Mont Clare, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, was just one Schuylkill River town flooded by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in 2021. Photo by Michael Stokes via Flickr.
A recent article by Kyle Bagenstose in Grid magazine discusses the floodplain management challenges in the Philadelphia region. The article features MACH Community Partner representative and Collaborative Stakeholder Advisory Panel member, Abby Sullivan, Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Philadelphia. Abby notes that flood mitigation efforts require coordinated policy efforts because what happens upstream impacts downstream (the City of Philadelphia is located along the downstream and tidally influenced portion of the Delaware River). While coordinated policy efforts are lacking, the article highlights the abilities of organizations like MACH that are developing better practices for future floodplain management. MACH’s commitment to transdisciplinary research centered around the needs of community partners is training the next generation of scientists in conducting community-centered research and producing transformational research that can have a lasting impact. Clint Andrews, a MACH senior researcher and professor of urban planning at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy at Rutgers, is quoted in the article discussing the positive changes the work MACH is doing can bring about, “You get all these scientists and engineers to think about reforming professional practices… the knowledge base that the planners and municipal engineers and the accounts use…that’s how you get change institutionalized. It’s not just by trying to lobby government, or persuading individual households.”