Leading the Resilience Movement at the State Level: Policy Recommendations for a More Resilient California

Written with colleagues Corinne LeTourneau and Anna Friedman, I wrote a blog post for the release of 100 Resilient Cities’ 2019 white paper on policy recommendations for resilience in California. Full 100 Resilient Cities white paper here.

Excerpt:

California faces a diverse range of resilience challenges, top of mind for most being earthquakes and a full range of natural disasters – including wildfires, drought, and flooding which are becoming more severe and frequent due to climate change. Yet no less severe are the slow-burning resilience challenges: a housing affordability and homelessness crisis, rising economic inequality, and silos at all levels of government that hinder bolder responses to the state’s urgent issues. Despite, or perhaps because of these challenges, California finds itself at the vanguard of the resilience movement, with great potential for leadership at the state level. With its history of progressive leadership in areas like climate action, and with its urban centers taking tangible steps toward a resilient future, now is the moment for the State of California serve as a national and international model for resilience.

Building upon the resilience experience and expertise cultivated in California to date, “Resilience Public Policy and Implementation in California: Strategies for Building Statewide Resilience” provides a number of tactical policy recommendations across four opportunity areas: governance, housing, disasters and climate change, and economic opportunity. These recommendations aim to strengthen the State of California in the face of current and future shocks and stresses, while creating a resource for other states and municipalities working to build their own resilience.

Rail Transit Impacts on Residential Land Use

View my Harvard Graduate School of Design Masters in Urban Planning thesis here and my APA 2017 National Planning Conference poster here.

Abstract:

While the importance of rail transit in creating dense, livable places may seem self-evident to many urban planners, there is actually a great discrepancy between two schools of thought. There are those who advocate transit oriented development and the expansion of rail transit systems as a solution to a variety of urban ills, including housing issues. Conversely, there are those who remain skeptical, recognizing that there are benefits from having an existing system, but rarely recommending the construction of new rail transit systems.

This thesis examines the impacts of the extensions of the MBTA Red and Orange Lines in Boston during the 1970s and 1980s to add to this conversation by analyzing the changes in the residential nature of neighborhoods around new transit stations in the decades after they were built. Boston is a particularly relevant place for this inquiry for a number of reasons. Its rail transit system has undergone several phases of development, including the opening of the first underground subway line in the United States in 1897. The most recent major phase of development was the realignment of the northern and southern stretches Orange Line and extension of the Red Line to Alewife and to Braintree, all of which occurred as a part of a nationwide wave of transit construction in the latter half of the twentieth century. Today, Boston is engaged in a debate around a potential future phase of rail transit expansion, making this an opportune time to assess the lessons that can be learned from past efforts. In this context, there is evidence that improved access to rail transit does indeed generate some increased residential density, particularly with respect to the physical housing stock and especially when considered over a long time frame (twenty years and more). By examining the evidence, we can help further situate the discussion around transit in Boston and beyond.

SENSORS and Smartphones: Technological Solutions for Monitoring Road Conditions

View my writing for the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center Data Smart City Solutions program here in November 2016 and republished on govtech.com.

Excerpt:

Cities are looking for ways to direct their street improvement resources more effectively, given the limited personnel to monitor streets and anemic funding for repairs. … [S]ome cities are turning to digital monitoring to replace traditional techniques, enabling more frequent and accurate assessment of infrastructure quality. These digital methods primarily fall into one of two categories: vehicle-based monitoring systems, which collect data via an array of sensors attached to a vehicle (usually owned or contracted by the city), and smartphone-based monitoring systems, which leverage built-in smartphone functionality to gather road data.