From Our Archives – The World has Changed. Now What?

By: William Larson and Frank Came

PNBRC, November 28, 2018 – Americans recently received a sobering reminder that the world has changed forever. That fact has far-reaching implications for the industries that build our cities, towns and the systems that sustain our way of life.

The National Climate Assessment report sums it up clearly. “The nation’s economy, security, and culture all depend on the resilience of urban infrastructure systems.”

The report explores many dimensions of the nation’s economy, society and the natural environment affected by climate change and makes it clear that adaptation to new and harsher realities is unavoidable.

Extreme weather events are predicted to become more frequent and potentially devastating. Catastrophic disasters from floods, wildfires, cyclones and periods of bitter cold will be the new realities driving the need for adaptation.

But the need for adaptation in the built environment goes far beyond basic measures to bolster resiliency against potential climate-related impacts.

The very fabric of urban form is changing, and the imperative to deal with these new climate risks adds an element of urgency to how those industries most responsible for the built environment must adapt.

Our cities and towns are becoming larger and more densely populated. Our capacity to provide housing and other critical infrastructure is growing faster than our already tight budgets and increasingly outdated “business as usual” approaches will permit.

As the climate assessment report notes, paradoxically, as the economy and population of urban areas grew over past decades, the built environment within and connected to cities deteriorated, becoming “increasingly fragile and deficient.”

As a consequence, the vulnerability of those who live in cities multiplies when the effects of climate change interact with pre-existing urban stressors, such as deteriorating and fragile infrastructure.

As the report notes, climate change increases the risk, frequency, and intensity of certain extreme events, such as intense heat waves, heavy downpours, high velocity lowland flooding from intense precipitation and coastal storm surges.

This is not good news for the approximately 245 million people that live in U.S. urban areas today. Their numbers will grow to 364 million by 2050. That’s little more than one generation from now.

What Does it Mean for Us?

So what does it mean for industries such as ours that design, build and maintain n our cities?

Simply put we must think differently about how we plan, design, build and manage our physical and social infrastructure. Building better buildings is part of the answer, but it goes much further.

As the climate assessment report notes, although urban infrastructure systems such as transportation, water supply or energy often are considered individually, they are highly interactive and interdependent.

As evidenced by many recent climate incidents such as Hurricanes Sandy, Hazel and Florence, it is not just one system that fails in times of acute stress. Everything fails! Communications systems, transportation access, energy for heat and power, healthcare – they all collapse at once.

This means we need to change how we build, what we build with, where we build, and we must ensure that our buildings and communities are more resilient, more efficient, and more livable.

These are profound challenges for industries already grappling with severe economic and social pressures. Even without the added imperative of climate change, we must build faster, more efficiently and at lower costs, both economic and environmental.

We know already that concrete, the building block of modern societies, can and is changing to meet new consumer demands. Prefabrication, modular construction, design and build approaches, and changing the very fabric of concrete are transforming our industry.

Informatics, blockchain financing, social equity, and sequestration are terms not often associated with construction, but they are part of the new realities  and the new tools we will need to adapt to the changing economic and climate realities.

There are No Simple Answers

Climate change is an extremely complex issue. For decades we have seen fake news, factual misrepresentations, and paralyzing denials of even the most obvious realities.

Over the past two years, the message is finally sinking in. Catastrophic damages to cities and towns at risk from tidal surges and devastating wildfires that have literally erased thriving communities have left little room for doubt about the need for change.

There are no easy answers and no quick pathways to a more sustainable and resilient future. For example, laying waste to our forests – the true lungs ohigh-risenet – to build high rise structures with mass timber is not an environmentally sane solution for dealing with climate change.

Once felled, contrary to popular allegations, forests require several centuries to replace the amount of carbon initially sequestered by the original “old growth.”

So What Must We Do?

First, we must recognize that we are the industries that build our cities, towns, homes and physical infrastructure. Therefore, leadership must start with us.

We can’t wait for someone else to solve these problems. Our industries can lead to greater resiliency in our buildings and communities.

We can and must work to change public awareness of the need for more durable and esilient infrastructure. In doing so, we must change the minds of elected and non-elected civic officials that make crucial decisions that can have far-reaching implications for catastrophic collapse or manageable recovery when disasters strike.

We must publicly and loudly support truth, science, and the facts. We must use every available means to engage consumers, investors and public officials about the need for greater resiliency planning. And we must rethink our investment decisions and move toward greater sustainability.

We can build better buildings and better infrastructure. But we need to work closely with other sectors to reduce the risks of failures, to sustain essential services and to lower our vulnerability to catastrophe.

Changing policies and planning measures such as building codes, zoning regulations, land-use plans, water supply management, green infrastructure initiatives, health care planning, and disaster mitigation efforts can all support adaptation.

Integrating disaster preparedness and resiliency planning into ongoing public policy processes is a low-cost, no-regrets approach that allows us to use existing funding sources for climate adaptation.

But to succeed, these adaptation efforts require that private sector players and governments come together in a common cause.

Only by working together can we reduce our exposure to climate-related stresses and strengthen our ability to adapt to changing conditions. We can do it. We must do it. There is too much at stake for inaction on our part.

The National Climate Assessment Report is available here.  
The Chapter on the Pacific Northwest is available here.

About the Authors

William Larson is the former Vice President of Marketing at CalPortland. He has served as chair of the Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition since its inception in October 2016.

Frank Came is the former Managing Director of Globe Advisors.  He now serves as Communications Director for the Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition.