Catastrophe Recovery

Your community or regional sustainable revitalization program can start with a primary focus on any of the 12 sectors of restorable assets.

But if you're in a post-catastrophe situation, there can be a wonderful "silver lining": the urgency and comprehensiveness of your needs can be the catalyst your community needs to create an integrated revitalization program.  This would break down the inefficient silos f renewal activities (infrastructure, economic development, planning, historic preservation, agriculture, brownfields, watershed management, etc.) that might have long impaired your economic growth, your quality of life, and/or your environmental health. 

If you've already been hit by a major disaster, and have a strong catastrophe recovery organization, it could be an ideal sponsor for your community's Real Revitalization Program.  Is this organization trusted and effective?  Does it wish to take an even larger, longer-term role in the community's future? If so, sponsoring the Real Revitalization Program is also the best way to help it create (or become) a revitalization forum. 

A revitalization forum is a permanent public-private organization that supports an ongoing revitalization program.  [Note: Readers of reWealth (McGraw-Hill, 2008) will recognize this type of organization as what that book technically referred to as a "renewal engine". It was revealed as the key factor behind the most dramatic urban regeneration success stories documented in reWealth.]

Definition & overview: Catastrophe recovery comes in five basic forms: Natural disasters (hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, etc.); Anthropogenic disasters (industrial explosions, oil spills, nuclear power plant accidents, etc.); Natural disasters exacerbated by anthropogenic factors (natural floods made catastrophic by development in flood plains, earthquakes made more severe by groundwater or oil extraction, hurricane-associate mudslides caused by deforestation, etc.); Socioeconomic disasters (military base closure in a community whose economy depends on it, industrial flight to areas with cheaper labor, incremental decline caused by a multitude of social, environmental, economic, and image factors, etc.), & Conflict (invasion, terrorism, revolution, riots, etc.).

Integrated Catastrophe Restoration includes use of revitalization programs to prevent catastrophic community decline; use of natural or manmade catastrophes to stimulate redevelopment (such as technological leapfrogging of infrastructure, community redesign, etc.), also known as the "silver lining effect"; use of potential economic catastrophes (such as military base closure) to stimulate revitalization; recovery from armed conflict; etc.  Here's an examples of the "silver lining effect" in action:

• Between 1950-1980, many major highways were built along decrepit industrial waterfronts. With the waterfront redevelopment trend that started in the 80's and accelerated in the 90's, many communities found that these highways were preventing effective revitalization of their waterfront. The vast investment in these roads made it difficult to propose removing them (as in Toronto for the past two decades with the Gardiner Freeway). This problem is sometimes "solved" by natural disaster, as with the earthquakes in San Francisco (Embarcadero & Central freeways), and in Seattle (Alaskan Way Viaduct), where the communities took the time to question whether they should be rebuilt, and what could be done if they weren't.
  It should be noted that some far-sighted communities, such as Boston, "bit the bullet" and charged ahead with the removal of revitalization-obstructing infrastructure without waiting for a disaster to damage the highway for them.

Integrated catastrophe restoration is desperately needed these days, when natural disaster damage is steadily increasing every year, and when wars are becoming smaller-but-more-frequent, longer-lasting, and more toxic. Recognition of the need for more-integrated approaches is reflected in the rise of concepts such as "smart aid".  Too often, disaster and war recovery efforts focus almost exclusively on physical (usually urban) infrastructure. While this is--in fact--usually the most critical need, catastrophe revitalization efforts often miss their target by forgetting (or under-funding) restoration efforts related to rural needs in general, and social / environmental aspects in particular.