With disruptions and disasters supercharged by climate change now happening more frequently, resiliency—the business of protecting communities from threats, or adapting to them—becomes more urgent. After thousands of square miles of metro Houston were inundated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the city and Harris County implemented impressive large-scale and community-enhancing flood-management projects—yet they are not enough, and too often continue to fail the most vulnerable. At the coastal edge of New York, on the other hand, Arverne East has broken ground on a $1 billion mixed-use development that makes transformative leaps in sustainability and resiliency, while enhancing the economic and social viability of a struggling neighborhood.
Houston was particularly susceptible to the torrents that came with Hurricane Harvey—the worst downpour in Texas history, with 60 inches of rain in parts of the state. The city is nearly flat, heavily paved, and has soils that drain poorly: the storm left behind more than 150,000 flooded homes, including 25 percent of the city’s affordable stock, and caused $125 billion in damages. The area famously lacks land-use controls, and, so, over the years unfettered building had occurred in high-risk areas, many of which are low-income enclaves where people have fewer resources to deal with greater damage.
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