1046265
research-article2021

CTYXXX10.1177/15356841211046265City & CommunityHaney

Original Article

Development, Responsibility,
and the Creation of Urban
Hazard Risk

City & Community
00(0) 1­–21
© American Sociological Association 2021
DOI: 10.1177/15356841211046265
https://doi.org/10.1177/15356841211046265
journals.sagepub.com/home/cty

Timothy J. Haney1

Abstract
Scholarly attention has recently shifted to the creation and redevelopment of urban hazardscapes. This
body of work demonstrates how housing is deployed in close proximity to hazards, and how the attendant
risks have been communicated—or not—to potential residents. Utilizing the case of Calgary, Alberta,
this article uses interview data collected from flood-impacted residents, and looks at their perceptions of
development and risk creation. The analyses focus on how people attribute responsibility for development
in flood-prone areas, and their views on future development in these areas. Results reveal that many
residents argued for more government regulations preventing new development in floodplains. Moreover,
they viewed developers as narrow-interested capitalists who fail to protect public safety and work to
conceal risk from the public. Others wished to see large structural mitigation projects—dams, levees,
or floodwalls—or insisted that homebuyers be informed of flood risk prior to purchase. The article
concludes by addressing the implications for scholarly work in urban sociology, environmental sociology,
and the sociology of disaster—all of which grapple with tensions between place-making and risk creation.

Keywords
disaster, risk, development, hazards, place

Introduction
The new neighborhood of Riverstone, in Calgary, Alberta boasts on its website that the
community is “surrounded by 360 acres of
environmental reserve” with “lots backing
onto greenspace and Fish Creek Park” (Calbridge Homes 2019). Brookfield Residential,
the real estate firm charged with selling the
Riverstone properties, tells buyers it is a
“community on the edge of the Bow River
that features a beautiful natural escape, thoroughly designed streetscapes and stunning
views, all within city limits.” Thanks to
twenty-first-century flood mitigation, “your
family can safely enjoy all the advantages of
living beside the beautiful Bow River yearround, without concerns” (Brookfield Residential 2019), though this statement about

concerns was subsequently removed. Bucolic
as it sounds, Calgary’s regulatory flood maps
reveal that Riverstone was built almost
entirely within the city’s Flood Fringe, designated by engineers and hydrologists as a
high-risk flood area.
The case of Riverstone illustrates a pattern across North American cities. Rivers
and streams provide opportunities for outdoor
1

Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB, Canada

Corresponding Author:
Timothy J. Haney, Professor of Sociology, Board of
Governors Research Chair in Resilience & Sustainability,
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Mount Royal
University, 4825 Mount Royal Gate S.W., Calgary, AB
T3E 6K6, Canada.
Email: thaney@mtroyal.ca

2
recreation and picturesque living. But they
also carry the risk of flooding, as Calgary
saw in 2013 when the Bow and Elbow rivers
overtopped their banks, forcing the evacuation
of more than 75,000 people, and causing more
than $6 billion in damages. Yet following this
destruction, Calgary has continued developing
in flood-prone areas, owing largely to developers’ political and economic clout. Similar
developments have been built across Canada,
the United States, and the United Kingdom
(Bruemmer 2019; Mazur 2019; Melnychuk
2019; Rowlatt 2019). Research often focuses
on the tactics of a city’s “growth machine,” a
body of work that too often overlooks resident
voices, risk framings, and concerns. As such,
nearly absent from discussions of the pros
and cons of developing in floodplains are the
views and concerns of residents themselves—
who engage in a particular politics of homeownership and placemaking, while at the
same time working to safeguard their place
attachment and property values (McCabe
2016). More broadly, although there are some
iconic case-studies of environmental injustices that affect marginalized communities,
residents of urban hazardscapes are less commonly asked about how they view the ongoing production of risk.
To add this missing piece, this article
applies a theoretical framework drawn from
the political economy of place-making, urban
development, and risk, to answer several
questions: How do residents living in floodprone areas attribute responsibility for creation of risk and protection from flooding?
How do residents view developers and the
municipal government? Does experiencing a
disaster prompt flood-prone residents to ask
for more regulation of the development and
home-building industry? Do residents favor
requirements that real estate agents and/or
developers disclose a home’s location in a
flood-prone area to potential buyers? Finally,
to what extent do they prefer structural mitigation efforts?
Using interviews from 40 residents living near Calgary’s two rivers, this article
begins a conversation about flood risk and

City & Community 00(0)
responsibility. As nearly unabated development of flood-prone areas continues, this
analysis reveals how residents understand
these new forms of risk. It explores how residents in a city with a powerful local growth
elite and continuing development near hazards view land use regulations in the wake
of a catastrophic flood that threatened their
livelihoods and property values.
As the analysis reveals, participants voiced
many views about who should shoulder
responsibility for halting the creation of new
flood risks, and what approach is best. Many
placed the onus on government, either to
limit development near rivers or to mandate
that homebuyers be informed of risk. They
expressed openness to regulations, particularly when flood risk threatened home values.
Others preferred an individualistic “buyer
beware” approach or asked for enhanced
structural mitigation efforts—dams, levees,
or floodwalls. These different approaches, as
we shall see, signal a lack of consensus about
responsibility and about best-practices for
flood risk mitigation.

Literature Review
Early twentieth-century urban sociologists
examined how parcels of land changed as
they were bought, sold, developed, or abandoned. The Chicago School of urban sociology also demonstrated how particular ethnic
and socioeconomic groups moved into and
out of a space over time (see Hartmann 1993;
Schwirian 1983 for reviews). It advanced a
human ecological model of the city outlining
how the provision of housing and urban amenities map onto changing neighborhood and
local demographics (Park 1952). Most importantly, it demonstrated that social relations do
not occur aspatially nor on the head of a pin,
but are emplaced in both space and time
(Abbott 1997).
Later in the century, urban political economists added a layer of complexity, demonstrating land-use decisions as products of
competition for resources, profit motive, and
negotiation of different parties (Harvey 1985;

Haney
Katznelson 1982). This approach outlined
how urban elites transform space to serve
their interests. Only recently have we studied
how these processes of migration and development also create an urban landscape of risk.
Due to cities’ capital-intensive infrastructure,
population concentration, and ubiquitous hazards (Fu 2016) residents must be protected
from risks amid capitalist expansion. The following section analyzes these complex interactions by exploring the role of development
as a driver of urban risk creation.

The Political Economy of Urban
Placemaking
Recent work highlights how urbanization
operates as a dialectic process of systemic
risk production and obfuscation. Development in risky areas is carried out by a local
network of builders, developers, investors,
real estate interests, and other incentivized
parties. Typically, the state initiates the process of landscape transformation but then
turns the process over to members of this
growth coalition (Rudel 2009). With the
blessing of the state, parties actively push
growth into hazardous urban spaces, including along waterways (Nicholls and Crompton
2017), in low-lying coastal areas (Brody,
Kim, and Gunn 2013), on fault lines
(Ramseyer 2012), and near landfills (Gaffney
2018). The potential costs associated with
developing in risky places are now included
in developers’ calculations (Fu 2016). The
network of pro-growth interests “captures”
local political officials and works to undercut
existing environmental protections (Clement
and Elliott 2012). Municipal governments are
particularly vulnerable to being “captured”
because the responsibility for regional development has largely devolved from the federal
to the municipal level, making these dynamics more susceptible to advocacy from progrowth actors (Rudel 2009).
Despite the attractive logic of limiting
development in flood-prone areas, many
scholars note the barriers for doing so. One

3
key problem is the “extent to which local
government is pressured by economic development needs, land scarcity, or both, to allow
development in, or very near, the 100-year
floodplain” (Birkland et al. 2003). In Calgary,
recordings from 2013 reveal a discussion
among developers about how to wield power
over city council, with one builder bragging about fundraising for candidates who
support development (Vaessen and Elliott
2013; Walton 2013). Exacerbating this pressure, homeowners often understand property rights as absolute, resisting municipal
decisions to limit or regulate development.
In turn, local governments “may shy away
from adopting stringent land use codes for
fear of future legal objections and a potential
backlash from voters” (Brody, Highfield, and
Kang 2011:84; see also Tarlock and Albrecht
2018).
When implemented, land use regulations
limiting or prohibiting development have
been successful in slowing residential development near hazards (Jackson 2016), while
at the same time, risk-sensitive planning has
proven cost-effective for governments (Sudmeier-Rieux et al. 2015). However, conservative communities often oppose all regulations,
fearing overreach by “big government” even
when those regulations may benefit them, or
when they already benefit substantially from
existing government programs (Hochschild
2016). This objection to government regulation often occurs because residents see risk
as the inevitable (Lupton and Tulloch 2002)
tradeoff for economic growth.
The classic essay “The City as a Growth
Machine” (Molotch 1976; revised as Logan
and Molotch 1987) explains how a city’s
“growth elite” (including builders and developers as central players) clamors for continued growth, despite the environmental costs.
Those in the position to benefit from growth
“encourage growth . . . for its own sake”
(Logan and Molotch 1987) through “incessant
lobbying, manipulating, and cajoling” (p. 52).
In a recent iteration of this logic, with an eye
on hazard creation, Tierney (2014) argues:

4

City & Community 00(0)
Pro-growth actors . . . prefer to operate in
environments in which they are not constrained by land use plans, zoning and code
requirements, and environmental regulations.
They generally oppose regulations and
requirements that would add to the cost of
building and infrastructure construction and
maintenance . . . and they seek to comply
only minimally with existing mandates. Second, growth machine coalitions deemphasize
the risks associated with places and spaces,
focusing instead on the amenities provided
by these locations. (127–28)

Developers have few incentives to focus on
risks, as those who profit from development
activities in risky locations in the short term
do not bear the ultimate costs; individual
property owners, communities, insurance
providers, and taxpayers bear those costs
(p. 128). This is true in Calgary, where home
builders shoulder financial liability for one
year after completion, part of a mandated
warranty on new homes (Province of Alberta
2013). After one year, financial risk is transferred to the homeowner. In most North
American cities, developers “will be protected from liability by legal walls that are
much closer to being watertight than are the
levees” (Freudenburg et al. 2008:1023). This
is of particular concern given that until 2015,
Cnadians could not purchase flood insurance;
only now are a small number of people beginning to carry coverage (Henstra et al. 2019;
Thistlethwaite 2017; Thistlethwaite et al.
2017). In this context, developers quickly
transfer risk off their ledgers and onto
homebuyers.

Resident Views of Risky Development
Given the ubiquity of residential development
in North American cities, and the increase of
new developments in flood-prone areas, we
might expect a robust literature on resident
attitudes toward floodplain development.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Most literature on resident views explores development
of tourism infrastructure (Long and Kayat

2011; McNicol 2004), transit (Noland et al.
2017), and sports facilities (Bob and Swart
2009; Scherer 2016), but not housing. New
and emergent work in urban sociology looks
at how relic industrial sites breed hazards that
become obfuscated as land uses change over
time (Elliott and Frickel 2015; Frickel and
Elliott 2018). Little work has examined how
residents perceive the ongoing creation of new
risks, particularly the construction of housing
near natural hazards. Although scholars pay
much attention to expert understandings of
risk, they pay significantly less to layperson
understandings of risk, often cast as uninformed (Rothstein 2003) or overly emotional
(Lupton 2013). There are, however, a few
notable exceptions.
To begin, extant literature provides some
perspective on how residents view developers. This small body of work reveals that
residents support development, but hold
negative appraisals of developers (Monkkonen and Manville 2019), as they resent the
tremendous profits that developers stand to
make. Work by Morris-Oswald and Sinclair
(2005) echo this sentiment, demonstrating
how residents value cooperation but feel that
riverine management has largely excluded
them from the conversation, as it favors
technocratic, rather than democratic,
approaches (Glenna 2010). Furthermore,
while some publics distrust government
and risk-regulation experts uncritically, others reject expert knowledge more critically
(Poortinga and Pidgeon 2003).
To challenge ongoing risky development
practices, residents must have scientifically
accurate understandings of flood risk. One
obstacle to this understanding, however, is
that flood maps and hydrological assessments
are often out of date (Stevens and Hanschka
2014) and that the metric used (i.e., the 1-in100 year flood zone) inadequately captures
real levels of risk (Highfield, Norman, and
Brody 2013). Nor do maps account for the
ever-changing landscape of risk, particularly
in coastal regions heavily affected by climate
change (Whitney and Ban 2019). In the case
of riverine flooding, peak flows vary and

Haney
are irregularly calculated (Jakob and Church
2011), leaving scientists with only a vague
approximation of risk. Even when scientists
hold an accurate understanding of risk, the
way they communicate (couched in scientific
language) often fails to answer residents’
most fundamental question: “am I safe?”
(Frickel and Vincent 2007). This results in
a verifiable gap in awareness of flood risks
between experts and the public (Chowdhury
and Haque 2011).
Attention has shifted recently to “room
for the river” approaches that either restrict
development in floodplains (Bogdan, Beckie,
and Caine 2021; de Groot and de Groot 2009)
or offer buy-outs for residents to move from
risky areas (Koslov 2016; Zavar 2015). Do
residents prefer these approaches? Although
research into resident views is scarce and
the literature is fairly split, it teaches us a
few lessons. Dutch residents, despite holding
eco-centric ideals, resist the notion that areas
immediately adjacent to rivers should be left
undeveloped to allow “room for the river”
(de Groot and de Groot 2009). In contrast,
residents generally have positive views of
buyout programs in flood-prone areas, and
see the resultant green space as a desirable
environmental amenity (Zavar 2015). Related
research demonstrates that these “gain
frames” (i.e., amenities) are more effective
for encouraging risk mitigative behavior than
“loss frames” (i.e., fear of flooding) (Spence
and Pidgeon 2010). The literature examining
public views of development and land-use
decisions is also rooted in discussion of space
and place-attachment. Both security gained
through structural mitigation, and amenities
such as green spaces, are key elements for
placemaking and strong place-based social
capital (Coaffee 2013; Mattijssen et al. 2017;
Wu and Hou 2020).
In Canada, the least resistance to floodplain
regulation comes from residents most aware
of their own residential flood risk (Kreutzwiser, Woodley, and Shrubsole 1994). Residents feel more committed to places where
they feel protected from hazards and have
access to green space and amenities, both of

5
which can be augmented through “room for
the river” approaches. Yet, Larson and Santelmann (2007) find that resident preferences
for environmental preservation are directly
related to proximity to water. This attitude
probably relates to perceived risk, as previous research has found that proximity to
hydrological hazards is related to flood risk
perception (Gray-Scholz, Haney, and MacQuarrie 2019).
Efforts to resist development perhaps best
demonstrate this resident opposition (Gotham
2011; Lees and Ferreri 2016; Scherer 2016).
But how efficacious is public participation for
resisting the imposition of risks? Adua and
Lobao (2021) show that the involvement of
citizen groups and nongovernmental organizations in local governance is statistically unrelated to the adoption of controls on growth
(wetland protections, urban growth boundaries, etc.). Even the influence of business is
surprisingly circumscribed, but it nevertheless dwarfs the effectiveness of public participation on land use decision-making, often
because developers purchase the consent of
the community through donations and sponsorships (Garboden and Jang-Trettien 2020).
Other research indicates that municipal
governments, though closely aligned with
development interests, are responsive to
grassroots citizen engagement. Municipalities
are more likely to grant building permits in
hazard-prone places, and do so more quickly,
where there is local political participation (Go
2014). Combined with public unpopularity,
land-use regulations also predict decreased
rates of growth in and around a municipality
(Jackson 2016). Owing to these dynamics,
planners in Calgary struggle to curb developers’ ambitions who “set the agenda in Calgary,” as in many cities (Grant 2009:20). In
this “hegemonic growth regime,” “the most
active group (in most cases the Chamber
of Commerce and/or real estate developers)
favors growth, and all other active groups—
including neighborhood associations—are
pro-growth or neutral,” meaning there are
few voices opposing unabated growth (Logan
and Crowder 2002).

6
All of this begs the question: If both the
“growth elite” and residents oppose restrictions on development, what approaches to risk
mitigation do residents prefer? In conservative
neoliberal cities like Calgary, we might expect
residents to favor “personal responsibility”
over government regulation. As Henstra et al.
(2019) find, residents are willing to accept
some responsibility for flood risk mitigation,
but the small share of responsibility they take
is insufficient to influence their decisions, such
as by adopting property-level flood-mitigation
practices (sump-pumps, back-flow preventers, etc.) that have been found to effectively
attenuate aggregate flood losses (Kreibich and
Thieken 2009).
The widely preferred approach today is
structural mitigation—the building of berms,
levees, dikes, pumps, and floodwalls—to
protect people and property. This approach
reflects “the idea that people can use technology to control nature to make themselves
safe” (Mileti 1999:2). Although structural
mitigation can decrease flood damage in
the aggregate, other methods have proven
more effective (Brody, Zahran, Maghelal,
Grover, and Highfield 2007). The growth
lobby favors these increasingly sophisticated
structural mitigation techniques (Alexander
2000:25; Lara et al. 2017; Vari, LinneroothBayer, and Ferencz 2003), and the public
frequently prefers these mega-infrastructure
projects because of the psychological assurance and the political payoff they provide
(Bogdan et al. 2020).
Despite bureaucrats and developers preferring this approach, residents sometimes prefer
property-level, non-structural risk mitigation
methods (Rasid and Haider 2002). Furthermore, residents tend to like engineered infrastructure for risk mitigation (Gray, O’Neill,
and Qiu 2017), suggesting again that limitations on residential development may not be
preferred. There are also temporal complexities with structural mitigation; although the
costs are borne in the present, the benefits
accrue only over the long-term, therefore
seeming uncertain (Henstra 2012) and conferring a “present bias” against planning for

City & Community 00(0)
possible future events (White and Haughton
2017).
There is also evidence that residents want
a “buyer beware” approach to risk mitigation,
but coupled with widely disseminated information about risks. Shrubsole and Scherer
(1996) find widespread agreement by Canadian real estate agents and floodplain residents that potential buyers should be informed
of a home’s flood risk. This agreement results
largely from the shared knowledge that floodplain location does not negatively impact
property values in a context where residents
expect government to protect their property
values (Becher 2015).
Perhaps the most compelling time to look
at land-use decisions and development comes
soon after disaster. While we might expect
flood disasters to curtail future development
plans, Elliott and colleagues demonstrate
how disasters encourage more intense landuse development and demographic growth
(Elliott and Clement 2017; Elliott and Pais
2010; Pais and Elliott 2008; Schultz and Elliott 2013). As this development unfolds, discussions of the priorities of the various parties
involved in hazard creation and mitigation
(developers, builders, municipal governments,
residents) become all the more salient, and a
dynamic movement exists between conflict
and cooperation (Becher 2010). The dynamic
tensions, the power of developers, and a public at least partially unsure about best practices
for decreasing flood risk converge to make
hazard-affected residents an unlikely source
of resistance.
There are several looming unanswered
questions: How do residents in a city with
a powerful local growth elite and continuing
development near hazards view land use regulations in the wake of a catastrophic flood
that threatened their livelihoods and property
values? Is that experience enough to prompt
them to call for greater regulation? What
strategies of risk mitigation do they prefer,
and how do they understand responsibility
for risk creation and abatement? These questions are particularly germane in Calgary a
wealthy, fossil-fuel dependent city where the

Haney
public normally rejects government restrictions on private property rights.

Risk and Disaster in Alberta
Calgary occupies a strategic riverine location
at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers (Pomeroy, Stewart, and Whitfield 2016).
The larger of the two, the Bow, originates
from the Blow Glacier in the Canadian Rockies, and flows into the city from the west,
eventually flowing through many of the city’s
oldest neighborhoods, meeting the Elbow
near Fort Calgary. After this meetup, the Bow
flows southward, through many newer communities like Riverstone, Cranston, and
Chaparral.
In 2013, the Bow and Elbow overtopped
their banks, causing the evacuation of 75,000
people, and resulting in $6 billion in damages
(Gandia 2013). Both groundwater intrusion
and sewer backup inundated thousands of
homes (Abboud, Ryan, and Osborn 2018).
Events like the 2013 flood are poised to
become more common, as Alberta is projected to warm at more than twice the global
rate—as much as 4 degrees Celsius by 2050
(Sandford and Freek 2014). Already accounting for 60 percent of Canada’s total disaster
damage since 2010 (Edwardson 2018), future
claims to the federal government’s Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements from
Alberta are projected to increase substantially
(Parliamentary Budget Officer 2016).
Since the 2013 flood, Calgary, with financing from both the provincial and federal governments, completed upgrades to storm sewers,
installed new flood barriers, upgraded existing dams and reservoir capacity, subsidized
property-level measures like backflow preventers, and launched community education
initiatives, spending more than $318 million
by 2023 (City of Calgary 2020). Development
of new residential communities, nonetheless,
continues along the river on the southern
side of the city (see Riverstone in Introduction). But recent efforts to halt urban sprawl
also have pushed redevelopment inward to
the city’s older river-adjacent communities,

7
allowing builders to raze existing homes and
build two (or more) in their place. Known
locally as “infills,” those homes mean that the
population is also growing in existing neighborhoods near the rivers, not solely on the
outskirts. Unlike many North American cities,
where the wealthiest denizens protect themselves from flooding by purchasing property
far from or higher than bodies of water, in Calgary the wealthiest people buy property near
hazards because of amenities like scenery and
recreation (Bolin and Kurtz 2018:193), which
have been found to increase property values
(Bourassa, Hoesli, and Sun 2004). Residential
growth is projected to continue and expand as
Calgary envisions growing its current population of 1.3 million to 1.7 million by 2033,
and to more than 2.4 million by 2076 (Calgary
Metropolitan Region Board 2018).
Alberta is known as the most conservative
Canadian province. Its history—celebrated
annually at the Calgary Stampede, the largest
rodeo on earth—touts rugged individualism
embodied by self-made oil-men, cowboys,
and ranchers. This history makes Calgary
and Alberta particularly prone to right-wing
populism (Davidson 2019). Albertans maintain individualistic values, seeing a very
limited role for government. They “generally favor governments and political leaders
capable of protecting an enviable quality
of life by keeping taxes low” and eschew
“activist government” (Sayers and Stewart
2019). Albertans therefore prefer deregulation for the provision of services such as
electricity (Woo et al. 2012) and water (Nicol
and Klein 2006), while ardently defending
the sanctity of private property rights (Evans
and Garvin 2009). Given this context, how
do flood-prone residents, having recently
been through a flood event, view responsibility for risk creation and mitigation; what
strategies of risk mitigation do they prefer?
To get at the dynamics discussed above, the
present study focuses on a neoliberal city,
where flood risks have been systematically
produced over time, and where this risk has
recently resulted in catastrophic urban flood
events.

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City & Community 00(0)

Data and Methods
The article uses qualitative data from 40 indepth interviews with flood-affected residents, which took place in the Fall of 2015.
Recruitment of these participants was done
through community associations in Calgary’s
26 flood-affected neighborhoods (City of
Calgary 2018). An e-mail was first sent to
officials within each community association,
asking for help recruiting participants. Community association leaders then forwarded the
e-mail to members, discussed the interviews
at meetings, or posted a sign about it, instructing interested participants to contact the Principal Investigator. Our parameters included
only that participants be “flood affected,” and
we left that up to interpretation. In the end, 39
participants had residences that flooded in
2013. Interviews averaged 90 minutes and
took place at a public space in the participant’s neighborhood, or in a dedicated space
at the university. To thank participants, we
offered a $50 gift card to RONA, a Canadian
home improvement store. A third-party
locally based transcriptionist then transcribed
recordings verbatim.
We asked participants various questions
about their views on development in risky or
flood-prone areas. For this section, participants received the prompt:
The next set of questions asks you about
disaster risk—how decisions made by government, the insurance industry, and individuals—can place people at greater risk. In
answering these questions, we want you to
think about the best ways to protect people
and their property from events like the 2013
flood.

Other sections also elicited comments about
these issues. The Human Research Ethics
Board at Mount Royal University approved the
study, and all participant names are changed to
pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality.
Although many interviewees discussed
their demographics, we did not ask demographic questions specifically. This is because

we conducted a survey of the 26 floodaffected neighborhoods only one year earlier
(see Gray-Scholz et al. 2019; Haney 2018;
Haney and Gray-Scholz 2020; Milnes and
Haney 2017). That survey indicated that the
neighborhoods were affluent (median income
$100,000- $109,999), white (over 90%), educated (63% holding a Bachelor’s degree or
higher), and homeowners (over 75%). Thus,
the following analyses can be understood to
reflect the perspectives of a wealthy class of
individuals, living in a wealthy city. Within
the sample of 40 interviewees, 20 identified
as men, and 20 identified as women. Thirtyfive of the 40 participants provided their age,
resulting in a mean age of 52, and a median
of 55.5, which is slightly higher than, but in
the same ballpark as, systematic surveys from
Calgary’s flood affected neighborhoods (i.e.,
see Haney 2019 who found a mean of 48).
Data were analyzed in NVivo 11 using
qualitative techniques referred to as “descriptive” and “pattern” coding (Maxwell 2005;
Miles and Huberman 1994). First, the author
open-coded participants’ responses to identify
analytic patterns and themes (Warren and
Karner 2010:218–19). These themes were
put into different categories (Phillips 2014).
Second, these categories were analyzed to
identify patterned relationships across categories to determine similarities and differences
in the themes. Responses were coded by one
research assistant, and then by the author,
to ensure inter-coder reliability. In grounded
theory fashion, arguments were built by creating an ongoing exchange between the data
categories and existing theory in environmental sociology, urban sociology, and the sociology of disaster, in an effort to build upon
and reconstruct this existing theory (Glaser
and Strauss 2017)—an approach allowing for
both parsimony and scope of analysis (Phillips 2014:110).

Findings
I remember thinking about the community
of Chaparral and down in that area where
people are building right down in the valley

Haney
and I thought, ooh, that looks like a really
dumb place to buy a house even though I am
sure they are gorgeous houses and everything. (Mary-Jean)

The analysis that follows will accomplish
three central tasks. First, it explores who Calgarians believe is responsible for creating—
and ultimately for curbing—risks. Second, it
analyzes how participants discussed two
alternative strategies for mitigating risk: on
the one hand favoring structural mitigation
(levees, dams, or property-level mitigation),
while on the other, advocating for mandatory
disclosure laws. Third, it analyzes participant
beliefs that we have committed to development in flood-prone areas, and thus, we are
too late to curb risk.

Who Should Be Responsible for
Mitigating Risk?
Developers: The invisible hand of the market.
Many flood-affected residents talked extensively about the role of developers in continuing to create risk through irresponsible
practices, in addition to developers’ lack of
concern over the well-being of residents who
will, as a result, occupy a precarious location.
Mary-Jean says, “I think developers have a
responsibility because they are the ones who
are going to profit when those lots are sold, so
they should take the responsibility to make it
less likely to flood.” For several participants,
the experience of the flood made them adopt
this more critical stance toward development.
Wayne adds:
So after the flood I am always thinking,
“What are these developers thinking of?”
You are going to build four skyscrapers and
you are right on the edge of the bridge,
right? So those are going to fill up if anything ever happens . . . Calgary has got to fix
the problem and make sure it never floods
again.

Several participants bemoaned the lack of
constraints for developers to pursue projects

9
in flood-prone areas of the city. Irene believes
“developers get away with a lot of shit that
they shouldn’t be getting away with.” Others
suggested that developers’ lack of concern
for resident safety occurs because they are
removed quickly from financial liability for
flooding (i.e., one year). Matthew echoes
this sentiment; “We had a lot of developments in Calgary where the developers only
responsible for I don’t know a few months
or a few years after the development. . . . I
can’t remember what it is but it’s not long
enough.” Matthew adds that he believes
developers have full information about flood
risk but conceal this information from wouldbe homebuyers; “Cause the consumer won’t
know . . . And the developer you know in
some cases knows. Yeah. Private developers.
Absolutely. They should have responsibility.”
Several Calgarians faulted developers for
how they develop when they build near rivers.
According to Roxanne, who immigrated to
Canada from Britain:
I mean thinking about it in the UK we don’t
have a basement at all . . . So coming here
and having basements that you actually live
in are like, “Oooh,” and then when I thought
about it afterwards, it is like you have these
place underground right next to a river?
That is insane!

Many approached the role of developers
with a sense of futility. For them, developers
will pursue profit above all and will oppose
regulations. As a result, these residents clamored for the government to regulate developers. Nicole asserts, “I think it is the city who
is responsible to map it and say, ‘Okay, you
are a developer, and there is this land but you
are not allowed to build a residential area.’”
More bluntly, Rachel adds:
The developers can only do what they’re
allowed to do. They can’t build where the
city says they can’t. They can’t build where
the province says they can’t. So it’s not the
developers—they don’t give a shit . . . It has
to be government who says it can’t be done.

10

City & Community 00(0)

Several other participants made statements
that developers “don’t care” about the risk
for homeowners. For some, this also meant
that developers are blameless in the creation of risk. According to Scott, “You can’t
blame the developers, they are just . . . in
there to make bucks, right? And if the city
says you can build there then bingo . . . They
make a pile and they will.” In short, many
participants favored stronger land use regulations because they believed that developers were both unable and unwilling to
voluntarily limit development activities in
risky areas.
Government: The courage to stand up to developers? Because residents did not see private
developers as willing nor capable of making
land-use decisions that will mitigate risk,
many felt that it falls upon government to
regulate private developers, and to mandate
where new residential development can and
cannot take place. To do that, they feel that
municipal government—currently viewed
as weak and ineffectual—needs courage to
stand up to developers. As Jackie states, “I
think they have to have legislation in place
to say at some point in time, ‘No, developer,
you can’t put in a neighborhood there unless
you do A, B and C.’” Scott, in saying that he
would never again choose to live by a river,
added:
I think it is a mistake. The river needs room
and . . . the city should not allow it first off.
It is the government’s fault. I believe . . .
city government allowed that development
to occur and the developers did it, so I am
very, very unhappy about that.

Likewise, Gary believes that government
actors need to “have the balls to say no, and
most of them won’t.” When prompted about
why they lack “the balls” to regulate developers, he adds “It is all about money.” According to Gary, the money developers wield over
politicians influences municipal decisions.
In agreement, Scott says, “To hell with the
developer and that is what the government
has to do. To hell with the developer.”

Developers’ perceived influence over
municipal leaders leads some, like Leila, to
question the efficacy of representative democracy. Leila agrees with Gary and Scott, adding
that by ignoring the will of the people, government is “negligent in their responsibility
to the citizens.” By lobbying government to
allow building in high-flood-risk areas, Irene
believes that “developers get away with a lot
of shit that they shouldn’t be getting away
with.” Many participants felt that these conversations were taking place between developers and governments, not in spaces where
citizens might be consulted.
For participants, government holds the
best information about flood risk, and therefore has a responsibility to act. Nancy voices
this perspective by saying that city government should shoulder greater ethical burden
because they have the fullest information; “at
least they’re aware . . . I mean if the information is there, I don’t think they should be
developing there.” Frank shares this view,
adding that if development is allowed, then
developers should carry the corresponding
financial liability when housing developments flood:
they should control that and say, “if you are
going to allow a developer to develop a
whole neighborhood on a flood plain or a
swamp . . . then yeah, they should pay for
it,” I think, because it never should have
been allowed.

Matthew points out that the long-term
costs of building in floodplains make such
approvals costly for local governments.
Advocating for more restrictions, he says
developers “can’t develop places where it’s
just going to be torn down in 50 years or
even 100 years. Think about it. And government, they should help. They should tell
private developers maybe. (laughing).” As
laugher can be used to indicate discomfort
(Nairn 2005), Matthew’s laughter might suggest that he thinks his own proposed solution
is unrealistic.
Although nearly all the flood-affected
residents clamored for more government

Haney
regulations on development, there was not
complete unanimity. Bryan notes the economic fallout such limitations might provoke,
particularly for homeowners rebuilding, renovating, or expanding homes on their existing
flooded properties. When asked about granting building permits in flood-prone areas, he
said:
they absolutely have to give those permits
. . . because they will bankrupt people, and
the city of Calgary would leave itself
exposed to such huge legal action that they
would be bankrupt. So they can’t not give
permits. They can finesse that so that you’re
building better and more suitable and more
durable, but they can’t not give permits, it
would be financial suicide for the city.

Taking personal responsibility. Given the support for individual responsibility, and corresponding desire for fewer regulations and
smaller government in Alberta, it is unsurprising that some participants placed the onus
for flood risk mitigation on individuals—not
on developers nor government. According to
these perspectives, prospective homebuyers
should do their research and should avoid living in flood-prone places. Caleb says, “Well I
think people can live wherever they want, but
I think they have to carry that risk.” Bryan
adds that even discussing responsibility for
protecting people from flood risk “is really
fraught with problems, because it harkens
back to private property,” which he feels is
sacrosanct. He then says that homeowners
make their own choices and protecting them
from risk is “really nobody’s responsibility”
but their own.
Several participants argued that, living by
the river, the possibility of flooding should
be “common sense.” According to Caleb,
“people have to take some responsibility for
themselves, you can’t just go in totally blind
and say, ‘I know there is a river here but I am
going to build anyways.’ You got to use some
common sense.” Rachel refers to this common sense as “instinctual”; “Like if you’re
anywhere near the river it should just be

11
instinctual . . . You know? I know the risk.”
William feels similar: “Of course, I guess
being that close to a river it has to be in the
back of your mind that it could happen.” Sociologists, however, are critical of the existence
of common sense, arguing that such taken-forgranted knowledge is culturally specific, contextually dependent, and reliant on processes
of socialization (Watts 2014).

Not into Limiting Development? Two
Divergent Solutions
Engineering away the risk. Rather than restrict
development, the usual approach preferred
by all levels of government to curtail flood
risk has been structural mitigation efforts.
Although research has revealed the futility
of attempting to engineer away flood risk
(Brody Zahran, Highfield, and Grover 2007;
Freudenburg et al. 2008), several participants voiced confidence in these efforts.
Nicole says, “I think it would be a very good
idea if the money would be invested better
on some kind of flood-proof wall.” Likewise,
Emily says she feels mostly comfortable with
new homes going in flood-prone areas, but
developers should:
Make it higher. Make it safer. Whatever—
put up the concrete walls or whatever you
need to do to make it safe. If you really
wanted to sell that for development—make
it safe—or make the developers make it safe.

Comments by both Emily and Nicole assume
that homes in flood-prone areas can be made
entirely safe if protected by a strong enough
or tall enough wall.
Some homeowners argued that government should be more proactive about building
structural protections. Mary-Jean says, “The
province should be responsible for doing the
dams, or the enforcing or whatever is needed
in order to prevent it from happening as
well.” According to Emily, “Either you bring
in a lot of dirt and don’t build basements and
make it safe . . . The city should make sure
that people live in safe places!”

12

City & Community 00(0)

And some residents argue that the city
should not necessarily regulate or limit where
we develop housing but should instead focus
on how we build housing. According to
Jocelyn:
I think it makes more sense to put in really
well-designed homes and go bigger than
you even thought possible. Make it so you
can’t even have a ground floor, or like just
parking under your house . . . where the
house is up on stilts and the car goes
underneath.

Dave adds:
The government should have a lot to say
about that, that’s why we get building permits that’s why we get development permits
so there should be, I think, so if you’re
gonna build a house here you gotta build it
on stilts, it might not look like nice but I
mean that the kind of thing we almost have
to do.

Endemic to these approaches is the idea
that structural mitigation is key to conquering
flood risk. Some argue for larger communitylevel projects—dams or levees—while others
argue for property-level flood mitigation projects—like not allowing basements or building houses on stilts—but these approaches
share their belief that flood risk can be engineered away and, in doing so, imply that
development will or should continue. Few
participants discussed any specific government failures to mitigate flood risk, and
many projects were still underway (two years
post-flood). Many discussed the Province of
Alberta’s proposed Springbank dam and offstream reservoir, which was slated to be built
west of the city on rural land that would need
to be bought out. They voiced hope that this
project might make their properties safer,
but as of summer 2021 (six years since the
interviews), it has not been constructed. If
completed, it might provide some mental—if
not hydrological—security to residents and
aid in the process of placemaking in these

newer communities (see Coaffee 2013; Wu
and Hou 2020).
The need to inform? One question asked residents specifically if potential homebuyers
should be made aware of their home’s location in a flood-prone area. Although there
was some dissention, homeowners largely
believed that real estate agents should shoulder this responsibility. Dave discussed his
brother, who bought a home and did not think
about flood risk:
why would somebody not warn him when
he went to buy there? And that’s quite often
what happens, you see, you end up not
knowing that especially if you’re not from
around there, so that’s the kind of stuff I
think the government should control.

Peter agrees that a homebuyer:
should have total disclosure. You know, if
I was to sell my house, we would tell the
people that, yeah, the city flooded in 2013
. . . I think that it’s the responsibility of
realtors to make sure that people buy and
know what they’re getting into.

Even if that disclosure would chase away
potential buyers or lower the sale price, Peter
maintains that he would do so out of fairness.
Angela also homed in on the fact that
many homeowners may not understand their
actual levels of flood risk from a simple
disclosure, so she added that realtors should
“not just say that but explain what it means.”
Tasha echoed the need for more context. She
knew she lived in a floodplain, but not the
real, actualized flood risk:
I only knew I was in a flood plain, and then
after the flood I was told I was in a flood
fringe and I never, ever heard the word in
my life . . . . I have lived here for 42 years
and I have never heard of “flood fringe”
ever . . . so maybe realtors should be more
upfront that, “this is zoned ‘flood plain’ and
this is zoned ‘flood fringe.’”

Haney
These examples represent a vast majority
of residents who felt that homebuyers should
be made aware prior to the purchase.
A few residents, however, did not think it
was advisable to inform homebuyers, as that
responsibility should fall onto the individual
as a “buyer beware” scenario. According to
Allan, this has to do with the complexity of
flood risk and experts’ inability to understand
it, let alone communicate it effectively; “No,
I think the onus is on [the individual]. The
problem with that is what is the flood risk,
right? Really what is the flood risk? You can’t
quantify that realistically, right? It is a roll of
the dice and you are gambling.” Similarly,
Bryan says:
So, disclosure laws are pretty clear right
now. You can’t sell a flooded property to
somebody and not tell them. To tell them
about future risk is kind of like: this house
might burn down. That tree could fall on
you. This could flood again. So, buyer
beware, they should know that they’re buying on a flood fringe.

Those who supported a mandatory
informing law are also noteworthy because
such a policy would almost surely lower
their own property values, as homeowners
who already occupy these spaces. Nonetheless, many spoke convincingly about how
they wished they had been informed before
they bought.

Is It Too Little, Too Late?
Many participants expressed marked confusion about responsibility, and which parties
could be held responsible for which decisions, while several others felt fatalistically
that it is now too late to curb development.
In grappling with the complexity of floodplain management, Irene contends that if the
city allows housing to be built in floodprone areas, then insurance companies should
“damn well cover it.” This comment implies
that municipalities should have some control
over private sector insurers, influence they
do not normally wield. Christian expressed

13
confusion when asked who should be responsible for ensuring that Calgarians do not live
in flood-prone areas, saying:
I don’t think they ummm they worked, they
worked on it consciously. I may be wrong.
But I think there are so many other things to
work on. Uhhh, the other realities, you
know say developers against the environmental lobby. That’s not fair either.

Such hard-to-interpret responses reveal participants’ struggles to understand the complexities involved in non-structural forms of
flood-risk mitigation. William argues that
flood insurance ought to be mandatory in
flood-prone areas of the city: “it would be
nice to see that as part of the mandate for
allowing permits for developers to build in
those areas that are flood-prone.” This ignores
the fact that residential flood insurance was
not available in Canada until 2015, is still
widely unavailable (Thistlethwaite 2017),
and that homeowners carry unrealistic expectations for how low-cost this coverage—
which is not government-subsidized, unlike
in the United States—should be (Thistlethwaite et al. 2017). While laws about holding
mandatory insurance may sound attractive,
participants may not have understood the
institutional and financial barriers to implementing such policy.
Several participants felt the questions
about flood risk creation were too-little-toolate as Calgary has fully committed to building in flood-prone areas. The homes are built
and neighborhoods established, so there is
now nothing that can be done. Tasha notes,
“there is not a lot of land left in Calgary
[where we might] say that is a vulnerable area
and you should not live in it. So the dirty deed
has been done.” Allan felt that so much of the
city’s population lives in flood-prone areas
that talk of keeping people away from risk is
now inane or futile; “well unfortunately it is a
little late now, you know?” This view ignores
new and ongoing development in flood-prone
areas, like Riverstone (see Introduction). It
also rejects possible solutions such as “managed retreat” (Koslov 2016), which can be

14

City & Community 00(0)

used to move populations from vulnerable
places. Rachel points out that this approach
can be costly. When asked about areas with
higher flood risk, she responded by saying
that removing existing development would
be impossible; “you’re gonna have to buy
out 700, 800, 900 homes. There’s just a shitton of homes that are in flood fringe.” Peter
also saw this approach as undesirable, saying
“Half the city’s built on a riverbank . . . . So
you’re not going to force all those people to
pack up and move.” And lastly, when asked
how to keep people from living in vulnerable
places, Edward added:
Well they already do, so . . . and it is not just
people, I mean it is . . . Calgary, downtown,
headquarters of major national and international companies [are] in a flood plain of the
river. I can’t imagine what cost it would be
to the city, to the local economy, to the provincial economy, to the national economy if
nobody was allowed to live in a flood plain,
if no major businesses were allowed to
operate in the flood plain. . . . I don’t think
that you could do it, frankly.

Discussing flood risk in their community
forced many participants to confront complex
problems of global, systemic risk. William
acknowledges the need for multiple stakeholders to maintain a common operating picture and collaborate to decrease risk, while at
the same time acknowledging the difficulty:
I suppose that all depends on the insurance
that is available as well. If there . . . I mean
it is kind of hard to manage if you are issuing permits, to ensure that people have the
proper insurance to cover a flood, but I
mean, developers are only on the hook for
so long after developing an area. I guess in
an ideal world no, they shouldn’t allow permits for flood prone areas, but then just due
to normal population growth it is kind of
hard to avoid it.

Similarly, Christian has begun to think
about just how many people live in vulnerable

places. He feels that prohibiting development
in vulnerable places “would include ‘tornado
alley’ near Edmonton where you have more
tornados than there are in southern Alberta. It
could also mean possibly other areas. I can’t
think of what I mean by that but you know,
geographical problems.” Gary mused that it
is impossible for us all to live in the middle
of Saskatchewan to avoid risk. He paused
and added:
Regina? Built up on a river. Saskatoon?
Built on a river. Edmonton? Built on a river.
Vancouver? Built on the ocean. Tuktoyaktuk? Built on the ocean . . . Those are the
natural trade routes that go back hundreds of
years and that is why they are there.

Allan similarly concludes, “It is not just Calgary, it is everywhere that people live in
disaster areas . . . You can’t change that.”

Conclusion
Risk is proliferating in North American cities,
and new neighborhoods are being planned
and constructed in close proximity to rivers.
As the “growth machine” (Logan and Molotch
1987; Molotch 1976) pushes for unabated
development, it is important to examine how
vulnerable residents understand these decisions and to renew the conversation about
how we might keep people and property away
from hazards.
Using the case of Calgary, Alberta, this
article investigated several potential avenues,
including the possibility of placing limitations on new housing in flood-prone areas.
By interviewing residents—nearly all of them
homeowners—who had recently been affected
by flooding, this analysis demonstrated how
they conceived of risk and allocated responsibility for protecting residents. In doing so, it
highlights ongoing debates about the politics
and motivations of property owners, both
during normal times (Becher 2015; Dupuis
and Thorns 1998; Ruef and Kwon 2016) and
in situations of risk and disaster (Thistlethwaite et al. 2018; Zavar 2015). At the same

Haney
time, it highlights notions of trust and the
expectations that residents hold of municipal government in protecting property value
(Becher 2015; McCabe 2016; Poortinga and
Pidgeon 2003). Furthermore, it helps us better grasp how members of conservative communities, who normally reject regulation and
vilify “activist governments” nevertheless use
government and select land-use regulations to
protect their property (see Hochschild 2016).
Doing this work in relatively privileged communities reveals the barriers at play in cities
struggling to adapt to a changing climate
(Goodell 2017; Smiley 2017; Stone 2012), as
wealthy residents often serve as obstacles to
climate action (Page, Bartels, and Seawright
2013), while living some of the most highly
consumptive lifestyles (Harlan, Pellow, and
Roberts 2015; Solarin 2019).
Participants varied in their attribution of
risk and in their assignment of responsibility,
but many agreed that building should be curtailed in areas prone to flooding. A few residents did object to such regulations, owing
to “buyer beware” attitudes or the sanctity
of private property rights. Those residents
often preferred to enact mandatory disclosure
laws where homebuyers are informed about
a home’s location in a flood zone or, in some
cases, preferred only enhanced structural mitigation techniques to protect both existing
and new neighborhoods. Virtually none felt
that developers should themselves be responsible for curtailing risky development, as they
were cast as myopic profit-driven capitalists,
who will not voluntarily take actions to protect public safety. Participants typically were
not angry about developers’ complacence but
resigned to it. Many felt that homes had
already been built, and it was now too late to
halt development.
The above qualitative analyses reveal, however, that participants tended to discuss only
one approach to mitigating risk and fell into
three relatively mutually exclusive camps;
several argued for more government regulation of building in the floodplain, often along
with mandatory disclosure laws informing
homebuyers of risk; a second group focused

15
on the need for enhanced structural mitigation efforts, including new dams, levees, and
floodwalls; and a third group spoke about the
importance of personal responsibility (“buyer
beware”), often also expressing feelings that
we are too late to curb the creation of new
risks. Participants tended to stick to one of
these preferred approaches, rather than discussing them in tandem. For instance, several
participants feel it is “too little, too late” to
mitigate flood risk, and then discussed also
discussed the need for homeowners to take
personal responsibility by not buying homes
in flood-prone areas (i.e., Allen, Bryan, and
Rachel), which seems logically quite consistent. One exception to these mutually exclusive approaches is Gary who spoke about the
need for government to stand up to developers, but also noted how he felt we were too
late to curb risk, as houses had already been
built. By and large, however, participants
tended to prefer government restrictions on
development and/or the need to inform homebuyers, the need for enhanced structural mitigation, or the need for homeowners to own
the risk, in fairly mutually exclusive camps.
These findings suggest a certain disagreement, whereby residents of flood-prone communities lack common ground and preferred
approaches to flood risk mitigation, and differ
in their understandings of continued floodplain development.
The lack of consensus on who should
shoulder the responsibility to curb growing
flood risk likely means that river-adjacent
residents will have little collective voice and
there may be little movement in any one
direction, other than to stay the course. Given
that I collected data from flood-affected residents—those perhaps most likely to favor
restrictions on new development—we may
surmise that residents will not likely be able
to collectively resist ongoing and future
development. Indeed, research shows that
even when residents are organized and share
a relatively common vision on risk mitigation, advocating to governmental agencies
and actors for these desired outcomes can
still be challenging (Koslov 2016, 2019).

16
These findings help us better understand how
in “hegemonic growth regimes” most citizen groups end up being either pro-growth
or neutral, and do not present challenges to
the ubiquity of growth (Logan and Crowder 2002). It is also noteworthy that since
Calgary’s river communities contain some
of the most wealthy residents, many participants either hold informal membership in the
“growth elite” (Logan and Molotch 1987;
Molotch 1976) or stand to indirectly benefit
from continued growth. These vested interests may help us understand why residents
stopped short of voicing a uniform call to end
floodplain development.
Like all research, the present study carries
limitations. The choice to interview residents
from these neighborhoods makes sense for
post-disaster research, as they had just experienced a catastrophic flood. At the same
time, that methodological choice also carries
distinct limitations as findings from wealthy
hazard-prone residents may not generalize
well to residents living near hazards in other
cities (who are more likely to be lowerincome and therefore may have different concerns and attributions of responsibility); they
may, for instance, clamor even more loudly
for cessation of development near hazards.
They may also be more aware, and more critical, of the city’s “growth elite” as a key driver
of risk and vulnerability. In addition, the
qualitative data presented above give us little
insight into who subscribes to these differing
preferred approaches to flood risk mitigation.
Analysis of gender differences, age, occupation, neighborhood of residence, and even
education, provided little that might help us
understand how social and demographic factors drive these divergent attitudes and ideas.
Future research should look into how many
of the above factors (not to mention race/ethnicity, nativity, and other axes of inequality)
contribute to and explain different approaches
to floodplain development, risk creation, and
hazard mitigation.
These findings are particularly noteworthy
in Alberta, where many residents subscribe
to an individualistic outlook and decry new

City & Community 00(0)
government regulations as job-killing redtape. In fact, in 2019 the Government of
Alberta appointed a “Red Tape Commission”
and a Minister of Red Tape, charged with cutting regulations wherever possible (Maimann
2019). Yet, many homeowners in areas of
the city that flooded in 2013 are calling on
government to better regulate development
and to ensure that developers and/or realtors
better educate homebuyers about flood risk.
Given that mandatory disclosure rules would
presumably harm their property’s value, we
might feel sanguine that even residents with
much material stake in the status quo nevertheless recommended adopting better policies for flood risk disclosure. However, the
real estate industry derides these approaches,
labeling them “idiotic” and saying that mandatory informer requirements would “kill the
market” (Goodell 2017:97). Such objections
suggest a larger problem: “nobody wants to
spend money to build a more resilient city
because nobody owns the risk” (p. 103). The
practices of risk trading, epitomized by the
global reinsurance industry (Jarazabkowski,
Bednarek, and Spee 2017), as well as industry
efforts to influence policy and avoid financial
liability, effectively shifts risks onto property
owners. At the same time, as the findings
demonstrate, a number of participants attributed responsibility for risk to homeowners
who, they feel, should know better than to
purchase homes in flood-prone areas, effectively devolving the responsibility away from
developers and government, and urging more
personal responsibility—a finding that should
not be surprising in the Alberta context, but
does not lead us logically to many promising
policy interventions.
The 2015 introduction of private flood
insurance has protected a small number of
very wealthy homeowners, but will also
likely continue to drive development in risky
areas (Thistlethwaite 2017), and uptake of
these products has been low as most Canadians hold unrealistically low reservation prices
for premiums (Thistlethwaite et al. 2017).
Although insurance may not be the answer,
other ideas such as managed retreat (Koslov

Haney

17

2016) hold potential, particularly because
they are resident driven approaches to adapt
to a changing climate. Thus, managing risk
appropriately requires a shift in thinking. For
instance, in 1994 the town of Chelsea, Iowa
voted to move the entire town out of the floodzone. According to the town’s Mayor, “It used
to be that we manage the river and let people
go where they want to . . . Now we are trying to manage the people and letting the river
go where it wants to” (Steinberg 2000:119).
As climate change intensifies, more cities
may find themselves making room for the
river. For now, asking municipal governments
to stand firm against moneyed development
interests, and to restrict new housing in floodprone areas, is a pragmatic approach. After
all, the first step in getting out of a hole is to
stop digging.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks a dedicated team of research assistants
(Angela Laughton, Travis Milnes, Morah Mackinnon,
Priya Kaila, Grace Ajele, Victoria Stamper, Isabelle Sinclair, and Daran Gray-Scholz) for their hard work on data
collection and entry. Gratitude also goes to the floodaffected residents who took the time to share their experiences and views with us, to both James R. Elliott and
Matthew Clement for reading and commenting on earlier
drafts, and to Megan Holt for her careful professional
editing.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: This work was supported by an Insight
Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada (grant number
435-2014-1008).

ORCID iD
Timothy J. Haney
8245

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2288-

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