According to a new report, more than 200 shoreline communities around Lake Michigan are at risk from high lake levels and strong storms that could impact industrial facilities and contaminated sites.

Climate change is fueling more extreme Lake Michigan Water levels, along with stronger winds and heavier storms. These conditions exacerbate erosion, beach loss, and damage along the shore. Shoreline communities around the lake have already spent $878 million in just the past two years repairing damages from extreme weather events. Expenses could exceed another $2 billion in the next five years.

Using elevation data prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, analysts identified twelve areas where high lake levels and strong storms could impact industrial facilities, contaminated sites, and communities along Lake Michigan. These maps visualize four flood levels from 584 to 589 feet above sea level. The maps provide a useful starting point for risk assessment, spreading awareness, and prioritizing cleanup.

Chicago’s shoreline communities and the built environment have taken a beating from high Lake Michigan water levels whipped up by high winds and waves. 

Climate change is causing more extreme weather events and unprecedented swings in lake water levels. As Professor Drew Gronewold of the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability explained, Lake Michigan water levels shifted from a record low monthly average of 576 feet in 2013, to a record high of 582.2 feet in 2020.

While scientists expect global mean sea levels to rise somewhat consistently, the Great Lakes are expected to continue to both rise and fall, fueled by an accelerating “tug of war” between numerous factors. In some years, higher temperatures will increase evaporation resulting in lower lake levels. In many years, lower temperatures and broad ice cover, combined with high levels of precipitation, will cause much higher Lake Michigan waters levels for which the current built environment was not designed.

Residential buildings in Chicago’s north-side Rogers Park and south-side South Shore neighborhoods have been battered by water, wind and waves. Houses on the Chicago suburban North Shore, the Northwest Indiana shoreline, and Western Michigan’s lakeshore likewise have been battered. Beaches up and down the lakefront are being washed away and bluffs eroded. Wastewater treatment plants, toxic dredge dumps and other industrial facilities are vulnerable to damage, flooding and toxic release.

“In terms of climate change, the long-term signal for us in the Great Lakes is wetter and warmer,” Professor Gronewold said. “The practical reality is that we need to rethink the Great Lakes shoreline’s built environment in light of the more extreme water levels.”

Adapting to changing conditions and dealing with threats to the local environment and public health and safety will require fundamental policy shifts, and significant federal, state and local financial investments. Policymakers must include critical recommendations from affected communities. Possible action steps include:

• Reassess infrastructure risks and vulnerabilities in light of higher-than-planned-for Lake Michigan water levels. Too many existing toxic sites – landfills, coal ash storage ponds, and industrial facilities – along the shoreline were built based on outdated water level estimates; they weren’t designed to withstand now-projected higher water levels and flooding. Given climate-related predictions of more extreme lake levels, cleaning up toxic sites is even more important. At a minimum, let’s not make existing problems worse. For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed expanding the Confined Disposal Facility, a hazardous waste landfill on Chicago’s Southeast Side right along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Communities should likewise assess the impacts on marinas, water intake pipes and wildlife when water levels are low. Assuring that drinking water intake pipes are safe under both extremely high and low lake water levels is critical. 

• Update and redesign local land use planning and zoning standards based on today’s water level realities rather than yesterday’s news. Most communities’ planning, zoning and development laws and practices are outdated and based on historic Lake Michigan levels instead of the increasingly more extreme water levels.

• Invest in nature-based solutions to strengthen shoreline resilience, including restoring wetlands to store water and reduce some pressure by absorbing overflow from Lake Michigan, while also providing more wildlife habitat.  Potentially use nearby rivers and lakes to act as reservoirs for high lake water.

• Consider new environmental engineering and water management approaches. Green infrastructure, such as permeable pavers, can allow water to directly enter the groundwater, rather than overwhelming city drainage systems, flooding streets and flowing into the lake. Policymakers should explore and reasonably use “all of the water management tools in the toolbox.” 

• Effectively deploy the recent influx of federal funds, including the additional $1 billion for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which provides greatly increased funding to address wastewater and storm water threats, and investments in clean drinking water programs.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Cities around the world are feeling the pressures of climate change. Fires, droughts, floods and other factors are forcing evacuations of some towns, while driving those displaced to the nearest cities. Unfortunately, few cities are prepared to handle the pressures of climate change and rising populations.

Each year, urban areas add about 75 million people – more than the population of the world’s 85 smallest countries combined. The high density of people and assets makes cities extremely vulnerable to the effects of global warming and climate change.

Urban areas generate about 80 percent of GNP globally. Cities also generate approximately 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, more than 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Cities house an increasing proportion of the world’s most vulnerable populations (nearly 900 million people live in urban slums). Almost 500 million urban residents live in high-risk coastal areas. In the 136 biggest coastal cities, there are 100 million people and $4.7 trillion in assets exposed to coastal floods.

“Rapid growth, without efforts to boost resilience, is exposing cities around the world to huge risk. Population growth and human migration are on the rise, and climate change is poised to have dramatic effects, which means we’re approaching a tipping point for the safety of cities all over the world,” said Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, the World Bank Group’s Senior Director for the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience.

Resilient cities can absorb, recover and prepare from shocks (economic, environmental, social and institutional).

Few cities and communities have the luxury of time. Urban planners must develop shortcuts to find immediate solutions. To help jumpstart your road to resilience, we have prepared the following checklist for your adaptation. It will serve as a rapid assessment to help you and your stakeholders identify the most immediate threats, opportunities and actions. Develop a special resilience task force. Be sure to include representatives of key industry sectors and key community groups.

Audit & Assessment: Identify the most urgent threats and opportunities.

What are the governmental/regulatory barriers to progress in your city? How can city and county government be more transparent, inclusive, comprehensive and responsible?

• Emergency Response: Do you have the resources to respond to emerging threats? What threats/risks can be isolated, evacuated, reinforced or removed?
• Healthcare Systems: In the worst-case scenario, what gaps exist in the local healthcare system? Do facilities need to be relocated? Will roads in and out be accessible during extreme weather events or fires? Do they have backup power?
• Technology Gaps: Where is the technology infrastructure vulnerable? Where is it outdated? Is it backed up? Can it be accessed remotely in case of an emergency?
• Power: Is it a reliable resource? Is it a sustainable resource? Where are there opportunities to diversify your sources and what opportunities exist to generate and store power locally? Who uses the most power?
• Water: Is it a reliable resource? Is it a sustainable resource? Is it safe from pollutants? Is it adequate to meet future demand? Who uses the most?
• Food: Is it a reliable resource? Is it a sustainable resource? Is it safe from pollutants? How can you boost local production?
• Transportation: Where can roads and bridges be upgraded to improve traffic flow? What roads and bridges are vulnerable to floods, fires, landslides and other threats? What potential is there to improve alternative transportation? Promote walking, biking, carpooling and remote work environments. Electric vehicles can help, but only when powered by solar energy.
• Housing: Affordable housing, energy efficiency, recycling, smart communities, resilient communities, community gardens, composting, xeriscaping and more are all part of the solution.
• Wastewater Management: In most cities, the entire wastewater treatment process represents a public health disaster. Extreme weather is exacerbating the problem. Sewage sludge isn’t fertilizer and reclaimed wastewater isn’t liquid gold. This area requires immediate consultation. Please contact us.
• Green Spaces: Urban forests and flood plains matter. Defense from local forest fires, rising tides, tornadoes, hurricanes and more also matter.
• Air Quality: A key metric in some areas is air quality. It’s a matter of public health, but it also is a symptom of a problem that must be addressed. Ozone, particulates, smoke, automobile exhaust, airport and airline traffic, industrial emissions and more all must be minimized for maximum impact.
• Financing: Incentives, tax credits, green bonds and other avenues can help your city finance critical steps forward. In many cases, these projects will pay for themselves with cost reductions.Important Trends: What other local trends must be considered?
• Critical Success Factors: What keeps you up at night? What obstacles must be overcome? Who are key allies?
• Strengths and Weaknesses: What are your key assets and liabilities? Leverage your strengths and improve upon your vulnerabilities.
• Develop Action Plan and Budget: When it comes to global warming and climate change, cities represent our greatest risk for loss and our greatest opportunity for change. One of the biggest mistakes that community leaders can make is over-analysis, which often leads to crisis management. As the list above indicates, there are immediate opportunities for improvement in every city and community. Momentum is contagious.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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What will the cities of tomorrow look like? How will they adapt and evolve? How will we effectively manage and respond to physical, economic and social risks? QBE and Ashoka are hosting the Urban Resilience Challenge – a national social innovation competition that will uncover and fund tech-based innovations that will drive resiliency in cities. 

Across the United States, cities are at the forefront of our nation’s growth and are hubs of innovation, technology, and commerce. At the same time, urban areas face growing vulnerabilities and chronic stressors from economic shifts, changing demographics, and natural disasters.

Cities are complex and challenging entities, and their success relies on developing resilience to withstand these threats.

Recognizing the urgent need to build urban resilience, QBE North America and Ashoka are embarking on a unique collaboration to seek out and support innovators across the United States whose ventures contribute to building thriving, resilient cities that can effectively manage and respond to physical, economic, and social threats. Together, we’re launching the QBE and Ashoka Urban Resilience Challenge—a nation-wide social innovation competition seeking entrepreneurs leveraging technology to transform city ecosystems. 

The QBE and Ashoka Urban Resilience Challenge will recognize and support transformative for-profit tech innovations that are impacting policy and the broader urban ecosystem. Applicants can apply to one of the following thematic tracks: The Built Environment (infrastructure), Sustainable Economies, Food/Water/Waste, and Public Health and Safety. 

The QBE and Ashoka Urban Resilience Challenge will provide a select number of early entrants with access to mentorship/coaching opportunities provided by the QBE and Ashoka team of thought leaders.  Ten finalists will receive an all-expense paid trip to New York City to pitch their ventures, receive on-site feedback and mentoring from QBE and Ashoka’s notable network of employees, investors, and thought leaders, and compete for two cash prizes of  $75,000 (Urban Champion) and $25,000 (Urban Pioneer).

For example, SensCity’s founders—five urbanites living in cities around the world—have seen destructive climate change first-hand, from deadly Australian heatwaves to post-hurricane New York City. Now they’ve set out to revolutionize the way cities prepare by providing key data to developers and environmental consultants. Their software, currently piloted in the city of Bendigo, helps governments and organizations gauge how urban environments are reacting to climate impacts, whether current programs are working, and determine future risk.

Elsewhere, Biocellection co-founders Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have created a market-based solution to the plastic problem that’s both scalable and sustainable. Rather than downcycling plastic waste or using it to make fuel — which creates inferior products or further pollution—Biocellection molecularly recycles it, transforming plastic waste into virgin-quality engineering plastics. With high profit margins due to more valuable upcycled products, Biocellection is growing fast and helping to create an exciting market for plastic waste.

Plastic waste is a huge problem, so the founders of Arqlite designed a scaled-up solution to match. Arqlite uses a unique process to upcycle plastics— the kind that cannot be currently recycled—in its Argentina facility to make a brand-new commodity product: Arqlite light gravel. Ideal for construction, the gravel’s light weight and superior insulation provides companies with an effective, cost-efficient product. With over 500 tons of Arqlite gravel produced—and more products to come—the company seeks to solve the problem of plastic pollution.

Meanwhile, four billion people currently experience severe water scarcity, yet the manufacturing industry continues to consume massive amounts of water to make tech products. The Exergy team invented a solution that purifies and recycles water at the point of use, bringing it back into the production process and minimizing treatment costs. The process recycles 90% of the high purity water used in high-tech manufacturing. Exergy aspires to shift the paradigm to a new, circular approach, where resources stay clean as they’re continually purified and reused. 

Our current energy grid is underutilized 99% of the time— and it’s not friendly to clean energy.

That’s why Omega Grid is pioneering a bold sustainable energy system, using local energy markets as an alternative to the traditional grid. The software, which uses blockchain architecture and avoids expensive, centralized infrastructure, determines the best design for local grids, paving the way towards a sustainably-powered future.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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Today, we are excited to name the first group of cities selected through the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge – cities who have demonstrated a dedicated commitment to building their own capacities to prepare for, withstand, and bounce back rapidly from shocks and stresses.

Since we announced the challenge on our 100th birthday, May 14, 2013, the response has been enormous, with more than 1,000 registrations and nearly 400 formal applications from cities around the world. Each city was asked to present a clear and compelling description of how they are approaching and planning for resilience to decrease vulnerabilities, and after careful review of the applications, a panel of esteemed judges, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Olosegun Obasanjo, recommended the first set of 33 cities for the 100 Resilient Cities Network.

It wasn’t easy to choose only 33 – we had so many passionate, vibrant entries. Among the winners: One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world wrote of the city’s history withstanding shocks for the past eight millennia.

One African city wrote of a resilience plan as harmonizing climate change adaptation, biodiversity, planning and management and water security.

And a city in South America finds itself dealing with landslides and forest fires, all while sitting in the shadow of a volcano.

AFRICA

Dakar (Senegal)
Durban (South Africa)

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

Medellín (Colombia)
Mexico City (Mexico)
Porto-Alegre (Brazil)
Quito (Ecuador)
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

EUROPE

Bristol (UK)
Glasgow (UK)
Rome (Italy)
Rotterdam (Netherlands)
Vejle (DK)

MIDDLE EAST

Ashkelon (Israel)
Byblos (Lebanon)
Ramallah (Palestine)

NORTH AMERICA

Alameda (CA)
Berkeley (CA)
Boulder (CO)
El Paso (TX)
Jacksonville (FL)
Los Angeles (CA)
New Orleans (LA)
New York City (NY)
Norfolk (VA)
Oakland (CA)
San Francisco (CA)

OCEANIA

Christchurch (New Zealand)
Melbourne (Australia)

SOUTH ASIA

Surat (India)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Bangkok (Thailand)
Da Nang (Vietnam)
Mandalay (Myanmar)
Semarang (Indonesia)

Cities selected for the Network will receive four kinds of support:

The support to hire and empower a Chief Resilience Officer, a central point of contact within each city to coordinate and oversee the resilience activities, coordinate stakeholders, and ensure resilience is a city-wide priority.

The support for that Chief Resilience Officer to develop a resilience plan, which will take stock of existing efforts, identify priority areas of needs, conduct analysis to understand the interconnected risks and opportunities, and develop a clear and actionable set of priorities and initiatives.

Access to a platform of services to support the implementation of such a strategy, which may include solutions to spur investments and financing for resilient infrastructure, information technology tools, and policy models for resilience-enabling laws and regulations.

Connection to other Network members, to share what works, spotlight success, and advance both global and regional dialogues on urban resilience.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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From my office, on the 9th floor of a tall building in an academic campus in Bangalore, I have a birds-eye view of the city’s peri-urban surroundings. To the west, I can see a 6-lane high-speed highway choked by traffic, full of people commuting from their homes in city to their jobs in the globally famous Information Technology campuses located just outside. To the east, I am fortunate to witness a completely different picture.

A tranquil marshy wetland and freshwater lake, with dozens of cows grazing and cooling down in the water while the sun blazes overhead, accompanied as companions by hundreds of cattle egrets feeding on the insects that annoy the cattle. This idyllic picture of cooperation, mutualism, and rural bliss has evolved and been sustained over centuries in Bangalore.

Even this picture is marred by construction and dumping of large mounds of debris onto the wetlands and into the lake.

Such contradictions of livelihoods and lifestyles, urbanity and rurality, shared cooperation and rampant self-interest, may be typical of many Indian cities but are certainly not unique to India. Certainly, the situation I have just described in Bangalore could be familiar to people in many other countries, even continents. Conflicts such as these just described have given rise to, and are exacerbated by, some of the worst inequities that the world has ever experienced.

A recent Oxfam report, released on the occasion of the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, quotes a staggering figure: the world’s richest 85 people now collectively own as much money as the world’s poorest 3.5 billion! In a world that seems to be moving towards increasing self interest, and growing private control of the environment and natural resources, how can we ever hope or plan for a better future?

Following the example of Elinor Ostrom, who received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her pioneering work on the commons, we need to enlarge our discussion of models of urban governance to include a third alternative to the commonly espoused twin pillars of private and government administration, i.e., that of the community.

Research from case studies in diverse contexts across the world has now proven clearly that multi-level collaborations between local community groups, civic society actors and government administration are essential for the effective, equitable and sustainable governance of natural resources. For such collaborations to be effective, they should however enable the scope for negotiations on an equal slate between different groups, such as high income apartment owners and slum residents, that are likely to have very different power structures.

Developing the platform to allow negotiations at an equal level is particularly challenging in cities given the underlying context of high economic growth, which puts natural resources at stake. The imbalance between power structures becomes every more stark when natural resources are monetized, whether in the context of fracking and industrialization in China and the USA, or ground water withdrawal and water privatization in Latin American and Indian cities.

Effective governance is the key, obviously. Yet, to address these thorny challenges requires an adequate appreciation of the complexities of politics and political science, which is often lacking in approaches adopted by governments, influential think tanks and international policy makers.

Clearly, in today’s information age, lack of information does not constitute a barrier. More likely, it is the lack of dialogue, exacerbated by the imbalance in power, that creates barriers to cooperative governance for inclusive cities. It is the same lack of dialogue and imbalance in power between the urbanized landscape to the west of my office (with its character shaped by the shared use of large roads by high speed traffic), and the rural landscape to the east (with its character shaped by the shared use of wetlands by cattle and people), that leads to the dominance of the road over the lake, of the need for speed and linear growth over reflection and an appreciation of the cycles of life.

Such an imbalance in appreciation, in ideology, almost inevitably leads to the disappearance and decay of these commons in urban areas. Cities thus become oceans of gray in a quest for endless economic growth, swallowing up all the little islands where commoners once thrived and flourished in respectful contestation and adaptive dialogue with nature.

Our studies, as well as practical experience with community governance in the context of Bangalore’s lakes, has strongly highlighted the role for dialogue between communities and city government in providing the conditions that are inductive for effective co-management. This is particularly important in high growth urban contexts, which face political economic challenges of rent seeking, corruption and economic profit-making that can bias planning towards short term profit seeking, at the expense of long term sustainability.

Fortunately, Bangalore seems to doing well in this regard, with a number of lake communities coming forward to reclaim derelict lakes in their neighborhood, supported by civic action in the form of Public Interest Litigations and an active judiciary that places pressure on city administration. Such initiatives cannot be taken for granted, however, and are few and far between at the national level in India and indeed, in most countries with fast growing cities.

Our only hope for scaling up such action is to enable outreach at a mass scale, through interdisciplinary education that crosses boundaries, engages with students, local communities, policy makers and private actors, and facilitates respectful contestation across groups of actors joined in the common goal of seeking equitable pathways towards greater urban sustainability. Engaging with problems of sustainability in an equitable, fair and just manner will require the fresh perspectives engendered by such discussion.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. Greener Cities is a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world.

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