DALLAS — Eleven U.S. cities are among the first 33 of 100 cities in the world picked by the Rockefeller Foundation to receive financial assistance to develop more-resilient infrastructure that can resist catastrophic events and recover speedily when disaster strikes.
The foundation said it will work with the selected cities to obtain private financing for projects to restore and strengthen infrastructure against rising sea levels and other disasters.
"Building resilience is about making people, communities, and systems better prepared to withstand catastrophic events, both natural and manmade, and able to bounce back more quickly and emerge stronger from these shocks and stresses," a foundation spokesman said.
American cities on the initial list include New York, New Orleans, El Paso, Tex., Jacksonville, Fla., Boulder, Colo., Norfolk, Va., and the California cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda.
The cities will receive grants from the Rockefeller Foundation to create or expand the position of chief resilience officer within the governments. They will also have access through the foundation to innovative infrastructure technologies.
The Rockefeller Foundation will also fund the cities' participation in collaborative regional resilient design studios to train local architects in the design of public and private infrastructure that can better resist future disasters.
Foundation president Judith Rodin said local governments do not have the financial capacity to do all that needs to be done to harden existing public infrastructure.
"While government must take the lead, it will not be able to pay the bill on its own," she said.
"The private sector has both a role to play and an interest do so," Rodin said. "The continuation of businesses and markets depends on it."
Rodin urged New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio to create a dedicated infrastructure bank that could coordinate resilient infrastructure development and investment across the city. The current project-by-project, agency-specific decision system is inefficient, she said.
"The spirit of public-private partnership will be vital," Rodin said.
Cities can generate private investments in more-resilient public infrastructure with integrated project design that is more attractive to investors, she said.
"For example, projects to upgrade a city's storm water infrastructure could be done in conjunction with improving broadband and energy infrastructure at the same time," Rodin said.
Seven of the 11 cities, including several on both coasts, cited rising sea levels as one of the biggest challenges they face, Rodin said.
The bridge and tunnel division of New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority has spent a lot of time and effort to recover from Hurricane Sandy and prepare for the next storm, said writer Graham Beck. But as sea levels rise, Beck said, so will the MTA's repair bills.
"The MTA estimates that it will have to spend $4.76 billion just to bring the system and equipment back to pre-storm conditions," Beck said. "To update facilities and infrastructure system wide will cost significantly more."
The Rockefeller Foundation's $100 million resiliency competition drew 400 applications from cities on six continents. International cities in the first 33 include Bangkok, Rotterdam, and Rome.
The other 67 of the 100 cities in the program will be selected over the next two years.
