Follow the coast: East Boston

December 11, 2018By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

In December 2018, I made myself a self-guided driving and walking tour of East Boston. The purpose was to orient myself to one of Metro Boston’s most unique and diverse neighborhoods while wrapping my head around their relationship to the waterfront and familiarizing myself with the sites of some recent projects related to the Climate … Read More

‘Retreat’ ≠ ‘surrender’

November 22, 2018By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

During the 1993 Mississippi River flooding, while watching the national nightly news with my mother, a reporter stuck a microphone into the face of a resident whose family home was quite literally floating away, asking “What will you do now?” The stoic response was something to the effect of “Well, guess we’ll just start over.” … Read More

Colihaut: Making land before making plans?

April 27, 2018By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

“There is already a plan for reconstruction, indelibly stamped in the perception of each resident – the plan of the predisaster city. The new studies, plans, and designs compete with the old.” – Haas, Kates, and Bowden (1977), Reconstruction Following Disaster This post-disaster tension between change and normalcy hangs in the air in some of … Read More

Coulibistrie

April 22, 2018By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

The town of Coulibistrie, Dominica lies partially in a floodplain and after Tropical Storm Erica (2015), and is slated by the government for relocation. #dominica#dominicastrong   

A river runs through each

April 7, 2018By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

Dominica has 365 rivers – one for each day of the year.   Communities ring the coast, with at least one river making its way through each on its way from the steep, mountainous interior to the ocean.   While sea level rise is a real threat to island nations, the effects of riverine flooding … Read More

Attribution vs. contribution, and ‘wild’fire or urban fire?

December 13, 2017By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

Attribution and contribution With ‘wild’fires still raging across southern California, Gov. Jerry Brown warns that megafires may be the new normal. A cursory glance at media coverage over the past few years shows a trend of (thankfully) moving past “does climate change exist?” toward “is climate change to blame for this disaster?” Recent examples include VOX’s … Read More

Housing as Critical Urban Infrastructure in Resilience Planning

October 18, 2016By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized

Representing re:ground llc, I joined the Affordable Housing Institute, Build Change, MIT Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement (SIGUS), and Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities (Latin America) in presenting “Housing as Critical Urban Infrastructure in Resilience Planning”, a conversation about rethinking the critical role that housing might play in cities. More to come soon…     … Read More

Measuring Socioeconomic Vulnerability

January 27, 2016By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized 1 Comment

‘Measuring Socioeconomic Vulnerability: Customized Indicators for Better Public Policies’ an MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) course gave a great overview on how to interpret – and design – better data for understanding populations at risk. In other words… it’s more an art than a science to determine: who is at risk, of … Read More

Resilient Bridgeport

February 28, 2014By davehamptonjr_4d0554Uncategorized 1 Comment

Project: Resilient Bridgeport Date: 2014 Role: Team member, re:ground llc Team: Waggonner Ball Architects / unabridged Architecture / ARCADIS / Yale School of Forestry Management Resilient Bridgeport grew out of  the Rebuild by Design competition initiative, which leveraged HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds towards developing community- and policy- based proposals to protect … Read More