Abstract
Land use management in the United States is decided at the local level and not directly controlled by disaster recovery plans and policies. However, disaster mitigation and recovery policies and initiatives are closely connected to and influence land use patterns. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, recovery policies and programs had direct and varied impacts on land use in the affected areas, where, as part of recovery programs after both disasters, government buyouts have been used to purchase houses and property. In terms of implications for land use, the main difference between buyouts after Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy is if programs targeted damaged houses individually or by area. As damaged houses and lots were acquired individually in New Orleans after Katrina, vacant lots were left scattered throughout the city. To avoid similar outcomes after Sandy, New York City focused on property acquisition for redevelopment, and New York State’s buyout programs also targeted clusters of damaged houses and properties in coastal areas. After Sandy, new initiatives to address land use issues and resilience were also introduced through the Rebuild by Design (RbD) program, which began as an unprecedented design competition to consider resilience issues at a regional scale and was funded through a combination of public and private support. In addition to the geographical, political, and development contexts, the timing of Sandy recovery coincides with an ongoing processes of flood map updates and flood insurance reforms, which are closely linked to housing recovery as well as existing and evolving patterns of land use in affected areas.
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Notes
- 1.
In coastal areas the FIRMs specify Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs), including two primary zones: zone VE and zone AE. In zone VE, also known as the Coastal High Hazard Area, the estimated wave height is 3 ft or higher; the wave height is lower than 3 ft in the coastal zone AE (FEMA Region II 2016).
- 2.
Base flood elevation, or BFE, is calculated as the number of feet above the sea level of the first (entry) floor of the building. As a safety factor, communities can include freeboard, an additional height in addition to BFE. Encouraged but not required by the NFIP, freeboard results in significant reductions in flood insurance rates. As part of the process to update FIRMs, preliminary FIRMs are issued and, before that, Advisory Base Flood Elevations (ABFEs), which show the direction that future flood mapping will take.
- 3.
This update increased the amount of hazard mitigation funds available from 10 to 15 % of the total of FEMA’s disaster spending and increased the federal share of funding for FEMA-approved mitigation activities from 50 to 75 % (Rubin 2012).
- 4.
The urban planners who created the original map used dotted lines and intended the circles to show areas without access to parks and green spaces, but the map was reproduced in the local newspaper with solid green dots and a caption explaining that these areas would become parks and green spaces (Olshansky and Johnson 2010).
- 5.
ABFE maps are often created after a large disaster to determine whether the 1 % annual chance flood event, shown on the effective FIRMs, adequately reflects the actual current flood hazard (FEMA Region II 2015).
- 6.
Although it is possible to provide other types of support, such as for moving expenses, to make up the difference between pre- and post-storm property value to the homeowners, technically, the compensation for property through acquisition programs is limited to post-storm value.
- 7.
Long Island is part of New York State, east of but not part of New York City. Long Island includes Suffolk and Nassau counties, and housing acquisition is available to homeowners in both counties. However, enhanced buyouts are available to homeowners in Suffolk County but not Nassau County.
- 8.
Staten Island is one of the five boroughs of New York City.
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Maly, E., Kondo, T., Banba, M. (2017). Experience from the United States: Post-Katrina and Sandy. In: Banba, M., Shaw, R. (eds) Land Use Management in Disaster Risk Reduction. Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56442-3_6
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