Adaptive Planning in California

Adjusting to New Information and Best Practices

One of the hottest topics in planning is how to adapt to our growing knowledge of the risks various hazards pose, especially those made more dangerous by climate change. Some towns likely have to be abandoned while others can simply adjust their zoning maps.

SPUR’s ‘Safety First’ Report on hazard mitigation shows the high hazard areas throughout the Bay Area, taking into account multiple hazard types, likelihood of occurring and severity. SPUR recommends steering development away from these areas using a variety of carrots and sticks.

The State should, according to SPUR:

1. Require a functional recovery standard for new buildings/infrastructure and a no collapse standard for existing buildings/infrastructure
2. Precisely define and map high-hazard areas (areas that should see no growth inside them), medium-hazard areas (ones where growth can occur given certain mitigations), and low-hazard areas (where growth should be prioritized)
3. Redirect state and federal funding to lower-risk areas that are building the housing and infrastructure needed to facilitate a retreat from the higher-risk areas

When deciding how to allocate its land and whether to invest in all-new infrastructure, the City of Alameda currently intends to develop what it calls the ‘Enterprise District’ for various types of employment activity. The infrastructure was built in a hurry by the Navy and is crumbling, which gives the City the perfect opportunity to rethink the district before sinking substantial time and money. Alameda should shift any development and infrastructure to the medium-hazard section of the Enterprise District and dedicate the high-hazard land to open space, parking lots, and other uses that don’t require the City to maintain underground infrastructure that could be extremely costly given its risky location. These boundaries would always change with updated science, but governments should always assume an area is high-risk until it has sufficient information to reclassify as lower-risk.

High-Hazard Areas in Alameda’s Enterprise District (source: SPUR, 2019)*

Existing (2014) zoning of the Enterprise District where the darker green means higher height limits (up to 100')

This adaptation alternative flips the height limits by focusing development in the lowest-risk part of the District and restricting development in all of the high-hazard zones. Clustering development like this protects taxpayers in Alameda who would be on the hook for that infrastructure maintenance as well as the employees who might experience liquefaction or tsunami events.

Historic shorelines often form the boundaries between high and medium-hazard areas along the Bay. The jury is still out on whether building beyond historic shorelines makes sense.

The original logic behind the 2014 zoning was that it anticipated the possibility of heavy and light industrial businesses with significant noise and air pollution and wanted those activities further from nearby residential areas. Unfortunately, air pollution impacts appear to pose the greatest impact on most residents and businesses on Alameda:

Estimate of emissions path using historical wind data from Oakland International Airport (note: does not necessarily indicate deposition of pollution). Begs the question whether or not industrial uses make sense in Alameda’s ‘Enterprise District’

Given the recent settlements by other companies in the Bay Area, the site could emit way more pollution for years and get away with fines that would help fund BAAQMD and the Bay Area’s response to air pollution, but would not help those in Alameda harmed by the pollution over the many years when the site could be emitting more than is allowed. After all, BAAQMD just settled the case with Shell’s emissions violations that started in 2017, just settled the case with the Tesoro refinery’s emissions violations that started in 2014, and just settled a case with Tesla for their emissions violations. This, combined with the World Health Organization’s recent determination that there are no safe levels of air pollution and that it is the single greatest threat to health globally, Alameda’s Enterprise District seems to require rethinking.

Unless the City of Alameda (among other jursidictions) push growth into lower-hazard areas, the State might want to take a much more aggressive approach to create the right incentives for cities so that the Bay Area has a better chance of avoiding a New Orleans-like economic collapse following a major hazard event that would only worsen the housing shortage, erode the tax base and compound the region’s infrastructure debt.

*SPUR’s data does not take into account the rising groundwater under the site that was listed as ‘medium risk’ in 2006 and may soon be considered ‘high risk’ if planning for fully saturated soil conditions (which is what is expected by 2070 under the State’s recommended planning scenario).