ABCs of Planning in a Climate Emergency
Almost 900 jurisdictions across the world have declared a climate emergency. But what does that mean? I asked planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering colleagues on Twitter to share their ideas on what planning in a climate emergency means to them. You can also check out climate change policy guides for planners from American Planning Association and Canadian Institute of Planners.
Anthropocentric (suggested by @bambinoir). In October 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report from the world’s leading climate scientists who warn that humanity has 12 years to reduce carbon emissions by the 45% needed to keep average global warming to 1.5 C — a level intended to avoid life-threatening changes to our food systems, weather systems, drinking water, and basic ways of life. Since industrialization, humans have released enough carbon into the atmosphere to make global temperature averages 1 C warmer than pre-industrial levels. We are on track for 3+ C of warming. And, northern areas like Canada are warming 2 to 3 times faster than the global average. It’s an emergency, because we need to take action. There are 12 years left to make significant shifts in energy systems, transportation, and land use. This means no home, business, or industry heated by gas or oil; no vehicles powered by diesel or gasoline; all coal and gas power plants shuttered; the petrochemical industry converted wholesale to renewables; and heavy industry like steel and aluminum production either using carbon-free energy sources or employing technology to capture carbon emissions and permanently store it.
Behaviour change (suggested by @tqmurdock). There is recognition of climate change impacts. But, there’s less enthusiasm to change behaviours. Some solid science shows that people who partake in smaller sustainable behaviours (like recycling) are less likely to change really harmful behaviours (like driving or flying). For example, BedZED, a “one planet community” built in the UK in 2002, conducted a post-occupancy evaluation in 2009. A major finding was that much of the carbon reductions achieved through energy-efficient buildings, on-site servicing, and shared transportation was eradicated by one holiday flight. So this is what we’re talking about when we talk about a climate emergency — even those of us who opt into the most sustainable lifestyles are hamstrung by larger, unsustainable global systems. We had time ten years ago to focus on low carbon buildings, energy systems, and walkable communities. Now, we need to implement all that and focus on life’s modern luxuries and conveniences, like online shopping, long-haul flights (find out your flight impact here), and unnecessary driving. This takes both individual and systems-wide actions.
Situating our individual actions within global environmental, economic, social, and governance systems also raises the idea of borders (suggested by @bambinoir). Much of the hand wringing and inaction since the 1980s at the international level about climate change has focused on sovereignty and borders — borders that can’t stop the sea from rising or storms from destroying homes. Borders that have already and will continue to stop human migration. Part of the cruelty of the climate emergency is that the nations that have cumulatively emitted the most are likely to experience less severe impacts. And other nations, like Kiribati, must completely relocate as the sea swallows their land. But tell me again how binding emissions reductions targets subvert state sovereignty.
Crude consumption, the commons, and carbon tax. We can’t talk about climate change without talking about crude oil, multi-national corporations, consumption, and the commons. The Decolonial Atlas prepared a graphic mapping the CEOs of the 100 companies producing the most industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Per the 2017 Carbon Majors Report, these 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all emissions from 1988 to 2015. This raises the point of demand and supply — are the corporations who bring petroleum to market to blame or are the consumers of carbon-intensive lifestyle (driving, eating meat and dairy, flying)? This is false binary, because we lack global incentives and regulations to reduce either petroleum production or consumption. Carbon emissions are a type of pollution that economists refer to as “externalities” or a “tragedy of the commons” — because there is no single “owner” of the atmosphere, it takes multilateral solutions to stop the pollution. Discussions have been underway since at least 1997 on putting a global price on carbon, so that it is no longer a free place to pollute. British Columbia implemented North America’s first broad-based carbon tax in 2008.
Development. Another (false) argument that gets in the way of climate action is the idea that “developing” countries (e.g. China, India) need to demonstrate carbon emission reductions before “developed” countries (e.g. USA) commit. This ignores two key facts. First, Western Europe and USA from 1850 to 2011 emitted about half of the carbon ever emitted during their years of industrial development and economic expansion. These emissions will continue to trap heat in the atmosphere for hundreds of years to come. Second, Western Europe and USA still dominate per capita emissions, extraction, and consumption today.
Emergency (suggested by George Benson). We can’t underscore enough that this is an emergency. We have less than twelve years to halve our global emissions. It’s an emergency, because a 2 C world means significant levels of flooding, extreme weather events, wildfires, fisheries die-off, pollinator die-off, resulting in millions of people potentially losing their homes, lives, and livelihoods, failing infrastructure, and dangerous supply chain risks for food and drinking water. Climate Atlas of Canada shows anticipated changes for extreme hot/cold weather days, average temperatures, precipitation and growing season in Canada. The data allow users to compare temperature changes from the past (1976–2005) with the future (2051–2080) for both high- and low-emissions scenarios. So, you can see an anticipated level of impact in your area on that site.
A July 2019 report for the BC Climate Action Secretariat titled Preliminary Strategic Climate Risk Assessment for British Columbia also identifies the level of risk for flooding, water shortages, glacier mass loss, ocean acidification, saltwater intrusion, coastal storm surge, heat waves, wildfire, and more.
An emergency also means emergency preparedness (suggested by @ccallihoo). As planners, one of the best things we can facilitate is making sure that neighbours know each other. This way, on heat wave days or during an evacuation order, no one is forgotten about or left behind — an important consideration when looking at climate change through a disability, equity, and inclusion lens, plus keeping in mind the number of rural and remote communities in Canada. In her book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit looks at five very different disasters: the 1906 earthquake and fires in San Francisco, the Halifax munitions cargo ship explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. She writes about grassroots-driven responses versus top-down government and charity responses to the disasters. Through this, Solnit makes a compelling argument for empowering communities to lead their own disaster recoveries in the first few days. In other words, we can’t just sit and wait for a higher power to intervene. Already we’re not seeing enough international or federal action. It’s local governments who are leading climate action through emissions reduction plans, declaring a climate emergency, etc. So, we need local solutions for emergency preparedness, too.
Emergency is also due to extinction. The WWF Living Planet index shows an overall decline of 60% in wildlife population sizes between 1970 and 2014. Species population declines are especially pronounced in the tropics, with South and Central America suffering the most dramatic decline, an 89% loss compared to 1970. Freshwater species numbers have also declined dramatically, with the Freshwater Index showing an 83% decline since 1970.
Food security (suggested by @ChMacArthur). Food security, which means having adequate access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food, is important in both “high emissions” and “low emissions” scenarios. On the high emissions side, farmers need to contend with more extreme droughts and floods, the rising costs of food distribution, and the fact that many pesticides and fertilizers are petrochemicals. If we manage to reduce and stabilize emissions at a lower level, we still need local food systems that put carbon back in the soil. To add to the complexity of the food supply, the same arable land is needed for growing biofuels and for carbon capture and storage (i.e. reforesting lands to put carbon back in the soil). A solve for this is permaculture. The Permaculture City by Toby Hemenway and Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren are a great place to start.
Gender shows up in a variety of ways when planning for climate change. First, the Malthusian school of ecological thought (think Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb) posits that overpopulation is the problem (see critique under: “One Planet Communities”). Taking it at face value, this approach requires top-down policies to manage reproductive rights, migration, and eugenics (see critique under: Migration, Social and Racial Equity). Second, many suburban-style communities are built on post-war assumptions and biases about white middle-class gender roles (i.e. the wife at in the domain of the single-family home; the husband commuting to the commercial core). Contemporary planning theory recommends mixed use zoning and compact communities, which allows for lower-carbon communities plus a greater variety of family structures.
Implicit in this discussion is Growth Management, which means anticipating how many people a community will have in the future, and then making sure that there is enough housing, schools, employment lands, etc. to accommodate. A Greenbelt can help make sure that new growth stays compact, although the resulting density contributes to rising land value and rising cost of housing (that said, in communities that sprawl, combined transportation and housing costs are very high, with transportation costs often equivalent to 33% to 100% of the cost of housing — Metro Vancouver data here). So, policies to encourage a compact community also need to plan for safe and comfortable walking, rolling, and transit, plus non-market housing choices. Greenbelts are also great places for carbon sequestration.
Housing (suggested by @amoralorealis) in the context of a climate emergency is multi-faceted. Considerations include: how much energy existing housing uses, as heating and cooling costs often account for one quarter of a community’s entire emissions (excluding industry); how energy efficient new housing is and whether those standards increase the cost of housing; how climate change will affect population growth and migration patterns and whether enough housing is available; how suitable the housing is to a changing climate (i.e. heat waves); and, how the housing form supports emergency preparedness by building community (or not). All of this is on top of existing goals to end homelessness and deliver housing that is affordable for people who live and work in communities, and within a context of redlining, urban renewal, and decades of racist housing policy (See Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law). Another goal is the delivery of non-profit or non-market housing (suggested by @amoralorealis), so that local housing is protected from local and foreign speculation and global money markets.
Insurance is an indicator for how the global economy is pricing climate change risk. Even as major multinational firms denied the magnitude (and human cause) of climate change, insurance companies were getting ready. But progress has slowed. This slow down in divestment in fossil fuel companies and investment in sustainable alternatives shows how intertwined the global economy is with the status quo. And, the lesson is that we can’t consume our way to significant emissions reductions.
Indigenous leadership (suggested by @amoralorealis) in the context of a climate emergency is complex. The important thing to remember is Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous rights to self-determination. Whether specific Indigenous people and organizations are Standing Rock Water Protectors, Wet’suwet’en pipeline protesters, Waiapi land protectors, US immigration camp detention protesters, or Mauna Kea land protectors, or whether they plan to buy a bitumen pipeline, Indigenous people’s interests, cultural practices, histories, are diverse. It’s important that non-indigenous people avoid romanticizing Indigenous people as being “closer to nature”, because this is overly simplistic. Instead, non-indigenous planners can respect and listen to Indigenous leadership (even when it’s not the officially government-sanctioned leadership) and work from the understanding that Indigenous people are fully capable of defining their own destinies.
Justice, particularly environmental justice and disability justice (suggested by @GideonIsmail), should be a core consideration for planning in a climate emergency. Environmental justice recognizes that Black and Indigenous people and people living in poverty are more likely to live and work in environments that are unhealthy, dangerous, polluted, and more at risk of natural hazards. We’re talking everything from hazardous materials dump sites and landfills, to the location of affordable rental homes along busy highways (suggested by @Lise_Town), to places most likely to flood. Dorceta Taylor’s work, Toxic Communities, is a must-read. As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes in Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, disability justice centers “disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others.” With this lens, it reminds planners whose experiences to center when planning for climate emergency.
Joy (suggested by @Lise_Town) is a reminder that even as we experience climate grief and the frustrations, anger, and disappointments of managing through rapid and difficult changes, it’s important for mental health and community cohesion to celebrate and find joy. adrienne maree brown’s work, Pleasure Activism, offers an antidote. brown writes that “activism is so often associated with pain and suffering; really dire, serious people insisting we have to suffer, to sacrifice, to protest, to forego so many of the sensual pleasures of life.” She continues: “…people are already so overwhelmed and depressed, why would they want anything to do with such a movement?” Instead, if climate action can be joyous, then it will be irresistible for people to join.
Kyoto Protocol (suggested by @bambinoir) is a 1997 international treaty that extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which committed nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions based on the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and it is caused by humans. The treaty went into force in 2005, and there are currently 192 parties to the treaty and 84 signatories (Canada withdrew, effective 2012, and the USA never ratified). The Kyoto Protocol was updated via the Doha Amendment in 2012. This established binding targets for 37 nations, of which only 7 have ratified. As of July 2019, 130 nations have accepted the Doha Amendment, but it needs 144 signatures enter into force.
In 2015, the Paris Agreement was adopted. It is not an amendment of the Kyoto Protocol, but rather a separate instrument under the UNFCCC. As of March 2019, 195 UNFCCC members have signed the Paris Agreement, and 186 have become party to it. Under the Agreement, nations self-determine and self-report their greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The Agreement’s long-term goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels; and to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. The following infographic explains the difference between 2 °C and 1.5 °C of warming:
Land use (suggested by @david16982612) connects to “Greenbelt”, “Gender”, “Housing”, and “Zoning”. The core idea is that by determining what uses are permitted where, the density of the use, and any conditions of that use, planners very directly impact the lives of people living within a community. Overly restrictive land use, such as “single family zoning”, creates whole areas in a community that are far away from schools, shops, and jobs. And, it embeds certain ideas about wealth, class, and belonging into a community. In the context of a climate emergency, planners need to consider natural hazards and whether new (or existing!) development is being allowed in areas likely to flood or be susceptible to wildfire. Planners also need to work with elected officials to understand how current land use patterns affect community-wide greenhouse gas emissions, and what kinds of major actions are needed to reduce emissions. Often, this means densifying the core to reduce transportation needs. But, as we have covered in housing, this has real implications for social equity. It’s also important to note that in countries with lots of forest, like Canada or Brazil, land use change by deforestation (plus agricultural uses) is a huge contributor to national greenhouse gas emissions levels. In fact, land degradation worldwide seriously impacts 75% of terrestrial ecosystems, reducing the welfare of more than 3 billion people, with huge economic costs. And, on top of all these considerations is understanding who the land belongs to; in a colonial context whether treaties have been signed regarding colonial occupation and use; and what land use rights Indigenous people have to their land and territory.
Migration is a hard thing to plan for, because immigration laws and targets are set at the national level, and housing, jobs, schools, and all the other elements that new members of the community need are managed at the local level. The current discourse in the US and Canada is heavily focused on migration, with calls to limit it from particular countries. Sea level rise, extreme weather impacts on crops and livelihoods, and climate change-driven conflict will displace people, creating climate refugees (suggested by @amoralorealis). This is something we need to plan for, especially as refugees are more likely to come from countries that historically have not emitted as much carbon overall or per capita as the US and Canada.
Mitigation and adaptation (suggested by @bambinoir) are two approaches for how planners can address climate change. Mitigation means taking action to reduce (mitigate) greenhouse gas emissions. Ideas such as densification, complete and compact communities, free transit, safe and connected walking and rolling connections, tree planting, etc. are mitigation-type actions (see this resource from Canadian Institute of Planners for more). Adaptation is based on the assumption that climate change is happening and focuses resources on adapting to the changes. Examples include sea gates and sea walls, ecological transition zones, etc. (see this resource from Canadian Institute of Planners for more).
Myth of progress is a helpful concept for understanding climate change at a planetary history scale. Progress is the idea that over human history, innovations and technologies inevitably contribute to the improvement of civilization — longer lifespans, better qualities of life, and general advancement in social progress, modernization, and scientific progress. The belief in progress is the core belief behind the idea that technology can solve climate change, that we can innovate our way out of it, and that humans have mastery over the environment. The myth of progress instead situates humans more holistically within the natural environment and takes a cyclical view of time rather than linear — that things rise and fall in cycles.
Net carbon neutral or positive is the idea that development either adds no more carbon to the atmosphere from a lifecycle costing perspective (net carbon neutral), or that it on a net-basis reduces the amount of carbon in the atmosphere (net carbon positive). In May 2019, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere passed 415 parts per million (ppm)for the first time in human history. The 415 ppm measurement is the highest in at least 800,000 years and probably over 3 million years. Carbon dioxide levels have risen by nearly 50 percent since the Industrial Revolution. While it is unclear what a “safe” atmospheric CO2 level would be, there is a broad scientific consensus that 350 ppm — a level not seen since the late 1980s — would prevent runaway global warming. This is why new construction needs to contribute to taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
Natural assets (suggested by @ccallihoo) are ecological or ecosystem services that provide drinking water (aquifers, rivers, lakes), drainage (creeks, ditches, wetlands), clean air (parks and forests), flood protection (foreshores), and more. Typically, asset management assessments and strategies do not include natural assets. This leads to undervaluing natural assets and potentially overbuilding engineered assets, which are more costly to build and maintain.
One planet communities and one planet living are based on the idea of the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint is a way of calculating how many resources a lifestyle needs — it looks at demand created by consuming natural resources and what the biocapacity (or natural assets) of an area is to support that land. The ecological footprint measure is often reported as global hectares or simplified into in the number of planet earths it would take to support that lifestyle. The goal is a one-planet lifestyle, or building communities that have all the preconditions available for people to live one planet lives. The measure shows how countries like the US and Canada have a high ecological footprint per person, matching the pattern of being a major source of historical and current carbon emissions, as we saw under “Development”. The one planet community lens, by looking at the level of demand for ecological services and the ability of the local environment to support that demand is a strong critique of the Malthusian idea that overpopulation is the major cause of environmental damage and climate change.
Peak Oil is the idea that the heyday of extracting high quality, cheap, and easy to access petroleum is over. As a result, oil producers need to source more expensive (tar sands), dangerous (offshore rigs), and lower quality (tar sands, again) sources of petroleum. This matters to planners, because we have to plan for alternative sources of fuels (and plastics), like hydro, wind, and solar. (power & energy), and ways to reduce petroleum use, like compact mixed-use communities. Peak oil also means that we can expect to keep seeing volatile oil prices, which affect the cost of food, heating, and transportation. As a result, this idea also connects to “Food Security” and “Growth Management”.
Parking minimums (suggested by @jo_urbanist). If you have read this far, you are probably wondering by Zoning Bylaws still have parking minimums. In particular they contribute greatly to the cost of housing. The solution is to have parking maximums (with spots still set aside for people with disabilities), but this relies on a community having transportation choices: frequent and reliable transit plus safe walking and rolling routes.
Quality of Life (suggested by @amoralorealis) is a general term for describing what kinds of expectations an individual or a society have about a good life (whereas a standard of living is more focused on income). Quality of life encompasses everything from physical health, family, education, employment, wealth, safety, security to freedom, religious beliefs, and the environment. There is an idea that living a more sustainable lifestyle (i.e. car-free) means a reduction in the quality of life. The one planet communities framework aims to counter that by delivering urban and suburban communities that maintain a North American or European quality of life. This also connects to the idea of “Joy” and pleasure activism — that framing sustainable living as deprivation will prevent the necessary behaviour changes to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
Resiliency is the ability to return to how things were after a disturbing event. Risk (suggested by @ccallihoo) is the likelihood that the disturbing event will happen and the consequence of that event occurring. Climate change is increasing the risk of 100-year floods, fires, storms, and other events, like new diseases, invasive species, and more. So planning for resiliency means that infrastructure and people can bounce back after disaster. It also means that we need to design for antifragile communities, by building in redundancies and/or backups — something that is easier to do in a more compact community. This also relates to “Food Security”, “Emergency”, and “Growth Management”.
Reconciliation and Reparations might seem out of place to some readers of this ABCs of Planning in a Climate Emergency. For many, the climate emergency feels like an apocalypse — something the likes of which has never been encountered before by humanity (except for, depending on your age and nationality, the Cold War). Indigenous and Black peoples in the Americas, however, have already lived through apocalypse. Since 1492, an estimated 90+% of Indigenous people have been eliminated in the Americas through war, disease, and genocidal government policy (check out “histories of the land” section of my reading list here to learn more). In his speculative fiction novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice writes about a small northern Anishinaabe community’s response to what we can only imagine is a climate change-related apocalypse. It’s a compelling read and a reminder to those of us who are settlers to think about whose experiences the climate emergency narrative centers (see “Indigenous Leadership”).
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is different but related. Europeans took 11–20 million people from Africa to be sold as property in the Americas from 1501 to 1834 in the British Empire, (1865 in the USA). After Emancipation, land use laws (among others) continued to make sure that formerly enslaved people and their descendants found it difficult, if not impossible, to build intergenerational wealth to this day. Planners and planning played a large role in this, with urban renewal and redlining being two major tactics (check out “histories of gentrification” section of my reading list here to learn more). In order to move forward, we need to reveal and acknowledge the past (truth), and then make amends (reconciliation and reparations). There is so much more to dive into on this topic. But for now just remember that the climate emergency must not be used as an excuse to continue to avoid doing this work, and that climate responses will not be successful if they do not include Indigenous and Black leadership.
Social and racial equity (suggested by @bambinoir) is the principle that each member of society is given fair and equitable treatment, access to resources and opportunities, and full participation in the social and cultural life of a community . This may include equal treatment or treatment that is different, but which is considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities. Following “Reconciliation and Reparations”, social and racial equity recognizes that peoples who have been subject to colonialism and anti-Blackness for 500+ years may need individuals, institutions, and broader systems to make accommodations so that they are treated equitably compared to people who have benefited from those 500+ years of settlement, labour, and wealth-building. As such, measures taken to address the climate emergency need to keep this in mind. For example, as discussed in “Justice” Black and Indigenous people are more likely to live in hazardous areas — areas subject to flooding or other natural or human-caused disasters. So, climate mitigation and adaptation planning needs to specifically include an equity lens to make sure that new works are not discriminatory, and better yet, that they help promote equity. And, compact, mixed-use communities with transportation choices tend to be more equitable.
Soil is one of the best tools (see “Natural Assets”) that we have for carbon capture and storage. Twitter user @BuildSoil shares many ideas about using land in ways that build soil, and therefore put carbon back into it. Major recommended actions include: 1) designing communities to retain water and build soil, 2) regenerative agriculture and grazing (i.e. perennial grasses), 3) planting trees, 4) river restoration, and more.
Transportation and land use are intertwined, and the key is to give people more transportation choices to reduce automobile dependency and therefore carbon emissions. While we covered systemic changes versus individual changes to reduce emissions in “Behaviour Change”, it should be noted that living car-free is a top personal choice for reducing emissions. So, from a climate perspective, we must offer safe and viable alternatives to driving — especially with a lens of social equity and disability justice.
To be transit-supportive (suggested by @Lise_Town), communities need to be relatively compact (see also “Land Use” and “Growth Management” topics). This isn’t just a big city thing; there are many ways to improve travel options in small towns and rural communities. Tactical Transit (suggested by Denis Agar) supports incremental and temporary improvements to transit to inspire people to see what’s possible. This helps community members see the value of transit without having to wait for a mega infrastructure project with decade-long timescales to be delivered.
Technocratic solutions will be offered over the next decade. Expect to see more calls for a war effort-scale approach to reduce emissions (and also keep in mind that via the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, we’ve been trying top-down regulatory solutions since 1997). The technocratic solutions will be strong regulatory frameworks with aggressive government investments (think of the smart cities trend). Don’t get me wrong — we need this as individual action alone isn’t enough. But what we also have to watch for is the social equity impacts of these policies. Will countries close borders to migration? Will countries only look after the assets of their wealthiest citizens? Or, will the war effort-scale investment instead look like colonizing space? And, will the benefits of intervention be worth the cost? Technological and land management practice changes, have increased biocapacity by about 27% in the past 50 years. But technological improvements have not kept pace with consumption, which has increased by about 190% over the same time period.
Urbanization (suggested by @bambinoir). More than half of the world’s population lives in cities today, and the world is becoming even more urban. This is part of an urban migration trend related to the changing global economy and challenges of financially sustainable rural lifeways. A UN report published in 2017 stated that rapid urbanization is increasing the risk of climate change-related effects for more and more people. Many of the world’s cities, such as New York, Mumbai, Dhaka, Shanghai, and Jakarta, are in areas susceptible to sea level rise and storms. Without mitigation and adaptation, climate change impacts on cities will affect billions of people, leading to even more migration (see also “Migration” and “Mitigation”).
Utilities (suggested by @Scott_dLB) relates to the ecological services idea within “Natural Assets”, and it also relates to “Emergency Preparedness”. Utilities will be stressed by climate change: stormwater and sewer systems by flooding and storms, electrical networks by heatwaves and more air conditioners, water (and fire suppression) systems by droughts and wildfire. Climate change will particularly stress highly centralized systems, because more distributed systems with built in redundancies can better handle stressors. So, as planners work with utility companies on woodstove replacement programs, oil furnace rebates, etc. with a goal of reducing climate emissions, planners should also think about whether the replacement items (i.e. heat pumps) will be more or less susceptible to failure in a hotter, drier, stormier, and higher sea level world.
Vision (suggested by @LyleSollaYates) connects back to the idea of “Joy” earlier. What’s working well? What can we be inspired by? We need a compelling vision to make the amount of change needed in the short time we’ve got. The vision needs to be something that anyone can get behind, even people who don’t believe in climate change. The vision is also something more tangible to be making choices against when there are limited resources.
Water (suggested by @amoralorealis). As described in “Emergency”, BC is at high risk for seasonal and long-term water shortages. Areas that rely on aquifers for drinking water are more susceptible to water shortages and/or drinking water being contaminated with saltwater. But, as glaciers get smaller and areas become drier, places that rely on lakes and rivers for drinking water are also at risk for shortages. Planners need to be protecting sourcewater today, and actions like prohibiting the bottling of aquifer water can also help with water conservation.
Xeriscape. In BC, we can expect to see hotter, drier summers. So, that means deliberately using plants that need relatively little moisture or irrigation. It also means planning ahead for an ecological transition. It won’t be long before BC is more like Southern California (but with shorter days in the winter and longer ones in the summer). So, supporting the drought tolerant plants in our local habitats today, while planning for the migration of more southerly species to move north, is important.
Yes. Being a planner at this time means being very clear on priorities and taking a stand. Taking a stand means offering principled and informed advice to colleagues, elected officials, and the public. Using a positive vision to advocate for low-carbon communities requires good communications and negotiating skills. An oldie but a goodie on principled negotiation is the classic Getting to Yes. An effective planner who takes a stand on climate change also needs to manage internal self-doubt and climate grief. What keeps you going? You have limited time and energy, so what do you want to say “yes” to? This way, you can say “no” (guilt free!) to all that other stuff, and just focus on where your time and energy can have the most positive impact.
Zuccotti Park. It can be hard to imagine, but there are other ways of being and living outside of individualism, consumption, and private land — ways of being that don’t offer many solutions in the face of climate change. There are many examples of living in shared benefit and interdependence. Rebecca Solnit covers a few examples of self-organized autonomous communities as disaster responses (see: “Emergency”). The Occupy movement offers another example. Occupy emerged in response to the 2008 financial crisis and to protest the financial bail-out of banks and bankers and the lack of bailouts for regular people subject to bankruptcies and foreclosures. Beyond Zuccotti Park explores the role of public space and free assembly from the perspective of 40 social scientists, planners, architects, and civil liberties experts. The project was seeded by a series of free public forums “Freedom of Assembly: Public Space Today” held at the Center for Architecture in response to the forced clearance of Occupy from Zuccotti Park and public plazas throughout the USA in 2011 and 2012.
The Occupy follows a long tradition of direct democracy, occupation, and self-management, such as Freetown Christiana in Denmark, Manhattan’s Lower East Side, examples from Vienna, the UK, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, etc. (but be mindful of similarities and differences between squatting on government land in places like Christiana or New York and gaining rights to the land via adverse possession versus homesteading government land and gaining rights to it via preemption in the context of unceded land and colonialism, and how colonial and settler language is used in squat contexts). We can’t talk about self-managed and autonomous housing without talking about cost and regulation. The cost of land is huge. Many squats emerged during hard economic times; nevertheless, occupants faced many violent police-driven eviction actions over the decades. By the early 2000s, relationships normalized between the local governments and many of the squats, with building occupants purchasing the land and bringing buildings up to code. This kind of action is hard today in a housing and climate emergency where we’re talking about empty mansions and condos rather than empty dilapidated buildings — today those are far more likely to be suburban.
Zoning (suggested by @lanefab) is another challenge. The ethos of self-managed, mutual aid communities birthed in squats shows up in legal alternatives, like co-ops, cohousing, and ecovillages. These kinds of developments require multifamily zoning that have more flexible conceptions of what constitutes a dwelling (i.e. must it have a kitchen), a “family”, and density. So, in the context of a climate emergency where we need to be building walkable communities where people know and trust each other, planners should be looking hard at their zoning bylaws and the rationale behind single-family zoning. Is multifamily housing not allowed in most of the city? Why? What makes co-ops and cohousing not financially possible? Legally possible? Why? Who is for and against zoning reform? Why?
CONCLUSION
The housing crisis and the climate emergency are not separate issues. They are intrinsically connected to consumption and extreme inequality. And, planners play a role in all this. Local governments are at the same time demolishing tent cities and upholding enclaves of luxury housing, both of which feel futile and irrelevant when there’s less than a decade left to halve our emissions. I hope this is an informative call to action for you, as a planner, to be bold in the next decade and advocate for the tough choices.
