Ideas about retreat and landscape restructuring have been a core concern and area of study the studio grappled with throughout the semester. Beyond the important tensions around self-determination, resilience, and safety, the issue of implementation was also a fundamental concern. Designing an ex-ante localized buyout program aims to proactively mitigate the risks and costs associated with coastal flooding. By strategically acquiring properties in high-risk areas, communities can reduce the potential for loss of life, property damage, and the need for costly post-disaster relief efforts. However, funding mechanisms for these proactive, ex-ante programs are particularly difficult to establish and maintain.
To inform the design of an effective preventive buyout program, we examined existing case studies of buyout programs implemented in various locations across the United States. Our research aims to identify effective land management strategies and success factors that can inform the development of an ex-ante localized buyout program. One crucial consideration is a community's ability to finance preventive resiliency measures, which is directly tied to the strength of its tax base and indirectly to the administrative capabilities that a larger tax base can support. By analyzing key factors such as the number of houses bought, total population affected, total cost, funding sources, post-buyout land ownership and use, departments involved, financial instruments used, innovative funding mechanisms employed, floodplain types, the nature of the programs (voluntary or mandatory), and their spatial distribution, we aim to identify successful land management strategies and critical success factors. This comprehensive analysis will provide valuable insights into the policy, legal, and financial pathways necessary to develop a sustainable and equitable ex-ante localized buyout program.
This process revealed an overwhelming majority of post-disaster buyouts in riverine coastal areas in a wide range of states. We found few preventive and coastal buyouts that can serve as reliable reference points for efforts in New Jersey. Our findings support the idea that better knowledge of buyout policy design and special attention to mechanisms that address the political and economic barriers could help turn the tide and promote much needed policy interventions that prevent damage and suffering in these communities.
In studying the factors that undermine buyout programs as a preventive tool, the issue of economic sustainability of municipalities at risk in the coastal plain stood out as an inescapable problem that needs to be addressed.
This inspired much of our work in considering the communities and infrastructure at risk and thinking of funding mechanisms and policy design that could provide satisfactory solutions to leverage any available economic flows despite the administrative fragmentation.