Jonathan F.P. Rose – Blog
Thoughts on a Well Tempered City

• Resilience lessons from Katrina and Sandy

  24 Apr 2013

  Prepare for the multiple threats of the 21st century. One of the key failings of the Federal Government’s Homeland Security mandates is that, after 9/11, they prepared New York City for the last threat, a terrorist attack, not the next threat, climate change. Although we must prepare for sea level rise, that is not the only natural threat facing our cities. We also have to prepare them for other natural systems issues such as drought, heat, earthquakes and sunspot cycles. Cities also need to prepare for risks in human systems- degraded trust from social inequity, the contagion of diseases, massive urban migrations, cyber attacks, power outages and financial volatility. And there are rising threats from interactions between human and natural systems which are degrading and salinating water supplies, polluting air, and undermining and adding toxics into the food system. All of these threaten our cities’ viability. And there will be many more that we cannot conceive of. We are challenged[…]

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