Binary to Brilliant: Building people-centric cities in the age of resilience
Stephen Engblom, AIA, LEED AP
Planning and design at every scale; Realizing Resilience and Economic Opportunity for everyone.
In the 20th century, we shaped our cities in binary ways. Sea walls separated land and sea, highways connected point A to B resulting in fractured local places, and policy determined prosperity for some communities and poverty for others. Infrastructure divided rather than unified, leaving longstanding scars on our urban landscapes.
Recently, as part of the Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge, the AECOM-led All Bay Collective broke from this model to develop a people-centered, systems-based approach to the socioeconomic and natural vulnerabilities facing San Francisco Bay. Our study focused on the communities around San Leandro Bay and the Oakland Coliseum site—places at the front lines of challenges such as sea level rise, groundwater flooding, earthquake risks, and environmental injustices.
For the Bay Area to thrive in the face of these challenges, we must usher in a new era of city building in which people, equitable economic development, and sound environmental science are at the center of infrastructure decisions. Such a shift would require a new social contract among cities, agencies, and residents. It would evolve how communities participate in the city-making process and how agencies responsible for delivering infrastructure work with communities. This new understanding would see infrastructure as a catalyst for widespread economic prosperity and a solution to the entrenched inequities in many of our cities. It would work with environmental systems instead of in opposition to them, and stitch together communities and ecologies into diverse, mixed-use spaces to deliver economic, environmental, and social co-benefits.
A surge in social and environmental consciousness has awakened us to the opportunities—and challenges—that housing, transportation networks, and utilities pose to communities, economies, and ecosystems. The impacts of climate change and more frequent extreme weather events have intensified the need to protect our cities. Deferred maintenance and budget shortfalls have made us reconsider how we invest in and prioritize infrastructure expenditures, with some urban areas leading the way through mega-measures for transit, parks, and ecological restoration.
Through our work with stakeholders in the San Leandro Bay communities of East Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro, we learned that these places are textbook case studies of the impacts of 20th century city building. Sprawling, paved surfaces intensify the combined threat of sea level rise and groundwater flooding, and regional transportation corridors like Interstate 880 impose barriers for residents trying to access shoreline parks. Local creeks have been channelized and fenced off, making it even harder to get around and eliminating once vibrant habitat. Discriminatory planning practices and environmental injustices have led to disinvestment, especially in East Oakland. These inequities are compounded by high housing prices, flood insurance expenses, and mismatches between jobs and education levels.
During the Bay Area Challenge, we collaborated with community and agency representatives to co-design a more resilient and equitable vision for San Leandro Bay—one that embraces the new social contract in infrastructure delivery. This vision puts local priorities at the heart of important planning decisions so residents can prosper in harmony with rising water levels. Communities would benefit from expanded shorelines and restored creeks, which provide both flood protection and new open spaces and habitat. Some would live in Tidal Cities—floating neighborhoods where people live with water, protecting them from both flooding and earthquakes. Transportation investments like a multi-modal transit hub at the Coliseum Station would create quick, seamless connections locally and to regional jobs and opportunities, while also making it easier for neighborhoods to access the shoreline. Resilient Equity Hubs would help residents thrive, by using special districts to advocate for community benefits and fund local priorities like affordable housing and job training programs.
Lessons Learned
We learned several important lessons throughout the challenge on how to design more resilient and equitable places. First, we took time to learn about the goals, priorities, and challenges of local stakeholders, and then we built a collaborative process to help integrate and coordinate efforts moving forward. One of our most important contributions was simply getting stakeholders together in a room to share their ideas and spark productive working relationships, especially between community and agency representatives.
Second, we put existing residents at the center of the planning process. Learning about the deep, socioeconomic divides and everyday pain points that define life for many residents led us to expand our focus. While it was important to address resilience to environmental vulnerabilities like flooding and sea level rise, it was imperative that we lead with the conditions affecting people day-to-day and, wherever possible, produce co-benefits. For example, our Tidal Cities concept addressed not only flood and seismic resilience, but also incorporated a community land trust to stabilize housing prices for existing residents.
Third, we developed tools that can be used as conditions evolve, instead of designing a master planned solution. In addition to the wide range of near- and long-term adaptation projects we proposed, our team also created the ABC Toolkit. This kit includes three tools that agencies and communities can use to design and assess adaptation strategies: The In It Together board game, ABC Equity Checklist, and quadruple bottom line project evaluation tool. Some of the most informative—and most fun—moments of the challenge involved playing In It Together and watching agency staff, community representatives, and residents of all ages work toward the most collaborative approach.
Looking Ahead
Our team looks forward to continuing to work with San Leandro stakeholders to co-design solutions that protect local neighborhoods while also producing equitable, economically vibrant, and environmentally thriving places. Few places are better poised to usher in this new, 21st century era of collaborative, people-centered city building.
For more information on the All Bay Collective’s proposal for the Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge, please visit our website.
Want to help your city go beyond binary? Check out AECOM’s eight steps for making a Brilliant City.
Senior Designer at LandDesign
6 年Thanks for another forward-thinking post!?
Retired
6 年All-in sounds fun.