Watershed Texas

For many Texans, this week will be unlike any other because they got flooded. Getting on track will be long and heartbreaking. People will find their strength, but I also know their savings will be drained, debts created, and life’s plans disrupted. For many others, including myself, this week is the same as any other because my house did not flood. Water came close, but it receded in hours. For my wife and I, our nerves are frayed, but our finances and home life are whole. And, we will help friends and strangers recover.

The accounting in this disaster is simple: I and others who were spared received the Harvey dividend, while those flooded paid the Harvey premium. You don’t need to own stock to get a Harvey dividend. Live in the right place and build in the right way, and the payout for being resilient is virtually automatic. And, you don’t need to have insurance to owe premiums. Each day away from school and work, each dollar spent ripping out moldy carpet, each month that passes to get life right-side up is a premium paid.

This may seem like an unfair lottery for those that got flooded, but this is no lottery. Where we build and what we build matters greatly. The term business-as-usual is shorthand for lack of vision and courage, and business-as-usual is putting people in harms’ way. It is impossible to know when the next accounting will take place. But, here we are again, the third 100-year event in three years.

The most remarkable thing is that the location of these dividends and premiums has been known for some time. As flat as Houston seems, every bump and dip in the land makes a difference. League City, near to where I live, is south of Houston on Clear Creek, where this week the National Weather Service measured more than 40 inches of rain. When it was settled in the 1870’s, people protected themselves by putting the town center on a nub of higher ground. Through both Harvey and Ike, its historic center never flooded. Dividends reinvested produce compound investment growth.

Now, in 2017, we have flood maps that tells us where these dividends and premiums are. Flawed they may be, they were central to our house hunting effort last year. Yet, I see slab-on-grade construction in the 100-year and 500-year flood plains. We let this happen in one of the most flood prone areas of the nation, when we also know that every inch above grade avoids thousands of dollars in losses. The math is so clear. Higher ground and higher development standards pay dividends.

What we build next is the most critical question ahead for us. We are building in a way where floods are worse than they need to be, creating losses that never had to happen. We will be paying for these development decisions for decades and it is a drain on prosperity. We cannot avoid all losses, but it is possible to grow in a way that respects this accounting and honors this region’s natural wealth, making us more resilient and more prosperous.

So, if we want to ensure that our future city’s is truly safe and prosperous, then our response after Harvey has to include a serious and ongoing conversation about how we build neighborhoods that pay Harvey dividends. Houston’s bumps and dips are a starting point. But it also means talking about density, employment, and affordability. It means talking about mixed-uses, transit, and walkability. And, it means talking about parks, open space, and agriculture. These are not pie in the sky ideas and they have worked for a lot of human history.

Consider some examples. Texas has 254 county seats of government. These towns were built with notions in mind of a centrally located courthouse and surrounding park, nestled in a neighborhood of residential and commercial uses, with farmland just beyond. This used to be the rule for development. Now it is the exception. San Marcos Texas discovered several years back that if they wanted to revive and rebuild their town center, it would be illegal because of requirements for parking, building set-backs, and separating uses that benefit by being together. We have somehow forgotten the wisdom of this simple design common throughout Texas that brings together public, private, and commercial life.

Slicing through Houston’s center is Buffalo Bayou. Nearby buildings were flooded, but the city had the foresight to dedicate the bayou and its flood plain to its best use, a bayou. It pays all kinds of dividends, among them a world-class urban park enhancing nearby neighborhoods, flood control, and avoided losses by not developing. New Orleans’ historic French Quarter survives Katrina with a few bruises, but next door, a modern era subdivision protected by a modern era levee cannot? It wasn’t luck. The French Quarter was built in the right place, in the right way. It was built to last.

In my work as a planner and educator, I have engaged Texas counties and cities about growth in all the right places. At these workshops I have observed a real hunger among participants for candid conversations about a vision for growth. They are looking for solutions, but they want to find them in a certain way. We often ask participants what is the greatest barrier to becoming a more resilient community. “Ourselves,” was one tables’ straight-faced reply. Talk about honesty.

I think this means a serious conversation needs to get underway now about who we want to be. And it has to be about using what works and letting bad ideas sink, else we are going to sink with them. Our region is not lacking for proven development models, nor opportunities to apply them to. We need distributed leadership from across the community. And, Houston and surrounding cities have to commit to a vision beyond business-as-usual. We can think about the next 20 years, but we need to imagine longer, a lot longer. It is what a great city requires and Houston is here for the long-haul. What happens next is on our watch.