With the NYC Office of Emergency Management, Gans and Company developed a Participatory Urban Planning (PUP) model and toolkit to help coordinate disaster planning efforts across government agencies, the private sector, not-for-profit organizations, community groups and residents. With additional FEMA funds from the Regional Catastrophic Planning Team, and OEM, Gans and Company then led a series of workshops in the tri-state region to help coastal communities plan short and longer term post-disaster response.

Each workshop brought together representatives from government, the community and private sectors. They began with presentations to equip the participants with a shared working knowledge of their demographics and environment and an inventory of possibilities for rebuilding called the Interim Housing Toolkit. Workshops culminated in a planning exercise to locate interim housing sites in their communities. The results are brought together in a single report that identifies the overlapping challenges and opportunities that make regional, interdisciplinary, cross-sector coordination so important. The full report can be viewed here.

Project Team:

Gans and Company: Deborah Gans, Rosamund Palmer, Cristina Zubillaga, Emma Considine

OEM: Cynthia Barton