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How Can We Plan for Safe and Sustainable Regions?

Moderator: Andrew J. Whittle ScD '87
Chiang C. Mei Michael M. J. Fischer Anne Whiston Spirn: October 18, 2005; Running Time: 2:00:09

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

As various plans emerge for the recovery of New Orleans, these panelists offer some pointed lessons in flood prevention and reconstruction, from overseas, from our own history, and from other parts of the U.S.

Anne Whiston Spirn believes in the power of catastrophe to transform cities beneficially. In particular, she embraces “ideals of designing a city in concert with natural processes.” But it takes collective will to discard old planning schemes. In West Philadelphia, Spirn discovered that whole neighborhoods were sinking due to their construction on landfill over an old creek. Kids called where they lived “the bottom”—and they didn’t mean just on the floodplain, but socio-economically, explains Spirn. She documented her findings and offered city planners ways to turn these sinkholes into viable and attractive community assets. Officials ignored her, until affected residents got involved. While New Orleans is “dramatic and riveting, it’s but the tip of the iceberg,” as hundreds of communities across the U.S. face the same story of dangerous and unhealthy living conditions and official neglect.

As colossal as the Katrina flooding was, a 1927 Mississippi flood proved far more destructive. Michael M.J. Fischer describes how wet weather lodged over the nation’s midsection for half a year, leading to the flooding of 23 thousand square miles, from Virginia to Oklahoma, and displacement of more than 1 million people. Officials dynamited dykes that protected rural areas along the Mississippi, “forcing the rural poor to sacrifice for the city -- and used troops to suppress the threat of civil war,” recounts Fischer. Sharecroppers were “pressed at gunpoint” into repairing the levees, protecting the interests of large cotton and sugar firms. Fischer sees “echoes in the Bush administration lifting of rules on paying prevailing wages.” He notes that these coercive measures permanently changed race relations in that region, and led to an exodus of many African Americans from the Delta.

Even without Katrina, New Orleans has been inexorably sinking—due to coastal erosion, oil and gas drilling and global warming. But these problems afflict other global landmarks just as dramatically, says Chiang Mei. Look at poor Venice, which has been debating for 20 years now the construction of gates on its famous lagoons. The community, engineers, business and government simply can’t collaborate on an acceptable solution, says Mei, and this “jewel of the western world” hangs in the balance. The Netherlands is more than 50% below sea level, so “protection against flood has been a matter of survival” for centuries. A massive 1953 flood launched the nation’s most ambitious effort: a shift from dams to moveable gates. In an astonishingly swift timeframe, the Dutch engineered a means to protect their land from “10,000-year storms,” and to maintain their valuable estuary ecosystems, home to mussels and oysters. Will New Orleans reconstruction adopt “Band-Aids vs. long-term solutions,” wonders Mei, and how much of a role will environmental impact play?

Lecture Details

Location: Kirsch Auditorium 32-123

“There’s never more support and energy for rebuilding and doing it right than immediately following a catastrophe. But if no plan is already in hand, the desire to do things fast and get the job done can take over the first impulse to do things right. Political expediency rapidly takes over.”

Anne Whiston Spirn

About the Speakers

Moderator: Andrew J. Whittle ScD '87

Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Andrew Whittle received his B.Sc. 1981, from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, and his Sc.D. in 1987, from MIT.

His research focuses on geotechnical engineering, constitutive models for geomaterials, analysis methods for foundations, excavations and tunnels,in situ test methods, and ground improvement.

Whittle has received the J. James R. Croes Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Chiang C. Mei

Donald & Martha Harleman Professor and Acting Head, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Chiang C. Mei received his B.S. in 1955, from National Taiwan University; his M.S. in 1958 from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in 1963, from the California Institute of Technology.

He researches theoretical hydrodynamics; ocean and coastal waves phenomena; fluid-solid interaction; poroelasticity; seabed mechanics; land subsidence, debris and mud flow and the mechanics of soil remediation.

Michael M. J. Fischer

Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, Department of Anthropology and Program in Science, Technology and Society

Michael M.J. Fischer received his B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University (Liberal Arts/Geography, 1967) and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (Anthropology, 1973). He taught at the University of Chicago (1972-73), Harvard University (1973-1981) and Rice University (1981-1992).

From 1996 to 2000 he was the Director of the MIT STS Program. He has been a Fulbright Lecturer in Brazil (1982), a Council for International Exchange of Scholars Fellow in India (1985), and a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution (1990).

Anne Whiston Spirn

Professor of Landscape Architecture, Departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning

Anne Whiston Spirn's first book, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, won the President's Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1984, has been translated into two other languages, and remains a standard university text. Her new book, The Language of Landscape, sets out a theory of landscape and aesthetics that takes account of both human interpretive frameworks and natural process.

Spirn received her A.B. from Radcliffe College and MLA from the University of Pennsylvania.