a case of resilience: Greensburg Kansas

But Greensburg’s accomplishments run deeper; the community has found a formula for rebuilding not just physical and economic infrastructure, but also vital social infrastructure that often gets forgotten. One source for their success can be found in traditional prairie self-reliance. But there is a large measure of listening to and appreciating the stories within the community. The story continues, as Greensburg has since mentored other US towns hit by natural disasters.

 

Greensburg lies 200 miles south of the geographic center of the US in flat prairie country where only a few scattered trees and farm buildings punctuate the horizon. The town grew around a deep well dug in the 1880s to supply water for trains running on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line. Because of the railroad, the town remained prosperous through the 1950s, but post-war demographics slowly turned prosperity into decline. All of western Kansas is in Tornado Alley, and Greensburg sits right in the middle of it. In May of 2007 a category 5 tornado swept away 95% of the town. Lives were lost and many were injured. The population, which had hovered around 1500 since the early nineties, dropped overnight to 700, those remaining were homeless and hopeless.

 

This changed with impressive speed. Starting the week after the storm and continuing through the summer, local citizens, civil groups, business owners and authorities from local, state and federal levels worked together to jumpstart not just the rebuilding of the devastated town, but to create progress and success where before the storm there had been stagnation and resignation. In tents and shelters, town residents, business owners, workers and officials spoke about what they had lost and told stories about values, respect for the land and pioneering self-determination. They concluded that a plan based on sustainability was the only way forward. Early doubters resisted some 1960s vocabulary, but it became clear that a vision of a sustainable community was universal, not simply political. Daniel Wallach, a nearby resident and co-founder of a food cooperative in Greensburg was instrumental in helping the town set up a non-profit organization - Greensburg Greentown - through which to channel resources and support.[1] The Greensburg Long-term Community Recovery Plan, completed already in August 2007, included recommendations for further concrete actions. Two key organizations were brought in to foster the planning process, the Kansas City based architecture firm BNIM with expertise in sustainability and NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

 

The results provide a better than textbook example of how a well informed grassroots initiative and well coordinated top-down support can achieve resilience and long-term success: progress without hubris, inclusiveness balanced by traditional heritage, awareness of the needs of future generations, conservation of all resources (energy, water and land) while developing economic activities, a durable energy-efficient infrastructure. All this managed with sensible Midwestern caution.

 

The resulting Greensburg Sustainable Comprehensive Plan, issued in 2008, records the process, embodies the values and lays out the strategies that have been followed, with the result that Greensburg today, less than ten years after the disaster, is a thriving and progressive, tightly knit community known not only for its 100% renewable energy goals, LEED certified public and civic buildings, but also for its walkable downtown, green wildlife corridors and a renewed sense of purpose and future. The rebuilding of Greensburg is seen by all stakeholders as a strategic investment, not just a replacement of what was lost, but an endowment for the next 20 years and beyond.

 

What struck me as I read through the Comprehensive Plan was how many aspects run parallel to programs such as the Swiss Energiestadt initiative started in 1988 (since expanded into the European Energy Awards) to support municipalities seeking to build community-wide sustainability. To give a few examples, both programs call on local authorities to act as energy-use role models, both provide pragmatic support for energy efficiency in residential and commercial buildings, and both require cross-sector roundtable discussions on infrastructure planning and environmental issues. There is, however, one big difference.
The initial impetus for Energiestadt was a top-down, joint venture between the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Association of Swiss Communes. In the Energiestadt process, the first step required from participating communities is the development of a vision statement. The logic being that when communities take ownership of their goals and see local government not as enforcers but rather as implementers of a shared vision, discussions within the community expand and improve. In Greensburg, it was the community itself that started the vision process, from the bottom up; their shared identity grew from their own stories.

 

I have come across many projects that highlight the process of hashing out differences to reach consensus. As David Bolliger discusses in his book Think Like a Commoner,[2] the process of working through differences brings people closer together because they understand what they share. In the introduction to the Greensburg Sustainable Comprehensive Plan, the authors express exactly this:

 

“The process of planning and the coming together to envision a common goal is often more important than

 

the planning document itself.”[3]

 

Whether a common vision for a community stems from a tragedy that forces all sides to work together, from a group who happen to live in the same neighborhood or from planners smart enough to include all voices in a development project probably doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a community knows, that when there are stories to tell, they will be heard

 

 

[1] Patrick Quinn, in USA Today Green Living, April 25, 2013

 

[2] David Bollier in Think Like a Commoner - A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons, 2014, especially chapter 6

 

[3] Greensburg Sustainable Comprehensive Plan, page 5, Greensburg Planning Commission, BNIM Architects, 2008