Rising Tides Roulette

In recent years, communities in Texas and around the world have been experiencing storms that are more intense than in the past. Recovery from these events and reduction in damage from future events create numerous challenges. Finding a fair and appropriate balance is an important challenge for communities, their planners and everyone concerned with living and working in a sustainable place.

For the APA Texas 2023 conference in Corpus Christi, Karen Walz designed a role play exercise to explore these challenges and the ethical dilemmas they create. “Rising Tides Roulette” focuses on a fictional Travis City, a medium-sized community near the mouth of the Trinity River. Years ago, its economy was based on fishing and seafood processing. In the past twenty years, the main economic engine has been outdoor tourism – sport fishing, beach-going, water sports, bird-watching – along with visitors coming to the historic Travis Tavern country-western music venue and dance hall. Travis City was severely impacted by Hurricane Zelda. During the exercise, participants play roles of the stakeholders who would be involved in decision-making after such an event. Each team sought to reach agreement on how to allocate a potential $10 million grant among projects for neighborhood safety, economic incentives, civic services and vitality, and long-term sustainability. After very lively discussions, most (though not all) teams did find common ground on the grant. The exercise debriefing was also lively, with participants and session leaders (Karen Walz and colleagues Matt Bucchin AICP of Halff Associates and Julia Murphy AICP of the City of San Antonio) exploring the effectiveness of outcomes, ethical choices by participants and implications for action on climate change in the ‘real world’.