhibition endedMolenaar's team set out to implementthose that would have immediate practi-cal value. Rotterdam is now experiment-ing with an architecture of accommoda-tion: it has a floating pavilion in the citycenter, made of three silver half spheres

with an exhibition space that's equivalentto four tennis courts; a water plaza thatserves as a playground most of the year butis converted into a water-storage facilityon days of heavy rainfall; a floodable ter-race and sculpture garden along the city'scanal; and buildings whose facades, ga-rages, and ground-level spaces have beenengineered to be waterproof

Smart designs have improved otherparts of the Netherlands' critical infra-structure. Its communications networkfeatures the fastest Internet speed in Eu-rope, and, with 1.B.M., it has built a sys-tem for water and energy management. Italso has a resilient power grid, designed towithstand strong winds and heavy rain. Inthe United States, most distribution linesare elevated on wooden poles and exposedto falling tree branches; in the Nether-lands, the lines are primarily undergroundand encased in water-resistant pipes. TheDutch grid is circular, rather than being asystem of hub and,spokes, so that, if a linegoes out in one direction, operators canrestore power by bringing it in from an-other source. And it's interconnected tothe grids in neighboring countries, whichgives the system additional capacity whenthere are local problems. This networkarchitecture is more resilient in ordinarytimes, too. In Holland, the average du-ration of total annual power outages istwenty-three minutes, compared with twohundred and fourteen minutes in NewJersey, Pennsylvania, and New York-notincluding outages from disasters.

After Sandy, there was a five-dayblackout in lower Manhattan, becausethe walls protecting Con Ed's substationalong the East River, at twelve and a halffeet above the ground, were eighteeninches too low to stop the storm surgeand prevent the consequent equipmentexplosions. When I asked Jacob aboutthis, he threw up his hands in exaspera-tion. 'Just put it on a high platform anduse more underwater cable," he said.'We've had it available for a long timenow. These are just moderate invest-ments, in the millions of dollars. It's asmall price to pay for more resilience."

The island nation of Singapore-where 5.2 million people are packed

into seven hundred and ten square kilo-metres. of land, much of which is peril-ously close to sea level-offers otherlessons, Singapore began adapting to

THENEWYOI\I\:EI\.JANUAI\Y7, 2013 33

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34 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 7, 2013I

dangerous weather thirty years ago, after 'Singapore is better prepared not only for vice," Leonardo Duenas-Osorio; an engi-a series of heavy rains during monsoon extreme weather but also far meeting fu- neering professor at RiceUniversity whoseasons caused repeated-flcoding in the ture demands for power and water as its is developingresilience.metricsfor criticallaw-lying city center. The cauntry has ai- population grows. infrastructure.systems.told me."A~ a'hur-ways had a difficult relationship with ricaneapproaches, operators could 'island'water. Its geography makes it vulnerable Jacob doesn't think Rotterdam's or Sin- areas that look.like they Will get the mostto. heavy seasonal rains and frequent gapare's arrangements can simply be damage.This breaks the systemintasmallflooding but there is never a sufficient replicated elsewhere, but he's im.pressed clusters andprevents cascadingfailures. Itsupply of usable water, and in recent years by their ambition and foresight. After gives the operators more control, more ca-Singapore's dependency on Malaysian Sandy, New York paid the price for its pacity to keep the power going or get itwater sources has led to.political conflicts. lack of preparation. In recent decades, bck." Smart meters also enable.consum-Climate change, with its rising sea levels American utility companies have spent ers to go onlineanytimero learn whenand increase in heavy rains, threatens the relatively little on research and develop- andhow they use energy andhow.muchcity-state's stability. But Singapore's gov- ment. One industry report estimates that, they're spending. AJreadytlwrlsevidenceernrnent also sees this as an opportunity. in 2009, research-and-development in- that customers \yitfi this information. are

The Marina Barrage and Reservoir, vestments made by all u.s. electrical- adjustiag.theirbehavior-accerdingly. eas-which opened in 2008, is at the heart of power. utilities amounted to at most $700 ing off onair-conditioning; drying theirSingapore's two-billion-dollar campaign million, compared with $6.3 billion by clothes at night, Cteatiilgwsmirter,moreto improve drainage infrastructure, re- I.B.M. and$9.1&illionby Pfizer. In resilientgricLforNewY0rk·willbeexpen-duce the size of flood -prone. areas, and 2009, however, the Department of En- sive, but not as expensive as a future filledenhance the quality of city life. It has nine ergy issued $3.4 billion in stimulus grants with recurring outages ,during ordinaryoperablecrest gates, a series of enormous to a hundred smart-grid projects across times andlang,;la:stihg failures.when thepumps, and a ten-thousand-hectarecatch- the United States, including many in weather tuinsmehacing,'ment area that is roughly one-seventh areas that are prone to heat waves and The communicarionssystern.uoo, isthe size of the country. The system not hurricanes; The previous year, Hurricane vulnerabktq.w.e~iherextnime$;Americisonly protects low-lying urban neighbor- Ike had knocked aut power to two million mobile~ph(i)nenetWQrks·havei~wnsbeenhoods.from flooding duringheavyrains; customers in Houston, and full restora- less reliable t'llallthoseln3El1rope, andit also eliminates the tidal influence of tion took nearly a month. When the city regularlyfailiri catastrophes, 'l)uringthe surrounding seawater, creating a rain- received $200 million in federal funds to. Sandy, emergeI'lo/ wor~~rsinNewYorkfed supply af freshwater that currently install-smart-gsid.technology-it quickly and New].6riseyWere'i;lna:bli,ro,.com,,lDu,:,meets ten per cent of Singapore' s demand. put crews to work. Nearly all Houston nicate withco~ei~es' who .came fromMoreover, by stabilizing water levels in households have been upgraded to -the otherstates.becausethere's no nationwidethe Marina basin the barriers have pro- new network; one that shouldbe.more.re- networkfor.first res'Ron:de.r~;gI'l~.thoseducedbetter conditions for-water. sports. liable1whenthenext storm arrives, fromautsidetheJ~g~on'd,epe~de~(m:cel~.The Marina's public areas, which include Smangrids.areinthe early stages; but lularneiwor1}S i:Pa:ti¥.~t¢,down.'IGobd·'a-sculpture garden, a water-play space, a. a1r.eadytheYhavesever:aladvat1tag~s oyer publicpoLiGiesmU;ld'potentiaUy makegreen. roof.with dramaticskyline vistas, . iheol~~p:o~ersysteins;]3igitalmeteJs; '.thes6n~wpe~~r~;'f!1~4~pr~,'fesmeft)" .and 'the .Sustainable Singapor~ 'Gallery,wlUchare'jdsl:alled::iri' hotisehOlds and at . HaroldF~lp~'*~!S¢~()r:r(,x:t~~~~9~n,to£'bolst~r the city's tburisteconi.)Iny~s :t,ell. k~Ytb~ri~fulssio il,pbirit~, au t0maticaliy .'the c4git~7t~g~fsa.dYoc~Cy'g(d!,wr:P,ublic

The Marina is just one ofSiugapore's generate rea:l-tirne information about .KB(in¥ledge;:say$.The'n~tW:?rkS'h.e~:ei1y,is,.a,diptation projects. The Mass Rapid bath consumers and suppliers,allowing. ages are~~~l.e",~e ;have ~e4Uflqit;cies:TranS.it system has elevated.the access utility proViQlersto. detect fail\l:fesimme.,. "They c~tr ba.~keaGh'otfuerup~" 8t>qa1'tpoints for the underground rail system to diately, and sometimes also to identify the phones giveth¥I1~twoJjks' ad~itipnitL:,pa:"arleast a metre above the highestrecorded cause, This means that,' after an outage, pacities for f\q16rge~0"com~~~t~~~~s,

.~~~~~e~~li;i~;::;~~~~ei:;~~:dt~: ~h~#o:~s~~~e~:e~rt~~:tr~o;;:!s,.:~:. ::~:~!r~:Vi~~!~~~~~t~~~~~~1d~~~'"drainage systems. In the nineteen-seven" crews. Moreover, smart grids are flexible, . tamers inZi.pCodes,wl1~r~::dl!:ng.e'r9\:isties, thirty-two hundred hectares of land capableofbeing fed by disparate sources weatherisappraaclllng,withg~&gr.aphi~.were flood-prone; today, only forty-nine ofenergy, including systems powered by cally specific-instructions-onwherhes.tohectares are. Singapore is further reducing the sun 'and 'the ~nd. When the' energy evacuate or how to stay safe;its dependence on imported water by industry develops better technologies for Unfortutlately, the cellular industry ,building new facilities for desalinating storing power [mm.these renewable re- has resisted·;effottsto J:'ygWate it, as~J3l:iCf'<seawater, and developing technology for. sources; thelJlewnetWorkS should be ea- old telephQMrretWor~;is:irj;gp:ratedi'~@)~using reclaimed and treated wastewater in pable of integratiRg them. there arenofederaf;lay.rs;esrap1,i'shtt1:g(\industrial settings. To reduce its energy Reengineered gdds will ultimately minimurritequiretp.eritsfOf,b:;tG~Hrpo'vyyr!'consumption, the Building and Can- o;ffemother benefits. "Thesit.uational during erriergeFlcf~s,nqs't~(J1dir!'ldbi:structionAurhoriry requires that all new awarelilessof the System mightaJl0W:0P- howand:when'JDJbviders~;iS~~UJ~.,.p.e,t+..structures be insulated with materials de- erators to fecon:6igur;ethe system;' either works or diqpi0.arriing. C4aJ!g~s:to':giye'signed to retain cool temperatures. Today, bd0re or after the event, to.maintainser- marepeople'iaccess:to' i'h{0tmation,'an(i

no rules forreporting whatcausedex-'t~hdedoutages. 'We have apublic.inter-estin.building robust networks,". Feld'says:"AndbYnowit'sclearthatwe~rer1otgoing to get them by lettingindustrj reg~ulate itself"

New York City Will inevitably exploreways to reduce flooding. There are rela-tively inex;penslve measures, such as re~storingwetlandsand planting oyster beds,and rhen.there are more ambitious, capi-tal-intensiveapproaches: engineers at theDutch firm Arcadi\i have designed a$65~billio1i.barrier,that would go justnorth of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.Others have prGlPosed a five-mile .gatethat wouldstretclr [rom Sandy Hook,New Jersey, to Rockaway, New York.Malcolm Bowman, who runs the Storm

. Surge-Research Group at SUNYStonyBrook..is aniong the Ieading-advoraresforsuch a barrier. 'Wecal1'tjust sit aroundwaiting for the. next catastrophe," he ar~gues,·'The.ti,meisuow;.and.it's really justa matter ofp()litica1,~ilL",;Buttl:ler¢al;'¢de1>ates about the long-tetm!eflicacyio£:'these barriers. "Barriersare at-best an .intermediatesolution,"Ja(!:obto1dmeJn,his office. 'They will re-quireat least.twerityyears to build, be-causs we'dneed environmental -irnpactrepoIts,ai;\<{,b\iY7iufiJomthefederal gov~ernirrerit(th,e -state ,govemm.ents of NewYork, New Jersey, and Connecticut, andprobably alsoabout three hundred munic-ipalities. If all that happens, we'd getpro-tection.for perhaps dew decades, Wallswill keep out storm-surges, but not the ris-ing ocean, and they could causea sense offalse securitythat:prevents us from findingreal solutiQns}'·'

]acob's0fPcehcks the high-poweredcomputlng,,'equipment that one finds inthe labswhere engineers are designing so-phisticated models for sea barriers. "I'm aconceptual ~nker," Jacob told me. "I dothe.raodelling in my head. And if wespend-allour resources on expensive safetysystems that are not sustainable we're notgoing to solve the problem. Sometimesengineers don't see things holistically.Earth,s:cience helps us seethe bigger. pic-ture." Eventually.Tacob believes, the citywill need to make a "managed retreat" tohigher grouJd.'We have a lot of highareas that-we're not using, or that we'veused for-cemeteries.In Queens. I think weneed to switch the living and dead, and Ithink the dead would understand."

He turned'again to his monitor. "Look.at-the map," he said,·tracingthe coastline.ig/Brooklyn, Queens.and Staten Island,th:¢rr.running his fingers along the Hud-son and the East 'River. 'This iswhere therising water will.hit."

S;till, a strategy of resilience Will involve," ' more than changes to our physical in-

frastructure. Increasingly, governmentsarid disaster: planners are recognizing the .importance of social infrastructure: thepeople, places, and institutions that rostercehesion-andsupport. "There's a lot of so-cial-scienceresearch showing how muchbetterpeopledo in disasters, how muchlongel' they live.when they have good so-cial networks and connections," says Ni-cole Lurie, a former professor of healthpolicy at RAND'sgraduate school and atthe University of Minnesota, who hasbeen PresidentObama's assistant secre-tary for preparedness and response since2009. "And we've had a prettybigevolu~tion in our thinking, so promoting corn-munityresilience is now front and centerin our approach,"

The Chicago heat wave proved to be acase study-in this respect. Researcherswho sifted through the data (I was amongthem} noticed that women fared far bet-t(;)rthan meru.because they have strongerties. to friends and family andare lessprone to isolation. Latinos, who ,had highlevels of poverty, had an easier time thanother ethnic groups in Chicago, simplybecause in Chicago they tend to live incrowded apartments and densely packedneighborhoods, places where dying aloneIS nearly impossible.

The key difference between neighbor-hoods like Auburn Gresham and othersthat are demographically similar turnedout to be the sidewalks, stores, restaurants,and community organizations that bringpeople into contact with friends andneighbors. The people of Englewoodwere vulnerable not just because they wereblack and poor but also because their

community had been abandoned. Be-tween 1960 and 1990, Englewood lostfifty per cent of its residents and most ofits commercialoutlets, as,well as its socialcohesion. 'We used to be much closer,more tight~knit,"says Hal Baskin, whohas lived in Englewood for.fifty-two. yearsand currently leads a campaign againstneighborhood violence. "Now we don'tknow who lives across the street or aroundthe corner. And old folks are apprehensiveabout leaving their homes!' AuburnGresham, by contrast,' experienced nopopulation loss during that period. In1995, residents walked to diners and gro~cery stores. They knew their neighbors.They participated in block clubs andchurch groups. "During the heatwave;wewere doingwellness checks.asking.neigh-bars to knock on each- other's doors;"Betty Swanson.whohas.livedin AuburnGreshamfor nearly fifty years, ,says.'Thepresidents of our block clubs usually knowwho's alone, who's aging, who's sick. It'swhat we always do when it's very hot orvery cold here."

Robert J. Sampson, a sociologist atHarvard University, has been measuringthe strength of social ties, mutual assis-tance, and nonprofit organizations inChicago communities for nearly two de-cades. He has found that the benefits -ofliving in a neighborhood with a robustso-cial infrastructure are significant duringordinary times as well as dvring disasters.In 1990, life expectancy in AuburnGresham was fiveyears higher than it wasin Englewood. And, during the severeheat waves that are likely to hit Chicagoand other cities in the near future, livingina neighborhood like Auburn Greshamis the-rough equivalent of having a-work-ing air-conditioner in each room.

Since 1995, officials in Chicago havebegun to take these factors into account.During times of intense heat, the city hasurged the local media to advise neighbors,friends, and family to check in on oneanother. City agencies have maintained a

"We're apack, not a cult. "

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database that lists the names, addresses,and phone numbers of old, chronically ill,and otherwise vulnerable people, and cityworkers call or visit to make sure they'resafe. Churches and civic organizationshave encouraged neighbors to look out forone another, as have family and friends. InEnglewood, meanwhile, residents andcommunity organizations have inventedtheir own version of the Rotterdam strat-egy, turning their main problem, aban-donment, into an advantage. Their goal isto transform Englewood into a hub ofurban farming, with gardens that createstronger community ties as well as freshproduce and shade.

Englewood, as it happens, is just a fewmiles from the neighborhoods where

Barack Obama worked as a communityorganizer during the late nineteen-eight-ies, learning first hand why social tiesmatter. Obama must have been thinkingof places like Englewood when, as a U.S.senator in 2005, he connected the effectsof Hurricane Katrina to the slow-motiondisaster that New Orleans's vulnerableneighborhoods endured every day. "Ihope we realize that the people of NewOrleans weren't just abandoned duringthe hurricane," he said. "They were aban-doned long ago." Katrina, Obama contin-ued, should "awaken us to the great dividethat continues to fester in our midst" andinspire us to "prevent such a failure fromever occurring again."

Obama was one of many members ofCongress who believed that Katrina ex-posed the shortcomings of a national-security strategy that marginalized non-terrorist threats. The following year,Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emer-gency Management Reform Act, whichexpanded FEMA's authority, and thePandemic and All Hazards PreparednessAct, which authorized new programs toimprove public-health responses, rang-ing from risk communications to tar-geted support for' vulnerable popula-tions. During his first term, PresidentObama introduced a new National HealthSecurity Strategy that emphasized pre-paredness and Iresilience, calling for theparticipation of the "whole cornmu-

. ,,--, . . ..I1lty-government agenCles, CIVlC orga-nizations, corporations, and citizens-inall aspects ofthe security plan. "It was apretty big evolution in our own think-ing, to be able to put community re-

36 THE NEW YOI\.I\.EI\.JANUAI\.Y 7. 2013

THE PEAR.L

She lost an earring-who knewour bed could be so vast?

She combed the sheets:blue thread tangled in itself,nibbled transparent moth wing,two deeply veined maple keys.

She found Bushwick, dawn,marriage, work, middle age. ~

What makes her so stubborn,raking each seam gingerly,unable to resist the sheenof a hook with a missing bead?

silience front and center,"Nicole Lurie says.Since March, 2011; when Obama is-

sued a directive on national preparedness,FEMA has embraced a similar approachto community resilience. "Community-engagemenf' pilot programs hll1ded by theCenters for Disease Control and Preven-tion have been launched in Los Angeles,Chicago, New York-City, and Washing-ton, D.C. "There's alwaysbeen abigfocuson classic infrastructure in mitigation,"Alonzo Plough, the director of emergencypreparedness and response for the Countyof Los Angeles, says. "But it's not just en-gineering that matters. It's social capital.And what this movement is bringing tothe fore is that the social infrastructure

. "matters, too.Sandy revealed serious flaws in all

forms of infrastructure in New York andNew Jersey. But it also turned up surpris-ing reserves of strength. When I visitedRockaway Beach in mid-November, res-idents complained about the slow pace ofrecovery. the power was out. The gas wasoff. Phone service was spotty. Trains'weren't running. Sewage water from theflooding covered the streets. Still, therewere some bright spots. The RockawayBeach Surf Club, which opened inMarch, in a converted auto-repair shopbeneath the Elan Beach Eighty-seventhStreet, transformed itself into a temporaryrelief agency when two oi its founders re-turned there after the storm, posted Face-book updates inviting friends to join

-D.Nurkse

them, and watched more than five thou-sand volunteers come to·help. It becamethe main community organization, pro-viding food, cleaning supplies, camarade-rie, and manual-labor for nearby residents.The surf club's neighbors, including blue~collarfamilies and poor.African-Arnericanswho, months before, had worried abouthow the club wouldsfit.intothe cornmu-nity, joined in and benefitted from theorganization.

Ofelia Mangen, a thirty-year-old who.. lives with her younger brother in

a row house on Beach Ninety-secondStreet, joined the surf club last summerand spent manynights there volunteeringwith neighbors and friends. "I broughtflowers, bartended, worked the door-whatever was needed," she teld.rne, as wewalked down Rockaway Freewayon amild day in mid-November, past sanita-tion trucks, police cars, and sidewalkscluttered with debris. "I'vejust kept doingwhatever is needed since the stO(ITl'hit,But now the heeds havechanged, and,there's obviously alot more of them." Twoweeks had passed since the superstorm,and residents had no power, gas; heat, orhot water for bathing. Stores, restaurants,pharmacies, and,gas stations were closed.Trains were inoperable. .

Mangen, a,graduate student in educa-tional design at New York University,has a steady disposition. She's slim butsturdy,'with curlybroWnhair, thick glasses,

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f;~~~li.~~~~:~:~~.:: . "' ••bilCkto her'stte~t:Wfal1en:tree rested om-? / ',' :'in6"&~lyo'~the~o~fo{atwo,-story apart-

'me,ntb,u~dil):g.on.thecorner.i':"~ing'e~sRQt~~d'Jullior, a neighbor'~hoyVotiksa~;~'<;tDritractor,parking his vanacrqsstlie street from us, and she led us to

····:,the·ap~er1thiilping sot#at w~ could"9~~;if'a9yone wa?th~re."He1l6,"shes&~~~gd';"af~'~"'~~e~~oi1<;~edoor'~few tImes, •.•..1&•........« ... ·PQlne? A youngbt6~-fskil1ri~dworDiJ.n peek¢cI out fromth~5~~O~c!..;'£iGC;l\.vindo~,beneath thefallen: tree:"Are you O.K. up there?"Mangenasked. "Do you need anything?"

. ''Juice,1!sheanswered. "For the baby."We returned to the surf club, where

residents; many with shopping carts, linedthesidewalk, putting in requests for foodand supplies and waiting while volunteersfetched them. Mangen introduced me toBrandon d'Leo, a sculptor, and BradachWalsh, a firefighter, who were directingthe club's relief efforts, and they enlistedme in the search for volunteers to meettheir neighbors' most pressing needs."You're.from a school," d'Leo noted. "Doyou know anyone who teaches plumbersor electriciansrWe can't get power re-stored in our homes until wflve passed aninspection by someone with certification."

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When Mangen returned to her neigh-bor's apartment to deliver the juice, thewoman came down to greet us. She heldan: infant, and appeared to have a painfulsore on her lip. "Can we get youanythingelse?"Mangen asked. The woman shook~erhead, but hesitantly. "Listen, there'sf~6d at the surfclubdownonBeachElghty-seventh,"Martgen tolciher. "It'sjust. a few minutes from'here. And thereare places giVingout medicine now, too."The woman smiled shyly, thanked her,and returned to her dark apartment. Afew minutes later, walking back to herplace, Mangen had a thought. She calledthe arborists from Tennessee and askedthem if they could take on another job.

. Soonafterwal'd, the tree resting on herneighbor's rooftop Wasremoved,

~hotisands of people whose homes.~ were damaged by Sandy live inneighborqoods that lack sttongsupportnetworks or community organizations ca-pable .of mounting a l:uge relief effort.They tend to be poorer and less educated .than typical New Yorkers, with weaker.ties.to the¥' neighbors aswell as to politi-calpowerlsrokers. Since Saridy, MichaelMc:Donalcl, who heads Global HealthInitiatives, in Washington, D.C., andworked in Haiti after the 2010 earth-quake, has been coordinating reliefeffortsby volunteer groups, government agen-cies, corporate consultants, health work-ers, and residents invulnerable areas, par-ticularly in the Rockaways. McDonaldcalls the network the New York Resil-ience System, and-he's con-vincedthar civil society willultimately determine which.people and places will with- .S-stand the emerging threatsfrom climate change. In De- Ycember, lwatched him chair ameeting of network partici-pants-they included repre-sentatives from New YorkCares (the city's largest volun-teer organization), the accounting andconsulting firm PricewaterhouseCoo-pers, the New York City Department ofHealth, and the state Attorney General'sOffice. 'What's actually happening on theground is not under an incident com-mand system," he told me. "It's the frag-ile, agile networks that make a differencein situations like these. It's the horizontalrelationships like the ones we're building

that create security on the ground, not-thehierarchical institutions. We're here tounify the effort." .

Whether they come from govern-ments or from civil society, the best tech-niques for safeguarding cities don'tjust mitigate disaster damage; they alsostrengthen the networks that promotehealth and prosperity during ordinarytimes. Contrast this with our approach tohomeland security since 9/11: the check-

.points, the bollards,the surveillance earn-eras, the no-entryzones. Wedonotknowwhether these devices have prevented anattack on an American city, but, as thesociologist Harvey Molotch argues in"Against Security," they have certainlymade daily life less pleasant and efficient,imposing costs thatarediflicult to mea-sure while yielding "almost nothing ofvalue" in the normal course ofthings.

'We were making some progress onclimate-change adaptation in the latenineteen-nineties," KlausJacob observed."But September 11th set us back a decadeon extreme-weather-hazards, because westarted focussing on a completely differentset of threats." Effective climate-proofingdemands moreintelligentdesign. Itshouldprovide benefits not just when disasterstrikes but day to day, likeSingapore's Ma-rina Barrage, which created new water-front, parkland, and exhibition spaces, orlike a smarter power grid, which helps re-duce energy consumption in all weather.That's true of the low-tech and the no-techmeasures. Auburn Gresham's advantagesover Englewood aren't restricted to mor-

tality rates during a heat wave.It's a cause for regret that

we're not responding to thechallenges of climate changewith the same resources we'vedevoted to the war on terror.As long as the threat fromglobal warming seemed re-mote and abstract, it was eas-ier to ignore, Now climatechange is coming to mean

something specific, and scary. "Even on aclear day a hundred years from now, thewater will be where it is today understorm-surge conditions," Jacob said, Moreheat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, andfloods are to be expected. We are enteringan age of extremes. 'We can't just rebuildafter ev-ery disaster," Jacob continued.'We need to pro-build, with a future ofclimate change in mind." •

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THE NEW YOI\J(ER,JANUAltY 7, 2013 37