As Hurricane Ian moved towards Florida, Amy Wicks was trying to figure out what she hadn't thought of. She took note of the restored wetlands, and hoped that no alligators had taken up residence in the drain pipes.
After returning to her own home, she hunkered down with her husband and three children and listened as freight train winds moved over Babcock Ranch, a 4-year-old planned community. She hoped that the unique storm water system she had designed and monitored over the past decade would be up for the job.
The civil engineer had a theory. It wasn't a case study.
The storm dumped more than a foot of rain on this swath of old Florida cattle ranches and new cul-de-sacs.
It was obvious that something extraordinary had happened in Babcock Ranch. In the face of a Category 4 Hurricane, the town proved to be remarkably resilient.
It did not flood due to the years of planning and design that mimicked natural systems. Thanks to its 700,000-panel solar grid and battery backup system, it did not lose power. Babcock Ranch did not go under a boil-water alert because it owned and operated its own water plant.
This resilience was also important for other people.
A small but growing effort to build more resilient communities in Florida is an attempt to shift a yearslong pattern of rapid development that many here say contributes to water shortages and other environmental risks. There are practical reasons to build with greater attention to the environment, climate change, and water management in one of the country's fastest growing states.
As a resource economist with the University of Florida, I was happy to see that they came through Hurricane Ian in good shape. The challenge has a lot of proof of concept and trying to sell it.
Building has followed a pattern in Florida for a long time. With a constant flow of new buyers, developers have tried to acquire as much land as possible, and as quickly as possible. It often means buying up faded ranches or long-ignored swaths of swamps and forest, which must be flattened and cleared to make way for housing developments and roads and shopping centers.
To meet building codes that require homes to be graded above street level, developers will typically bulldoze the landscape, dig storm ponds, and then use the fill from those holes to prep building sites.
In the past, developers replanted the landscape with the types of plants that outsiders think of when they think of Florida. The problem is that these plants aren't native to the state so they need a lot of inputs to stay healthy They can't thrive in soil without organic material.
He says that the developers need to mass grade a site. Bring in fill and raze it. That makes soils hard to work with.
The man-made drainage system is the only way to capture water since the natural water collection systems have been eliminated. Climate change can cause this to be a problem in certain storms.
Ms. Kipp says that all of this creates a system without resilience.
She said that the landscapes were on life support.
The center of the state is the most obvious example of this. According to the U.S. Census, the counties around Orlando are some of the fastest growing in the country.
More extreme water shortages have been caused by that. Unless demand and usage patterns change, the region will face a 235 million gallon a day shortfall in the next two decades.
The executives at the development company decided to approach the project differently because of this reason.
The lead on the Sunbridge project, a community that will eventually have some 36,000 homes, says that Florida is at a pivotal point when it comes to development. Development has to be looked at differently.
The University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and other groups collaborated with Mr. Beaty and others to plan Sunbridge, which is two-thirds the size of Washington, D.C. They came up with a plan to use native landscaping, even though they didn't like the popular St. Some of the old live oaks are being saved and relocated. The new homes will have solar panels and electric vehicle plug-ins, as well as a battery backup system.
Scientists have built a living laboratory at the community center where they are testing the viability of different species of native plants as well as different kinds of compost amendments to soil and the impact on pollinator species. Mr. Beaty is trying to find a way to arrange for large scale composting and food waste recycling.
The change from what usually happens in Florida developments is marked by this.
She acknowledges that perhaps the best thing for the environment would be to never build on those 27,000 acres, to never remove the trees or disturb the soil. She and others involved in sustainable building initiatives here believe that development in Florida is going to happen. She and others hope that the new willingness of developers to balance their work with ecological efforts will be popular with new residents.
She says that they succeeded in persuading a large scale developer to adopt different practices. A lot of new home buyers would pay more for a home and community that is more connected to nature. It is quieter and you don't have to mow it.
There could be more consumer demand and more of a change when these communities are more resilient.
This is what happened in the ranch.
According to executives there, interest in the community's real estate has skyrocketed, with sales this October 49% higher than in October of last year.
The way the Babcock Ranch infrastructure survived the storm is one of the reasons why some of this is. She thinks it's because of what the community did after Ian.
Ms. Hall was watching the community's Facebook groups while she was out of town. People who lived close to the coast were offered shelter in the lead up to the storm. When someone posted about a 92-year-old friend on Sanibel Island who needed a place to stay, Ms. Hall offered up her own home.
The first emotion was relief when the rain stopped.
Steve Stroup, who moved to Babcock Ranch from Southern California with his wife and daughter, says that he didn't lose internet or power because of a cat roll through. Nothing happened. You cross the street.
He is shaking his head
The entire Babcock Ranch was a disaster. Staff and students who lived outside of the community lost their homes. Shannon Treece, the school's executive director, was able to mobilize parents and other instructors to help. The state turned the field house into an emergency shelter after residents came to bring bedding and food. The leader of The Community Church in Babcock Ranch, a mission of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, helped organize and transport donations to neighborhoods that were still covered with debris weeks after the storm.
Ms Treece said that her heart broke for the people who had damage.
One aspect of Babcock Ranch's resilience is that it can't be separated from the environmental mission.
One of the first things the developer did after purchasing the Babcock family ranch was to sell 73,000 of it to the state. He wanted to show that development, community care, and economic viability could work together. In the next 10 years, the team worked to restore wetlands, create a new water drainage system, and put in place community facilities that would create a sense of connection.
Other communities want to know how to become resilient. Ms. Hall said so. You just have to start.
There are a lot of related stories.
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