Begin With the End in Mind
“Begin with the End in Mind” is the second principle in the famous list of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by the late Stephen Covey.
Recently it occurred to me that the second habit, to begin with the end in mind, has tremendous application to the challenge of adapting to rising sea level and increased flooding. Before we start with the “next step” with any project we should have a strategic view of where we would like it to be in the long term. Our tendency is to do the opposite: To decide what we can do with the least inconvenience and expense in the short term.
By that I mean that typically we look at challenges incrementally. In coastal areas all over the word, the flooding is getting worse. To ‘solve the problem’ – the engineering analysis and design solution usually looks at what is happening “now” and perhaps over the next ten to twenty years. There are two problems with that strategy.
First, if we need to raise street elevations, change building codes, and utilities, it is a lot less expensive to raise them once than to do it repeatedly. In other words if six feet of flooding is possible within the useful life of the building or infrastructure, typically 30 – 100 years, it is a lot less expensive and gives a much better ROI (return on investment) in the long run, to raise things once, than it is to raise them two feet, three separate times.
Second, there are usually limits to specific engineering structures. For example, earthen levees have a practical height limit. Given that the latest trends with melting ice and rising seas indicates that six to eight feet is possible this century, we should be investing in solutions that allow further growth and adaptation even beyond that height. The same applies to all manner of coastal structures.
I often use the example that if you know that you may need a ten story building you can add floors as you need them if the foundation is built with that planning in mind. But if you only plan for a one level building, you cannot add the extra floors later, without likely having to tear down the building to redo the foundation.
If we can step back and design something so that it could be functional at much higher sea level, the interim changes and improvements are more likely to have good durability and a better return on investment in the long term. There are communities in low-lying areas that are flooding today, that need to be completely re-thought with bold long-term planning in order to cope with rising sea level over the next 50+ years. We need to get away from the usual short-term incremental approach that deals with flooding streets, foot by foot, block by block.
A great example of this occurred in Seattle, Washington – a century ago. Downtown in the Pioneer Square district, streets were flooding more and more often with the regular king tides, just as is happening now in communities everywhere. Back then the problem was that that area had been built on fill-land, that was not well supported. In fact a lot of the under layers were wood products from all the timber mills. With time, they get soggy, rotted and subsided.
Then, there was a great fire downtown in 1889. The City used that as an opportunity to build higher. They decided to rebuild that area 22 feet higher. For a few years, residents and businesses had to use ladders to get up to the street level. Over a decade however, the buildings abandoned their ground floors and built new lobbies on the former first or second floors. They solved the flooding problem. Today if you visit Seattle, there are tours of “Underground Seattle” where you can visit blocks of century-old structures, including hotel lobbies, that are now below street level. (I took the tour last year; it was fascinating.)
Those planners, property owners, and business leaders in Seattle designed with a new vision of a better future. They began with the end in mind. The transition was expensive, inconvenient, and difficult. But they were investing in a neighborhood that had a future. In the long run it was the right investment.
As cities, companies, and planning professionals tackle the challenge to deal with flooding, getting worse due to changing weather patterns and rising sea level, we should look to apply that principle, and always begin with the end in mind.