Houston, Copenhagen team up to address climate change
At first it was hard to imagine what they had in common: Houston, a city of 2.3 million people who live among hulking refineries and by bayous they fear are polluted. And Copenhagen, home to 600,000 people, a place known for its picturesque, waterside living that aims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral capital by 2025.
But on Monday, people from both cities logged onto Microsoft Teams, at 9:15 a.m. Houston time and 4:15 p.m. Copenhagen time, to talk about shared issues of climate, resilience and infrastructure.
The day of workshops kicked off the start to new agreements between the cities, as well as the city of Houston and the kingdom of Denmark. Officials will collaborate on how to address climate and water-related problems.
The partnership begins several years after the Consulate General of Denmark opened an office here in Williams Tower, with views of the freeways. It highlights Mayor Sylvester Turner’s ongoing effort to change the city’s reputation from a metropolis partly responsible for climate change to a place combating it.
Part of that effort is the city’s Resilient Houston plan, a oneyear-old, evolving document guiding the city toward improved infrastructure, equity and a strengthened economy. The idea behind it is to reduce ongoing “stresses” so residents can better withstand a “shock,” be it a hurricane, the pandemic or a winter storm.
One of the goals of that plan is to form global partnerships to build resilience, the city’s chief resilience officer, Marissa Aho, told the Monday morning group. Aho moved from Los Angeles to Houston to steer the work. On Monday, she presented excerpts from the plan.
“This is why we’re here today,” she said, hopeful the partnership will lead to innovation
and help identify projects to implement.
An entire book has been written on where the two cities diverge (”Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future”).
Turner conceded later in a speech that he had never been to Denmark, which is a roughly 12hour flight from Houston. Echoes of Houston’s least-favorite phrase, “Houston, we have a problem,” emerged that morning in the Teams chat.
“HOUSTON we can’t hear you!!”
But when one gets right down to it, there are overlaps between the cities.
Houstonians dread tropical storms and hurricanes. Danes dread sudden, heavy rainstorms called cloudbursts. A cloudburst in 2011 caused about $1 billion in damage to Copenhagen. Hurricane Harvey damages in 2017 cost an estimated $125 billion.
Both have climate plans. Both face major threats from sea level rise.
And as Turner said, “If this world is to be saved, it will take each and every one of us to do it.”
The Copenhagen folks expressed interest in Houston’s resiliency framework. The Houstonians listened to Lykke Leonardsen, who leads Copenhagen’s resilient and sustainable city solutions program, outline creative projects carried out on her “side of the pond,” as she put it.
Copenhagen, like Houston, faced the challenge of what severity of storm to design for. They also turned to naturebased infrastructure, which Houston is moving toward, offering examples of parking spaces, a traffic roundabout and a deadend street turned to green space that helps manage floodwater.
One of the biggest endeavors was a park designed to flood, with walls on three sides that seal off as the water rises. The aim is to reduce flooding elsewhere.
The meeting was in English but coming together would require a translation of sorts.
Many in the city of Houston’s public works department were “get’er done kind of people,” said Carol Haddock, the agency’s director, and they weren’t always focused on the big picture of how their work related to residents.
But Leonardsen, speaking with a background image of leafy trees, thought shared ideas would apply in both cities.
“There’s a lot of thinking that’s the same way and we do not need everybody to invent the deep plate — or I mean the wheel — in order to get ahead,” Leonardsen said.
She added: “I don’t intend to change the world in Houston, but if I can bring you some inspiration, I think it would be great.”