Saaddeus Palowski, professor at Columbia University: Local communities should have more say in urban transformation

Edited by: Yang Jun

"Congratulations to Johnston University in Pittsburgh for taking a bold and innovative step forward in bringing a new facility to downtown Johnstown. This will be a game-changer for the local economy, bringing dozens of students and staff to the city center every day!" was a message Thaddeus Pawlowski posted on his social media in October 2023 that received the most likes.

Saaddeus Palowski argues that how the government empowers communities, especially those in vulnerable groups, is a particularly weak link in urban renewal. Pictured is Saaddeus Palowski Courtesy of the interviewee

On December 20, 2023, the reporter of "Daily Economic News" interviewed Sadieus, who is the managing director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University, a research scholar and adjunct associate professor of urban design and urban planning, and has worked in the New York City Office of Emergency Management, the City Planning Bureau, and the Mayor's Office, directly involved in New York's reconstruction work after Hurricane Sandy, and has long been committed to disaster response and urban resilience research. In the interview, he shared his thoughts on urban planning, climate justice and other issues in the past year. Many of these experiences and observations are also applicable to China's urban regeneration.

"It's definitely one of my happiest things of the year! This is my hometown, where my parents worked every day for almost thirty years, and I learned most of what I learned about architecture from my father. I am honored and proud to be able to help make this urban transformation project a reality. Saaddeus told reporters.

If he had to distill an industry keyword of the year, he would choose "Community," "Cities tend to be keen on large-scale infrastructure development, whether in the United States or China, where people think of urban planning as just a government thing." But local communities are so important when it comes to tackling climate change, extreme weather, and urban regeneration because they are the people who truly know, care about, and live here. The government needs to mobilize and empower neighbors, neighborhoods, and communities to do more, and urban construction funds should be more in the hands of communities. I've seen some changes, but it's not enough. ”

Climate justice framework

Climate justice, is a new course Sadeus offered at Columbia last semester.

"As an urban planner and architect, I didn't learn this in school before. "Usually from an urban planning point of view, our ideas are a bit utilitarian, like having us find a way to complete a project. But when we talk about the climate crisis, it's all about historical power asymmetry, the consequences of colonialism, and other forms of exploitation of specific populations and natural resources. In order to resolve the crisis, we really have to think about building restoration, reparations and addressing these historic injustices. So I wanted to have a conversation with my students and give them an idea of how we got here. ”

In Sadieus's class, there are quite a few international students, some from China and some from Indonesia. He asked them to think about the climate crisis and the injustices in urban planning, using their hometowns as examples. Saaddeus also dissected his hometown, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The small city 70 miles east of Pittsburgh is known for its floods, which were devastated by three devastating floods in 1889, 1936 and 1977. Each time, local residents rolled up their sleeves to rebuild their homes and businesses after remembering the deceased. For hundreds of years, the town's main industries were coal mining and steel manufacturing, which only stopped in recent years.

"I'm from the coal mining region of Johnstown. Coal once powered the economy here, but it has also led to decades of economic degradation and environmental harm. Thaddeus said there are a lot of ecological problems, such as pollution and people are very poor. Because once the coal mines are finished and the steel mills are moved, there are not many opportunities for jobs, education, or social development. This went on for a long time.

Thinking about Johnstown's case in the context of climate justice, Thaddeus realized: "Our current economic system is premised on the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, where economic development often comes at the expense of the most vulnerable, and where and where the poorest people are most affected by climate disasters such as droughts, floods, and extreme weather." ”

The frequent flooding that occurred in Johnston was undoubtedly linked to environmental damage. "We're going to see more dam failures because of climate change. To deal with the floods, Johnstown built a very traditional large-scale flood control project that diverted water from the river into concrete channels, which is the standard engineering solution around the world, Saaddeus said. And now, these walls are getting older, people are getting older, and there is more and more rain there. But the funny thing is that the rain is getting heavier and heavier, but the floods are not so much, because the forest is back.

"This gives us a glimpse of the possibility of a new flood control system based on natural systems. In this kind of system, you're actually using the health of forests and rivers to better manage flooding, rather than relying on hard concrete infrastructure, Saaddeus said.

Flag the injustices in the climate crisis, consider compensating for these injustices in new urban planning and design, and try to re-establish ecological and economic positive cycles in these vulnerable communities. This is what Saaddeus believes is an important professional responsibility for modern urban planners – there are indeed the most efficient ways to do things, but often to the detriment.

How should the funds for urban construction and renovation be used?

The other side of the question is how to repair and compensate for historical injustices in urban renewal.

"It's heartening that the federal government is more proactive than ever in building community resilience, as seen in extreme weather events such as the 2023 Hawaiian wildfires, summer heat, and hurricanes in Tennessee. There's no doubt that the U.S. is much better at responding to disasters than Hurricane Sandy in New York did a decade ago, Saaddeus said, "but the U.S. isn't doing enough to help communities cope with extreme weather events compared to the severe climate change we're facing now." ”

How governments empower communities, especially those in vulnerable groups, is a particularly vulnerable link.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has allowed a significant amount of adaptation finance to flow into communities. One of them, called "Justice," states that 40 percent of the money should go to historically disadvantaged communities, "an important principle that guarantees that at least one public priority is to help those who are most vulnerable." Saaddeus said.

But who has the power to decide how the money is spent, and who uses the money, will directly determine how well federal money is spent. Thaddeus stressed that local communities should have a greater say in urban regeneration. In other words, the funds for urban construction and renovation should be more in the hands of local communities and organizations.

Johnstown's just-announced urban renewal case is a good start for Thaddeus to see. A $1.5 million grant to Pittsburgh Gateways from the Appalachian Regional Council's POWER program will be used to support the construction of the "Pitt Johnstown Factory of the Future" in downtown, an aging building that will be transformed into an advanced manufacturing, engineering, and automation hub that will provide more space for Xi, vocational training, and entrepreneurship groups, contribute to local workforce development, foster entrepreneurship and innovation, and accelerate the ongoing transformation of the regional economy.

Appalachian Regional Council, an economic development partnership entity between the federal government and 13 state governments, focused on helping 423 counties in the Appalachian region, will allocate $54 million to support transformation projects in 64 of the 217 coal-affected counties. Pittsburgh Gateways, Inc., a greater Pittsburgh-area nonprofit economic development group that assists communities with planning, management, research, and other efforts to help cope with community deterioration.

"Putting more infrastructure funding in the hands of local people, which is something I'm just starting to see, is definitely a big and important change. "The interstate highway system is important and gets more media attention, but what we really need is a lot of small projects that are tailored to the needs of the local community and led by the local community." ”

The private sector should take more responsibility

Just recently, Montauk, Long Island, New York, where Thaddeus now lives, had just experienced a terrible coastal storm that caused massive soil erosion but did not cause much damage.

"The climate change is so drastic that we often have rainfall events like this, flooding the subway, flooding people's basements, and it's become a new normal. "So we need a lot of investment in urban regeneration, can that investment keep up with our needs? I think we need to do more, especially the private sector, the big institutions and landowners need to take more responsibility." The government can mobilize some of these forces, or pass legislation to force them to do so. ”

For example, in the case of the Johnstown renovation, in addition to receiving federal government grants, the project received a $1 million donation from JWF Industries, a local steel company in Johnstown, as well as financial support from Vision Together 2025, the Allegheny Community Foundation, the 1889 Foundation, and the Richard King Mellon Foundation, among others.

These fundraisings from the local community reinforce the localized nature of the city's infrastructure.

"People always think that infrastructure is something that belongs to the government or some company, but I think infrastructure needs to be in the hands of the local people now. What we need most is grassroots leadership, and we need to make sure that funding is available to local leaders — the grandmothers who have lived in the community for most of their lives, the high school students who were born and raised in the community, who care about the community, who know and participate in the community, who give their energy on the streets. They are neighbors in small towns, neighborhood residents in big cities, and they are in desperate need of resources and capabilities, and they will do their best for their communities.

Thaddeus believes that local communities have a particularly important role to play in tackling climate change. In a metropolis like New York or Shanghai, much of the infrastructure was built to adapt to the climate many years ago. For example, all buildings run on fossil fuels and are now facing frequent power outages, and cities are paved with a paved surface that cannot absorb water, and old waterways no longer exist, causing frequent waterlogging. Local communities should upgrade their energy consumption structure and restore vegetation to increase water sequestration. "And in terms of information networking, how can we make sure that people have the right information or the right plan, that we can respond appropriately when a disaster strikes, that there are ways to help people rebuild and recover from a disaster as quickly as possible, and that there is so much that local communities can do. ”

Thaddeus is pleased to see that in his hometown of Johnstown, local communities are organizing to make the most of the resources of the federal government and local agencies to build a new economy based on natural beauty, actively cleaning up rivers and replanting trees. Nature is coming back to life, people want to go hiking and rafting, former steelworkers are being re-educated, and arts, cutting-edge technology and creative industries are sprouting.

"Help the once rust belt bottom out and turn it into the factory of the future. It's the best thing an urban planning architect can do. Saaddeus said.

National Business Daily