CCAC Hears About Resiliency

CCAC would like to thank LeeAnn Tomas-Foster, Associate Vice President, Environmental Public Market Leader, Arcadis, for hosting CCAC’s monthly luncheon on Tuesday, April 10th. The membership heard from Carly Foster, Urban and Community Resilience Practice Lead, Arcadis, and Stefan Schaffer, Deputy Policy Director, City of Chicago on resiliency. 

Resilience planning leverages solutions for one issue into solving others and avoids the huge opportunity cost of failing to invest in resilience. Both Foster and Schaffer discussed how risk is being leveraged into opportunities around the world, the United States, and in the Chicago area, as well as how the many benefits can be quantified and substantiated.

Foster set the stage by referencing the Rockefeller Foundation’s resiliency definition, “resiliency is the capacity of businesses, individuals, communities and systems within a plant to sidestep or operate, survive, adapt and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they may face.” Bringing it to a more local level, Foster explained that, “Chicago’s definition of resiliency is the ability to be a city where residents, neighborhoods, institutions, and government agencies are successfully connected to each other in the pursuit of economic opportunity, safety, equity, and sustainability despite shocks.” Shocks include things like natural disasters. Our members were surprised to hear that there were 60 federal emergency and major disaster declarations since 1957 and a third of them occurred between 2000-2013. “Stresses, both chronic and acute, that can exacerbate shocks, according to Foster, include disconnected communities, transit and transportation issues, economic disparities, racial and economic segregation, crime, aging infrastructure, and the combined sewer overflow that will threaten health and well-being.”

(L:R) LeeAnn Tomas-Foster, Associate Vice President, Environmental Public Market Leader, Arcadis; Carly A. Foster AICP, CFM, Urban and Community Resilience Practice Lead, Arcadis; Stefan Schaffer, Deputy Policy Director, City of Chicago; and Kelly O'Brien, Executive Director, CCAC.

 CCAC audience at the April 10th Meeting

Describing a graph shown at the luncheon analyzing the uncertainty of risk and when they will occur, Foster spoke on a scenario with the lowest emission peak, stating, “the lowest assumes we will peak our emissions between the years of 2040 and 2050 which will lead to tremendous change within the urban and non-urban environment.” To quantify this statement, she mentioned that Boston is on track to hit one foot of sea level rise between 2030-2040.

Another form of resilience includes proactive vs reactive risk management. “Even with a single disaster, cities have seen 2-1 returns of investment in terms of loss avoided from direct physical damages, displacement costs due to the investments in resiliency. By increasing the development standards within your community, you will receive a return on investment. When people feel safe, they’re more willing to invest,” stated Foster.

Foster spoke on a new initiative called the resilience dividend, which according to the Rockefeller Foundation, is what you can do with the avoided opportunity cost of having to invest in response and recovery. “You can invest in other improvements in your community and increase the quality of life and revitalize economic areas with that money. For example, resilience also looks like equitable action and multipurpose solutions and infrastructure,” stated Foster. Continuing her remarks, she provided various examples of investments in Norfolk VA, Pittsburgh, PA, and Boston MA.

Stefan Schaffer, works inside the City of Chicago Mayor’s office on its policy team, focusing on resiliency. “Being a part of the resilience plan, working in tandem with 100 resilient cities and the Rockefeller Foundation is a unique opportunity for Chicago to take a step back to think about initiatives that address needs that exist today with a longer-term lens of 5-10 years from now,” Schaffer stated.

Chicago is a part of ‘100 Resilient Cities’, a global initiative that seeks to help cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century.

Based on a series of agenda-setting workshops, surveys, and other stakeholder engagements asking “what a resilience strategy for Chicago should look like,” Schaffer noted the following items identified as Chicago’s most pressing resilience challenges:

The strategy will focus on three specific pillars:

The goals to create strong neighborhoods include increasing jobs and investment leveraged through community action in communities with historic underinvestment and creating a city-community partnership to build community trust and social cohesion. Schaffer highlighted the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund, which leverages growth in investment that’s occurring in the downtown district and funnels dollars into the neighborhoods which are historically underinvested in.

To create a more robust infrastructure within the City of Chicago, Schaffer shared a goal to increase investment in green infrastructure in order to reduce flood risk and create more sustainable neighborhoods. The City identified 18 areas to do further refined analysis and the overall plan is to develop a process that can be scaled and expanded on how to make green infrastructure investments in the future. Another goal for robust infrastructure includes improving transportation connections between workforce opportunities and areas with high unemployment. Schaffer discussed the mobility and workforce pilot. “Mobility and access to transit and relatedly access to jobs and job opportunities is a significant barrier. We are in the process of designing a pilot that looks at areas that have both transit opportunities and workforce opportunities and building on those existing transit and stations in place, where residents would be able to access it,” Schaffer explained. The City plans to hold community workshops in the Washington Heights and Gage Park communities, which are two of the areas on the south and west side that need support.

The final pillar the City will focus on is creating prepared communities. The goals are to reduce vulnerabilities to extreme weather events for disconnected Chicagoans and to increase personal resilience of first responders. According to Schaffer, “UI Labs, NASA, various universities, and Microsoft are working together to think about long-term planning for extreme weather events. In 1995, Chicago experience a heat wave that killed over 700 residents and we’re trying to avoid that in the future.” The plan is to leverage data sources to improve service to vulnerable populations and extend capacity to include predictive analytics for extreme snow, ice and rain events.

To increase the personal resilience of the City’s first responders, the department is working on an initiative. The Office of Emergency Management Communication suffers from a high absentee rate and the employers are being paid a substantial amount of money for overtime. The City is working on an opportunity to interview staff and make sure they are aware of the opportunities that are available to them.

Looking forward, Schaffer expressed the idea of integrating the concepts of resilience in the City’s planning going forward. City plans that will involve resilience include the Hazard Mitigation plan, the five-year Affordable housing plan which is being rewritten, and the Youth Quality of Life index.

Both Foster and Schaffer conveyed that resilience is everyone’s responsibility and encouraged CCAC members to remember that there must be a unified and integrated vision in place.

MEMBERS ONLY

Please join us at JGMA Architecture on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, for the next CCAC meeting, hosted by Juan Moreno, President, and Aaron Spiering, Project Architect, of JGMA Architecture. This luncheon is for members only.

CCAC Executive Committee Seeks Member Input

Please join the CCAC Executive Committee to learn about the:

Central City Investment Framework
A Proposal for Investment and Quality of Place

The Chicago Central Area Committee (CCAC) is proposing to lead the preparation of a new strategy for Chicago’s central city, in the form of a Central City Investment Framework. This will be a rapid initiative to focus attention on locations where an integrated approach can leverage greater investment. This is also an opportunity to anticipate and resolve emerging challenges and clear the path for enhancements that can benefit all of Chicago.

The purpose of the investment framework proposal is to create a clear vision for the direction of the Central City including: 

A six-month project schedule would drive progress, and a time horizon to 2030 will give certainty to the plan and allow proposed investments to be linked in a concrete way. 

Christine Carlyle, AIA, AICP, Principal and Director of Planning at SCB has been named to the Executive Board of the Chicago Central Area Committee

CCAC Boat Tour of Chicago River

CCAC and strategic partners will be hosting a design SPRINT in the fall of 2018 focused on equity and access along the Chicago River.
 
In preparation, CCAC SPRINT members are invited to an evening river cruise, focused on the South Branch and its adjacent neighborhoods on May 23rd beginning at 4:30 pm. The boat tour is being organized by the Metropolitan Planning Council, a CCAC strategic partner, and will feature a panel of guest speakers as well as plenty of networking time. Food will be provided and a cash bar will be available. This event is sold out, however, you may still participate in the sprint in the fall. 

For additional information, please e-mail Kelly O'Brien at kobrien@ccac.org.

CCAC Young Leader Quarter 2 Event 

New technology is disrupting every aspect of life around us. New technologies in the transit arena, however, will arguably have the most impact on the future of the City of Chicago, including its local economy, urban design, density and housing affordability. While this impact remains a concern, implementation remains the biggest challenge of all.

Join us on Thursday, June 21, 2018 for a roundtable discussion to review these new technologies and the impact that major technology shifts will have on Chicago’s traffic and transportation systems, including its infrastructure, and to discuss the practicality of implementation. The event will be held in the newest property from The John Buck Company, the Rooftop Sky Garden (35th Floor) at 151 N. Franklin, Chicago, IL.

Confirmed speakers include:

For membership information and to RSVP, contact Shalora Jasper at sjasper@ccac.org.

Interested in Participating in the CCAC Young Leader River Sprint?

In the fall of this year, CCAC Young Leaders will set out to provide a pro-bono planning and design effort to assist a selected community partner or partners in creating a vision for redevelopment of multiple sites along the Chicago River with equity, resiliency, and connectivity as fundamental goals. In addition, job creation, real estate investment, transit connectivity, land use and open space planning, housing, and environmental improvement will all be focus areas of the charrette. 

Participants will get the opportunity to network with one another, utilize their professional expertise, and create a meaningful planning and design solution to address the City’s most pressing problems.

Interested in participating in the sprint? Please e-mail Kelly O'Brien, kobrien@ccac.org  to join this effort.

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