Can smart growth help communities avoid the catastrophic impacts
of flooding? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
brought together designers, land use planners, engineers and
policy wonks at NOAA’s Silver Spring headquarters last week to
examine this question, and to find commonalities and tensions
between hazard mitigation techniques and smart growth
principles. “Hazard mitigation” is the technical term for a wide
range of urban design, landscape, architectural, land use and
engineering practices aimed at reducing exposure to threats like
flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfire. This field of
practice is closely related to climate change adaptation, or the
process of planning ahead for eventualities such as extreme
temperatures and sea-level rise. The experts at last week’s
meeting raised several questions about urban planning’s role in
hazard mitigation. Should cities require the street level of new
buildings to contain nothing m