Author's Forum: Climate Adaptationfor Architects

Rob Studville: Okay, we're going to get started. Welcome, everybody, to "On the Park Bench," a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism. "On the Park Bench" presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in New Urbanism and allied fields related to the built environment. Today, we have an authors forum with, um, author, uh, Allison Anderson, um, and the book *Climate Adaptation for Architects: A Design Toolkit*. I'm Rob Studville; I'm going to be the interviewer and moderator today, and I've got a few announcements. First, and uh, so, think about, uh, attending CNU34, which is going to be in Northwest Arkansas, May 12th through 16th, 2026. This is the first time CNU is going to go to a region with a series of smaller cities rather than one large central city. Northwest Arkansas is one of the places in America that now has one of the most innovative planning and urban design, uh, and architecture activity. Uh, it's also one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. Go to CNU.org/CNU34 to find out more about the Congress. And, uh, consider, uh, uh, submitting to the 2026 Charter Awards. Um, the submissions are open now through December 2nd. Uh, CNU's Charter Awards recognize outstanding New Urbanist achievements. Professional projects, emerging projects, and student projects are all encouraged to apply. Uh, submit at CNU.org/charterawards. And consider getting CNUA accredited. The benefits of accreditation are: it provides a marketable credential to employers and clients, a Senior Accredited Professional Certificate, and listing on CNU.org's public member directory as CNU accredited. Of course, the biggest, uh, benefit to being accredited is that that shows that you are an expert in the New Urbanism ideas of planning and development. Um, go to CNU.org/getinvolved/getseenuaccredited. And today, we're going to talk again about the book *Climate Adaptation for Architects: A Design Toolkit* by Allison Anderson. Allison Anderson, F-A-I-A, is the founding principal of Unabridged Architecture, based in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. She was the first LEED-accredited professional in Mississippi. After Hurricane Katrina devastated her community, her firm began exploring resilience and climate adaptation. About the book: it's an incredible resource. I was struck by the images, which are excellent throughout. Most of them were created specifically for the book by Unabridged Architecture, and the depth of detail in the book is really impressive. I'm going to turn this over to Allison for a presentation, then we're going to have a discussion, followed by a Q&A from the audience. So please use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you, because we'll get to them more or less in the order that they are asked. Thank you very much, and I'm stopping my share. Allison Anderson: And I'm starting mine. Thanks so much for joining us today. This is really special for me. I have so many friends that have been involved in CNU, and I've been involved for 20 years now. It's amazing. So, this is a little bit about the book. We are seeing disaster after disaster. Our weather outside today might be great, but our climate's becoming much more erratic, much more extreme. Last year, there were 27 confirmed weather and climate disaster events, with losses exceeding a billion dollars each. Um, these were just the ones affecting the United States. Globally, the problem's much larger. So, you know, this... this is really getting worse, and we need to figure out ways that our built environment can begin to address some of these climate hazards. So these hazards can really be defined by four, four threats, let's call them: heat, water, wind, and scarcity. So I'm going to talk a little bit about these, and then sort of explain how we incorporated some of these lessons in the book. Extreme heat is the deadliest weather disaster, not the most costly, but the one that affects the most people, places people into, you know, terrible conditions. And these extended heat waves that we're seeing are causing deaths, um, and very bad medical outcomes, so it can be really deadly. Flooding, of course, is the most common and the most costly disaster in the United States, and losses are projected to triple by 2050, by just 25 years from now. Of course, we're seeing some sort of dampen down tropical cyclones, but the ones that do occur are increasing Category 3 to 5. They have higher average and peak wind speeds. We're seeing fewer hurricanes, but more intense hurricanes, um, with a lot more rainfall associated. And then scarcity is affecting society in multiple ways and architecture. We're facing persistent stresses from droughts and loss of social capital, and growing inequality, other constrained resources. And then when disasters strike, that just places more people into vulnerable conditions. So architects are trying to figure out creative solutions to fill these gaps, um, and figure out ways to use the built environment to regenerate the protective systems on which we rely. So, just a little history, excuse me. So here we were, we built this house in July of 2005 in Bay St. Louis. We built it on high ground. This, uh, sort of land had... was up at 20 feet above sea level, right? Above sea level. It had never flooded in 300 years of recorded history. So we built a really sustainable demonstration house. We used a thickened envelope to improve, you know, the sort of thermal, sort of resistance to heat outside. We used a grass roof because we wanted to prove to our clients that it would work in South Mississippi. We sort of stripped down the finishes and used, you know, very simple finishes and an absorptive site. And then, five weeks later, after we moved in, Katrina happened. So, we had pretty much the quickest renovation of any project I've ever worked on. We were lucky that our building was still standing. It was the first one off the... off the waterfront that was still standing. And so people were kind of interested, you know, why did the architect's house survive the storm? Um, so it survived the storm for multiple reasons. One was it kind of had this green roof earth shelter that acted as an anchor to hold that building in place. We have those continuous load paths, that hurricane strapping that held the building together. The absorptive site actually, you know, moves some of the stormwater, and this cool envelope, this thickened envelope, had a resilience benefit, as well as a thermal and sustainability benefit. So, we were lucky. Our house survived. Uh, it had seven and a half feet of water in it, but we were able to dig it out and keep going, and live upstairs while we... while we refinish the first floor. But some of our other projects were not so lucky. Another project we had finished at exactly the same time, built to exactly the same building code, was Gulfside Assembly. It was, um, a guest house. It was a really well-known African-American retreat center on the Gulf of Mexico. It was right adjacent to the waterfront on much lower ground, um, and those sort of conditions conspired to erase centuries of history, including this brand new building, and really devastate a critical cultural gathering place. So we really wanted to figure out, after the storm, what went wrong. We were trying to rebuild our lives. At the same time, we were trying to figure out how can we do better next time? And really, find ways and solutions that prepare for future climate challenges without contributing to global heating. So, one of the first projects we got after the storm were... many of the first projects we got after the storm were armored buildings. They were kind of these shelters for the worst-case scenario. Um, how do we build so that we can absolutely resist any, any occurrence, whether it be 250 mile an hour winds, uh, or, or windblown debris, or flooding, all the things, um, that we have to deal with down here in the Gulf Coast. But these buildings are pretty much unaffordable for most purposes. They don't also... they also don't fit into the urban landscape very well, some of them. So, so we really had to think about how to build an armored building that did fit the landscape. And so the first, uh, one we did like that was this shelter, which was the Fire Station Number One. Because it had to be in the community where they had to fight fires. It did have to be in the FEMA 500-year floodplain, um, so it did have to be elevated somewhat. Um, so our first sketches, you know, we were sort of looking at how we might do that. How do we provide a safe room? How do we provide continuity of operations? How do we use landscape to really begin to deflect some of the wind-borne debris? How do we elevate without, you know, keeping people out, um, and providing accessibility challenges? And how do we provide that uninterruptible power? Many of these lessons from designing these armament structures are included in the book. Um, so this was the... the facility. We had to elevate four feet, which required this large apron and setback, which isn't really a desirable condition, but the rest of the building did sort of hold the street line, and this is on Main Street in Bay St. Louis. So it was really important. It's the gateway to downtown. So we had to create this kind of, um, system, where it was divided into two parts. There was the safe room part, which sort of kept the firefighters safe during the hurricane, and then there was the essential facility part, which was, um, where the fire trucks and the equipment was stored. And those... we kind of had to draw the line because it was terribly difficult to find doors, oversized doors at that point, back in, you know, 20... 2007, um, that could... that could meet the wind loads and the 250 mile an hour wind loads. So the rest of the building can hold... hold the street, it can... it can hold the people, the most important asset of the firefighting, uh, station, and then... and then the trucks and facilities, uh, the trucks and equipment are in the essential facility. So, continuity of operations, we included a sort of generator and an armored, sort of generator house. There's a three-day fuel supply, there's a 1500-gallon potable water tank for the occupants, and there's a 10,000-gallon rainwater harvest tank that collects rainwater from the roof and uses that to fill the trucks. Um, because there are a lot of fires after hurricanes, uh, because of ruptured gas lines and other things. And so, they're... they needed that water to fight fires, but we didn't want to dedicate potable water to that use. So, so we had a separate tank for that. Um, so... so this is... this is an example of building in the toughest, you know, to the most stringent requirements from FEMA for emergency management, um, and... and... that kind of thing can only be used with extreme budgets as well. So we also had to figure out how we might reuse and restore existing historic buildings to prepare them for the next 100 years. So this was a project in Waveland, Mississippi. Um, the water line is that blue line that you see inscribed over the photograph, and what happened when we came back to Waveland was we saw this, um... this building had been used for multiple purposes over the years. It began life as a school, but the city workers had come along and built a, um, a gable roof on top of a building that was never really planned to have one. It had a flat roof originally. And so they built this gable roof on top of this unreinforced masonry, and all of a sudden, all the additional surface area of that... of that roof sort of collected the winds from the hurricane and translated it down on the beachfront side and collapsed one whole wing of the structure. So, this was the building when it was built in 1927. Nice flat roof. This was a sort of standard design that was repeated over and over, um, along the Gulf Coast, along the southeastern states. And so you will actually see this building in multiple places. They pulled up along the railroad tracks next door to this... to this property, and unloaded all the bricks, all the lumber, all the workers, all the windows, everything in a kit. And they built it, um, as the Waveland Elementary School. Now, here is Waveland at the Mississippi Renewal Forum. This is a photo from that, from that, uh, project with all the architects and planners that came down to the coast in October 2005. This was the historic downtown street of Waveland, and the only building left standing was the Old Waveland School, which is just out of sight, um, down the street on the left. So what we did to really think about this... What could make this building anti-fragile? What could really improve this building in periods of disorder and stress? And these are the buildings that have been in existence the longest. These are... they're very continuance is really evidence of their being important to the community and contributing to society. And so they should be made in ways to adapt to new functions and to new conditions, new climate conditions, because they are beloved structures. Initially, uh, some folks came to the city council after the storm and said, "Why don't we just tear this building down and replace it with a metal building?" And a lot of the community came out in very, uh, strong opposition to this. So, what can we do to this... to this unreinforced masonry building? Well, one of the things we did was start at the very base. We created this anti-scour footing that really helped keep the existing footing in place. Uh, and we... we designed, sort of, back... backup system for the... for the base level of the, the, um, underneath the building and the crawl space. So there's a new slab to prevent moisture transmission, because we were conditioning the building for the first time, and we're also, you know, sort of supporting that, that, um, existing wall at the lowest levels, so that if some normal routine flooding comes along, it has some backup strength. In the existing walls, we added, um, metal stud on the interior, lateral support, to help keep that... that wall in place, and that gave us the room to actually insulate and provide more insulation for the walls as well, to keep it cooler for people inside. And then up at the top, at the parapet, we reinforced the parapet, um, and, and, you know, created a much more long... long-lasting and durable roof system. So those were the things that we did to improve this particular building. And you can see the restored facility, it's prepared for higher heat, it's prepared for more intense rainfall, more flooding. And at the time, we were engaged to design, redesign, restore the building. Um, the city didn't really have a clear function in mind. And so they said, "Well, you just have to make it, uh, flexible for all kinds of uses." So the kinds of uses that have occurred in this building since the restoration have been really broad, and it's really fun to see how the community has adopted and adapted this building for their uses. So, it has this kind of messy vitality that can be used for lots of functions over the next 100 years. Uh, right... right after the storm, after it was restored, they installed a carousel in here. It was a donation from a family that wanted to install a carousel somewhere in Waveland. That was interesting. It's used for all kinds of exhibits. It was used for the city council chambers until the, uh, the city hall was rebuilt. Now, it is the, um, Ground Zero Hurricane Museum, uh, and it has a bakery in it, so it's still used for lots of different purposes. Um, here's the building today, a lot of the landscaping has grown back. You can see it's sort of settling into its place again, and the Grand Zero Hurricane Museum sort of highlights the resilience of the people of the community, which would be really hard to do in a standard metal building, so I'm... they're really happy to have this historic building, uh, back, back in service. So as we were delving into all these projects and all this research, we realized that there just wasn't a comprehensive guide to adaptation and to resilience, so I started writing. And our office started illustrating the lessons we had learned during the recovery, and sharing them initially through AIA resources, and ultimately, through this book. So, each chapter sort of includes a definition of the adaptation measure. There's 45 of them. It includes illustrations, and the background for which the measure was developed, and then... and then, really, the important part is the key design considerations. What are the questions you need to ask your client, your consultant teams, your colleagues? You know, what recommendations can you make? What are the steps to implementation? And how do we measure success for that particular adaptation? And then, of course, at the very end, we look at impacts. What are the long-term impacts for implementing these strategies? And what are the resources that you might follow for further reading on this topic? So, we'll go through these really briefly. I'll show you some examples. Um, so heat is the first section of the book. Uh, it's the first... the first threat we sort of deal with. And we sort of designed a whole bunch of different ways to deal with heat, from wildfire protection to air quality, to... at the building scale, the sort of solar control measures you might take, and, uh, and cool envelopes. Um, so, we had a great project after the storm. The City of Bay St. Louis came to us. And this was following one of the recommendations, um, from the Mississippi Renewal Forum, is to create these cool corridors throughout the community, at the community scale. Um, there are so many CNU principles at work here to improve walkability, but also improve adaptive capacity. So narrowing the streets, you know, reduces the amount of heat island, and shading them with street plantings also improves the sort of urban heat island effect. Um, providing corridors for alternative transportation, bicycling, walking, strollers, scooters, whatever, whatever people want to get, improves the air quality, it reduces the heat gain. And all of these spaces really support social infrastructure as well. Places where people can come together to gather and engage. And so, you know, the whole idea of, you know, not everyone has to move to the suburbs to deal with a heat island. You can really make the city a greener place. Um, we did this in... in team with The Landscape Studio, with a great landscape architect, Ed Blake. And so, you know, we've really sort of looked at the before and after. How can we... how can we take the street that's just broad and has no defined edges, and how can we really start to create a more defined edge, um, with places for people to walk safely, with landscaping, with lighting? And these are the things that have a significant impact on heat gain. Um, so narrower lanes for cars, from these 13-foot-wide lanes, we switched down to 10-foot lanes, uh, which gave us space for wider sidewalks for pedestrians and protected bicycle lanes, and continuous landscaping for stormwater management. You can also use water as an urban cooling method. So, we had this, uh, great spot that was a real node that was underutilized. It was a ditch. Nobody wanted to walk by the ditch. Um, but it was at this really important, this critical intersection between downtown and the Depot District. So, we figured out a way that we could transform this ditch into a kind of urban pond. And it really helped us reduce temperatures, um. You can reduce temperatures using water in the urban environment by up to 8 degrees Celsius. So, you're just using the thermal properties of water, you're using shade, you're using open space, maybe misters. These kinds of constructed ponds and wetlands can also improve water quality by allowing sediments and contaminants to sort of settle out before you release the water further down and out into the natural waterway. So, we looked at lots of these different things. We created the duck pond at the end of this quarter-mile-long festival grounds. And it's really used for a whole variety of things now. Um, these wonderful places around the oak trees, beneath the oak trees. Um, and... and palm trees were kind of a historic, um, thing along this depot. So this is the... the Historic Bay St. Louis Depot. We now have the Amtrak train, so if you're going from Mobile to New Orleans, you can stop in Bay St. Louis and see this. And it gets used for parades and music events and all kinds of things. Even on the main streets and the beach boulevard, we kind of... we didn't have much right-of-way, but what we had we could use for landscaping and lighting and pedestrian walkways. And it really created a more vibrant and welcoming downtown, which was just recently, uh, really vibrant when we had hosted Cruising the Coast in October, first weekend in October. Lots of people, lots of old cars. It's a great time. So water is the next... next big hazard. We really have to deal with topography and risk, and here in these low coastal plains, we don't have much topography, so we start thinking about ways that we can allow water to do its thing and figure out ways to live with it, figure out ways to keep it safely in our communities, and, um, you know, direct it to where we want it to go. So one of the projects I want to show you is a project we did in, um, concert with Lake Flato Architects from San Antonio, Texas. Um, and this was a project for the Marine Education Center, so it was really intended to be a place where people were not sort of trapped inside learning about the environment, but were able to really engage with the landscape. And it was really a question of how new construction can prepare for sea level rise and more intensive flooding. You know, how can we present... Sorry, how can we prevent toxicity from building materials from affecting the environment? So we did this in a couple different ways. This was the original Marina Education Center. It was right next to the Isle of Capri, if you remember that from the Mississippi Renewal Forum. This was right next door, it was on the point in Biloxi, it was destroyed. It was a 34,000 square foot box with a whole bunch of tanks and live animals, all of which were lost in Katrina, which really devastated the staff of the Marine Education Center. And they said, "We don't want to do that again." Um, they also wanted to move to a different site, to a site that was more controlled. Um, and so... so they moved across the bridge into Ocean Springs, adjacent to Davis Bayou. Um, prior to the storm, they were at four feet above sea level, not very resilient. Um, after the storm, they were at about 19 feet above sea level. So, this was a project that really started with, um, understanding the environment, understanding the landscape. So, from the very beginning, we worked with the wonderful Larry Lewis, who's an environmental engineer, and with a landscape architect from the beginning of the project to really understand wetlands, to understand water flows, those kinds of things. And so we were looking for strategies in the design of this building that kind of offered no regrets. They would yield benefits in the absence of a hazard event. Um, so... so these were things like elevating, uh, to allow freeboard for flooding, um, allowing the stormwater to flow unimpeded beneath the building, and maintaining this narrow perimeter between the building and the landscape that really helps shield the building from winds, but also from direct heat gain. This was a really powerful message that our client gave to us at the very beginning of the project that really kind of focused our thinking on toxicity and building, uh, building materials, and considering the long-term effects of the work we do and its impact on the environment. And that was, "Every building ends up in the ocean." Um, so we really thought about that. We thought about ways we could, you know, have these buildings literally sit lightly on the land. So we used helical piers to raise the floor elevation about three and a half feet above the required base flood elevation. Some of the grade was already at about 16 to 19 feet. Um, we have this big bayhead swamp, so that the site kind of traverses these peninsulas, uh, at this site. So there's a... a bit of high ground, then there's Davis Bayou on the right, there's a Bayhead Swamp on the left, and then the project continues further to the left, um, with classrooms and exterior spaces. So we really wanted to look at how we could maintain that water flow beneath the building to preserve the habitat, um, and to water the bases of the trees that we were keeping. And one of the things we did was create a red list of materials that were toxic to aquatic species. Now, there's a lot of red lists for humans, you know, asbestos, lead, the rest of it. Well, we weren't thinking about was things like zinc is incredibly toxic to aquatic species. Well, zinc is in all of our metal roofing. You know, it was present in the galvanized roof. How could we then capture the runoff? Well, we did that in these infiltration trenches, so that it didn't, you know, immediately run off to the Bayhead Swamp and the Bayou St. IU Davis. And so, we wanted to really, you know, collect it in these trenches, let it filter through the sand and gravel trenches, through the ground, and then, um, before it hit the adjacent marshes and infected the juvenile species living there. Um, so you can see, the original 34,000 square footprint is really, you know, sort of articulated, it's broken down into smaller pieces, and it includes these outdoor spaces for learning. Um, so that's really, you know, how kids are engaging with this environment now. And so there's outdoor spaces for learning, as well as indoor and transitional spaces for learning as well, which are... which are wonderful. Um, acoustic spaces, they get you out into the environment, and everything, of course, is operable. In any building with water, of course, there's a few trade-offs. So, um, you know, in a typical house condition. We did this project for... for a client along the beach. Uh, and we recognize that. This was a client that was very educated about resilience and adaptation. He chose to retreat on the site to avoid the floodplains and to preserve this 400-year-old oak tree, which is wonderful. So normally, we would want buildings to, you know, maintain the street frontage, but we understand that sometimes there are really good trade-offs and really good reasons for retreating to avoid velocity zones for flooding, and reduce the elevation from the ground. So in this case, we used a sort of hybrid foundation method. So we brought up, you know, these kind of flood walls that you see below the blue dashed line, um, which kind of create a sort of interstitial step, and then... and then a few steps on piers up above to kind of re... we connect it to the ground a little bit to restore that traditional, you know, sort of relationship with the ground. Um, so those were things we did on the front house. On the back house, this is also part of the same compound, this is the mother-in-law's house. This is the garage, um, and... and the place for bunny rabbits and goats on the very far right. So we had this kind of stepped, um, transition down to green space. And again, it kind of... low flood wall to prevent flooding, and then a little bit of freeboard above that to... to, um, create, you know, sort of longevity for these structures. By the way, this is Shosugiban. This is... has a 50-year warranty. Down here, even in this hot, humid climate, it is Akoya wood that's treated. Um, and so... so it is... it does have that sort of black cast to it, which was, you know, one of the sort of modern touches he wanted on these buildings that were considered accessory buildings. The front building was in the historic district, so it... it had to maintain the sort of historic character. And again, here's the sort of site plan, um, the beach is to the left. And... and all the existing structures are above, slightly above the base flood elevation. When we deal with wind, we're dealing with, you know, we're first trying to figure out what the analysis is and how we deal with spatial texture, and of course, you'll see the famous Katrina Cottage here as temporary housing, one of our great examples. Um, but we're also thinking about landscape that can have a defensive, um, sort of pattern to it, and we're also thinking about, at the building scale, how do we then prevent buildings from... from breaching during... with wind-borne debris and other things. And then, how do we prepare for times of interruption as well? So, you know, one of the best tools for distributing wind at the community scale is something CNU members do really well. They're enhancing that spatial texture. You know, in places like Savannah, are much more sort of adapted to wind than places like New York City on the left, where you have these, you know, very strong grids, and the wind just channelizes down these corridors. There's a big difference in wind speed between pedestrians in New York City and pedestrians in Savannah, you know, because of the enhanced friction and the interruption of those squares. So, that was an interesting thing we learned, um, in the... in the... sort of research for this building. So many of the old waterfront cities, like Boston, shown here, the onshore winds, you know, they come barreling ashore, but then they get dissipated and distributed through these geometrically rich streets and buildings. So that's the kind of friction we're looking for, uh, in our landscapes. So the master planning scale, we tested this idea of spatial texture in an industrial park development. I know that doesn't sound like something architects always get involved in, and it certainly doesn't sound like a place where spatial texture would be welcome, but in this case, it really was. We were designing it to preserve the trees and restore the habitats, to avoid the wet parts of the site, uh, and to maintain permeability. So we designed this program. And again, we didn't have a specific tenant in mind, but this is an area adjacent to Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, where we have multiple tenants with needs for research and development. Um, they're developing underwater and airborne autonomous vehicles to support the blue economy. There's LIDAR. There's all kinds of really interesting things going on in these buildings. And so we really wanted to create the most flexible, sort of spaces, so you see, kind of, office spaces attached to, you know, development and production spaces as well. Um, we began again with a really deep site analysis to determine what the environmental carrying capacity of the site would be, um, to find the least cost, least impact areas to build. And so, uh, this map on the left is especially interesting. It is the base flood elevation minus the grade, so you can see that where it's red, it means, "Stop, don't... don't build here." Where it's fine, it means, you know, "Good as go." And we put all this together. Uh, and we used a GIS program to weight the data, and we came up with this sort of, um, this sort of priority areas for development. And unsurprisingly, the people who were there first, all these little pink-purple buildings, chose the really high ground. Um, so that... they chose the best land. But we had to find something. The Port and Harbor could develop one area, so we picked the most green. Everything to the left of that red line is part of the Stennis buffer zone and literally cannot be built on. So we're sort of limited to everything to the right of that red line. So we were looking for the place that could provide, you know, the closest thing to existing infrastructure and the highest ground. And so we developed this system. And we threw everything at it. You know, these buildings will be net zero, they will be, you know, adaptable and adaptive to... to future climate conditions. They have absorptive sites. Um, all of these different things. They're elevated to a very safe level, um, and they're, they're... continuity of operations. So, the all-wood construction was sort of planned to minimize transportation, and to use local resources. Because Mississippi is one of the largest wood-producing states in the country. Also, these are built... designed and built to fortified standards. That might be something you're familiar with, to minimize the chances of roof uplift and envelope breach and all the rest. So, impact glazed windows, um, and... and real, really strong tie-downs. We also wanted to fill the gaps in community services, so this was an area that really attracted a lot of people. But more and more people could not access the base because security is tighter now than it used to be, so foreign nationals needed a place to come meet with people from Stennis Space Center, um, off-site, so they could gain access. So we designed a conference center and a hotel lodge, because there were none in the area. Um, so this project's ongoing. We also, you know, we're facing these persistent stresses, whether they are biodiversity losses, whether they are edible, you know, sort of agricultural losses and those kinds of things. We're also really trying to address the loss of social capital and the loss of social infrastructure in our cities. And all kinds of constrained resources, from water and food to building materials, which we all saw during the COVID pandemic. So, so... the last section of the book really deals with these things. And of course, there's big overlaps here between New Urbanism and adaptation. You know, things like cluster development, where we can densify the settlement pattern, that can be used to avoid hazard zones, right? As well as protect those biodiverse habitats. Um, spaces for social infrastructure, these communities where people can, you know, have a common space, really improves adaptation by encouraging development and maintenance of social capital, you know, which is really essential to have when disaster strikes. You want to know who's got the, you know, car that can go the farthest? Who's got the chainsaw? You know, who has the capacity to help? So, we all depend on our neighbors after a storm. So this was a project we did. Community participation after disaster is really important, we know this. Mississippi Renewal Forum was an incredible effort. After Hurricane Katrina, you all know about that one. Hurricane Ike struck Houston in 2008. It had severe damage to the first ring of suburbs, many of which are occupied by minority communities, low-income communities. These are all in 100-year floodplain, so we really had to find a way to really deeply root this project in community participation from the very beginning. So we took neighborhood walks with our community members to define the character and understand the existing community context. We wanted to know the places and design elements that people loved, that were familiar, landmarks and memories that they would carry forward. Because we were rebuilding their homes on their... on their own properties. This is one of the few examples of a city, the city of Houston, really, um, coming up with a strategy to help people get back in their homes, in their neighborhoods, and rebuild that social network. So we came up with, I think, 32, um, original designs for these different neighborhoods, they were all kind of mid-century neighborhoods. And we invited the community in to choose which ones they thought were most important, that they felt fit the community best. And so we had a whole catalog that they could choose from. And then we met with every family to have them choose the style of house that they like, to choose the house they wanted, to place it on their site, to choose the finished colors, interior and exterior, and sort of sign off on it. And then two or three months later, it was built by a whole crew of pre-sort of qualified contractors for the City of Houston. And ultimately, it had a huge impact on these neighborhoods, and 300 family homes were rebuilt. And the thing that I take away from it is we got the HUD Secretary's Award for Community Engagement for this project, which was really meaningful and really helped people understand the value of that community engagement. So, let's wrap this up. I know we want to get to questions. I just wanted to... I had this idea that we could talk about, um, the ways that adaptation and New Urbanism overlap. You know, the things I've talked about: narrow streets, spatial texture, cool corridors, you know, boundaries to growth that define the edges of a community with green space, and social infrastructure, and other sort of things that have medium density solutions. And then I thought it would be interesting to also look at the places where adaptation and New Urbanism don't quite connect. Um, there... you know, we all know that elevating a house, especially to some of the incredible standards that we have to down here, which might be as much as 20 feet, can really sever the relationship between the porch and the street. We know that retreat and realignment can interrupt that urban pattern, and, you know, leave gaps in our urban fabric. We know that elevated roadways can create really undesirable sight lines, and earth-sheltered buildings don't fit the urban context, and, you know, some of these other things, like these big engineering projects, like seawalls and levees, can just dwarf the human scale of a neighborhood. But to us, the desired end result is always the same: to create these beloved places that can withstand climate challenges and maintain their value for generations. So, that's it. I'm looking forward to talking with all of you, and hearing your questions. Um, and I'm going to stop sharing, Rob, so we can get to that. Thank you. Rob Studville: Well, thank you, Allison. First of all, I want to let everybody know, please put questions in the Q&A, so Allison can get to those, uh. And, uh, and we can talk a little bit in the meantime. First of all, I thought, uh, you know, great presentation, and, man, um, you were really put to the test, and not lucky with your house, uh, in, in, um, you know, five weeks after it's built, to have that go... you go through something like Hurricane Katrina. But it really was a test of your design, and your design really came through incredibly well. So, um, you know, I don't know, I just think that speaks, uh, right away. You probably weren't... you were thinking to a degree about making, you know, adapting to something like a hurricane, but I imagine it wasn't... Was it the top thing on your mind, uh, um, when you were building that house? What's not? Yeah, like, I wouldn't think so, because, like you said, uh, it had not been flooded for 300 years of recorded history. And, wow, five weeks later, um, you got that storm surge that was 11 feet high on your house. Um, and it survived, and that says a lot. I'm also... I was also struck by the, uh, the two pictures of Bay St. Louis, um, like, from the Mississippi Renewal Forum, when it was virtually nothing standing. And then you had a picture of a main street, which was... looked like an incredible, you know, functional Main Street, with buildings on both sides, and how that has come back is really remarkable. Just sort of getting to your ideas a little bit more, but, um, um, you have so much information in that presentation, so could you just tell me, kind of, what are the big takeaways? If you can condense this down to a few main ideas? Um... Allison Anderson: Sure. Well, you know, we're sort of hampered in adaptation, because we think we don't know what to do. But in effect... in reality, we do have the tools. We have a whole toolkit of ways that we can deal with heat and water and wind and scarcity. And so we just have to begin applying those. I think one of the things that architects are... are most needed for architects and planners is to create that vision for people that's not a vision of doomsday, that's not a, "Hey, you're not going to be able to fly, you're not going to be able to, you know, see your friends, you know. Everybody's going to be in bunkers," and that's not the future that any of us want. We really want a future where we all are coming together, where we all are, you know, able to move around our communities in ways that might not rely on fossil fuels anymore. And so, you know, we're... we have those tools. We really... here's... here's the takeaway: we understand how to do it, we just need the political will. And the, the, um... we need everybody to create that framework and begin applying these lessons on every project. So, you know, we do a hazard and vulnerability assessment for every project that we undertake. And we understand those risks, and we understand those risks over the life of the structure. Where we're really thinking about, you know, if we're building a building today, we want it to last 100 years. And so we're thinking about what is... what is the climate going to do for that 100 years? And how are we going to protect this building for that length of time? So, that's the kind of framework that we're applying to our projects, and we want... we want to encourage other architects and planners to do the same thing, and to create these visions of a really welcoming and appealing future for all of us. Rob Studville: Um, I... you said that there's a lot of overlap between New Urbanism and adaptation, but there are these significant challenges that you also mentioned, and uh... Um, uh, so by doing New Urbanism, it can actually help with adaptation a lot, but uh... but on the other hand, um, if you prioritize the wrong things, you could end up with something that's completely the opposite of New Urbanism. So I'm wondering how do you prioritize your design, or how should urban designers prioritize their design and architects, uh, to create the kind of places that we want to build that are healthy and livable and, um, you know, just great communities? Allison Anderson: Well, you know, one of the... one of the things we think about a lot is density, and where we're placing people. Where are we placing people at risk? You know, where are the people currently at risk that we need to... to ultimately transition out of some of these spaces, because we cannot protect every place. We just... we don't have the economy to do that. And so... so we are going to be looking more and more at retreat and realignment of some of these cities. So where do we put the density in places that are safe, that are going to be safe for 100 years, you know, that can create the density that's livable? Because high density is a really bad word in my community, and when we talk about improving density, you know, there's a lot of pushback in existing communities. Where can we find the places that people can live somewhat closer together without really losing their sense of community? And so that's been a challenge, that's been a challenge in the 20 years after the Mississippi Renewal Forum. Because that was one of the recommendations of the renewal forum, was how do we increase density in some of these towns? And it's not always an easy solution by adding ADUs and things like that. Zoning often prevents us from doing that. So what is the sweet spot? Rob Studville: What is the sweet spot? I mean, you know, I noticed you've had the picture of Savannah, and a picture of Boston, and said how, like, you know, those, uh, the... at least these historic parts of those cities, you know, you have that disruption in the wind, you know, so you're not creating these wind corridors. There's a certain density that's actually creating... Allison Anderson: Absolutely. Rob Studville: ...a positive outcome in terms of resilience. In a lot of different ways, and uh... there's, of course, the famous studies where, um, if you have a strong sense of community, um, you have drastically reduced mortality in severe, you know, severe circumstances. And so, how can you kind of create that strong sense of community? How can you create... Allison Anderson: Yeah. Rob Studville: ...the emergency access and the, uh, and egress, and the escape routes, and all that? It's... these things are done through urbanism, and you're talking about shade with the narrow streets. Um, so... Allison Anderson: So that mutual shading, where one building is actually shading the next building, as well as the streetscapes, plants themselves, so... yep, that really helps. Eric Kleinenberg has written really beautifully on heat wave. And, you know, *Palaces for the People*, so those are two great resources if you haven't read them. Rob Studville: We have a lot of great comments, but we're not getting questions. I would urge people to, like, turn those comments into questions, because Allison is a really incredible resource. Um, I can tell you that, uh, by reading the book, any question you ask, you will have an answer for. Allison Anderson: Oh my gosh, I don't know about that. If not, I'll make it up on the spot, so... Rob Studville: Well, I think almost on the... It's... yes, on any subject. The book is really very comprehensive in terms of the built environment. It takes it beyond architecture into the realm of, really, designer communities as well. Um, I wanted to ask another question, and that is that the Sunbelt, where you have, uh, the severe effects of heat and hurricanes and flooding and so forth... Allison Anderson: Absolutely. Rob Studville: ...more so now than ever before, is built on air conditioning. And... and great, and, like, 60 or 70 years ago, that was not the case. Maybe 70 years ago, that was not the case, and you started to get... the air conditioning for every building, and the buildings have to be permanently air-conditioned, I'm told, or they all of a sudden start to mold. Allison Anderson: Yeah. Rob Studville: And so now you have a situation where you kind of have a vicious circle with air conditioning? Allison Anderson: You absolutely do, yeah. Well, I mean, form and orientation, every architect learns in, I think, second year about the importance of shading windows and, you know, preventing heat gain. Specifically from buildings, that thermal environment is more and more important, where we're insulating the building envelope, both at the roof, the walls, and the floor to keep that, you know, to keep that thermal environment out, whether it's heating or cooling. Um, the difference is going to be, in the future, we're going to have clean energy sources. We're already moving in that direction, and we just need to keep moving faster and farther and quicker to get to clean energy sources, so that that air conditioning is not having a detrimental effect on greenhouse gas emissions. It's not pushing greenhouse gas emissions up, but we're keeping cool at the same level. Now, you know, there's a lot of embodied carbon in these systems, so, you know, more air conditioning doesn't mean less emissions, even if it is clean energy. But we need to do what we can with the building envelope to reduce the demand. And then what we do on top of that is to create renewable energy sources to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Rob Studville: Isn't... but aren't those buildings also vulnerable? If you've got a disaster, you're going to... you're going to lose power, and then all of a sudden, they're not going to be air-conditioned. And then you've got mold. How do you make a more resilient? Allison Anderson: Yeah, well... right. Um, there are lots of things you can do with building materials, and you can have natural ventilation to some degree, but in our hot, humid climate, that's very difficult. Now, about nine months out of the year, because that's how long our summers are lasting, from, like, you know, March through November. Um, so... so you're going to have to keep air movement through there, and you're going to have to choose materials that can... that can basically take a swim. And not... and, you know, not create mold, and not create poor indoor air quality for people. So those are materials like, you know, rock wool insulation instead of cellulose, or, you know, um, using... using wood materials instead of, um, sheetrock. Uh, wood's not the best, but... but it can... it can hold up a little bit longer to water. Using ceramic tile instead of... instead of other things that... that get moldy underneath. So, the materials you choose, you know, if they can take a swim, then they're... then they're... they're good against mold as well. Rob Studville: I want to, like, obviously the headlines in the last, um, year or so, um, uh, there's been the fires in LA. I know that you cover fires in your book, and making... and there is also, uh, the Hurricane Helene, which devastated the mountains, you know, of North Carolina, which you wouldn't think, um, that they would be threatened by a hurricane as much, but... So, can you comment on, like, those two particular, you know, specific threats, and what we can do to make, uh, communities more sustainable and resilient? Allison Anderson: Sure, well, both of those kind of share an interesting characteristic. Both of the worst effects were at the fringes of those communities. They were... they were those loose, uh, sort of low-density, wildland-urban interface, you know, areas and areas up in the mountains where there were just, you know, one house here and two houses here, and that kind of thing. So, this is a place where density really helps, that kind of creating that real boundary to growth really helps protect people from harm, and in those kinds of cases. Of course, there's really different, um, solutions for wildfires, for designing for wildfires, and designing for steep slopes. Um, but in both of those conditions, you could argue that density would have been a solution to, um, to preventing some of those impacts. Now, not so much in... in the Eaton Fire, but, um, yeah, it's been... it's been devastating to watch, and... and the more heat we get, the worse... the more impacts we're going to feel. And the wider those impacts are going to affect our country and our... our people. Rob Studville: Now, if you do have a denser environment, it seems to me that it's easier to defend. Allison Anderson: It is easier to defend, and we have more infrastructure, money, to defend it. You know, we've had some great conversations in CNU and other places about that cost of service for, you know, areas that are very low density versus the cost of service. And the additional services and benefits that can be gained by having more and more people on a street. So, that is... that is important. Rob Studville: Uh, we did have a question, uh... "What has been your experience, uh, regarding construction and maintenance expertise for these new or innovative material selections? In construction structural techniques, we've been seeing in Canada a lack of construction skilled labor. And then, if it gets built, inability or lack of knowledge to correctly maintain things like innovative stormwater management, an infiltration or newer construction material application. Why is that true? Um..." Allison Anderson: Yeah, I think... I think that's a pervasive problem. I think it's certainly... it's certainly a problem down here, understanding that not every child has to go to college, understanding that technology can be... can be gained through the work of their hands is really important. Um, more and more people do need to step up to understand these things, but we are seeing a big change. Mass timber, um, that doesn't require a full set of new understandings, you know, a whole new set of skills. We're seeing people be able to apply that, who've traditionally worked in the timber industry. Um, but certainly training is really critical, and workforce training is especially critical. Um, we've had projects where we, we landscape the heck out of something, and somebody came along and mowed it all down, because of ease of, you know, ease of... ease of maintenance, or security reasons, or whatever. You know, you just... you just got to keep fighting those battles over and over sometimes, but... but making sure that you have a long-term client. That's nice, with a long-term relationship. That's really important. We've had that on several projects, like the Marine Education Center I showed, and that's been great to see how that project has really matured, and how they've, you know, sort of adapted to use that environment, so that... You know, you just have to create that. That owner's manual that doesn't just get put on the shelf, that you really are, you know, getting people to do it. Rob Studville: Well, we are now at the, um, the hour, and so, um, I guess, uh, I could ask a... you know, just a final question, or if you had kind of anything that, um, that you wanted to say, that, um, you know, that you wanted to emphasize, uh, at this point. Is there anything we didn't, you know, cover that you would like to, you know, talk about it a little bit more? Allison Anderson: I mean, there's a lot... there's a lot in here, but obviously, we're just trying to put people in places that they are fairly safe, right? We're not designing for the worst case for most people, we're designing for the design level event. Not just the routine flooding, but the design level event. And so we're really thinking about these places that will be viable neighborhoods for the next 100 years, and I encourage your members to think the same way. Um, it's... it was devastating, you know, seeing our projects erased after... after two weeks, right? That was... that's something I never hoped for anybody. But... but it was... it was a... a moment for us to reconsider what was important to us, and that, you know, we understood sustainability wasn't the final goal. Really, resilience and adaptive capacity is. So, I encourage you to think the same way. Rob Studville: Well, Allison, thank you very much. There's been so much that you covered today, and it's a very important topic. And so, um, we will, once again, we'll be posting this on the CNU website. Probably early next week. It's usually within 24 hours, but the person who posts is on vacation. Um, but, uh, but there is some great stuff here, and we will be posting it, and uh... uh, following up with this, and so thanks, everybody who attended, and thank you, Allison.