WC Archive

(If you're not following the US news cycle, here's why this is notable: FEMA is the government agency ostensibly responsible for organizing disaster response and recovery efforts. It was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, and its attention turned to post-terrorism recovery, with less attention said to be given to natural disasters. Unsurprisingly, then, FEMA's response to hurricane Katrina was by all accounts unsatisfactory, and the director was let go as of today. Many have criticized the quality of FEMA's leadership over the past couple of weeks, and given all of this, it's hard to remember that FEMA was actually a fairly professionally-operated organization in the 1990s, and that most FEMA employees are diligent, smart people.)

The FEMA website is called Rebuilding for a More Sustainable Future -- An Operational Framework, and each chapter is downloadable as a separate PDF (unfortunately, there isn't a combined single-download document). The document has a publication date of November 1, 2000, indicating that it was produced late in the final months of the outgoing agency leadership. Sadly, the material hasn't been updated since then, and the link to the document -- along with a link to a glossy short overview document, Planning for a Sustainable Future: The Link Between Hazard Mitigation and Livability -- is relegated to the bottom of the "additional resources" section of the Planning Resource Center page.

But no matter -- despite its age, this is terrific stuff, spelling out the links between disaster recovery and economic, environmental and social sustainability. It's exactly the kind of thinking that should be the foundation of reasonable, forward-looking conversations about rebuilding after Katrina, as well as the inevitable disasters to come. That it comes from the efforts of a government agency half a decade ago just underscores its mainstream cred -- this isn't some fringe movement or funky weblog trying to promote the idea of sustainable rebuilding.

Simply put, the very existence of this document bolster the claim that sustainable design -- of buildings, of neighborhoods, of communities -- is very much within our capabilities, and should be part of all kinds of planning efforts. It also makes clear that the US government is well aware that sustainable rebuilding is an option in the post-disaster landscape. We should not accept any future claim that "nobody could have guessed" that sustainable reconstruction was possible.