Two cities, one storm: a comparative analysis of post-Sandy resiliency planning in Hoboken and Jersey City

This paper seeks to explain the impacts of Hurricane Sandy in the cities of Hoboken and Jersey City in resiliency planning and their conditions, such as local elections, information sharing and pre-disaster planning in these two highly similar empirical cases.

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the New York City-metro area sister cities of Hoboken and Jersey City, New Jersey. While similarly affected by the super storm, post-Sandy engagement in resiliency planning, risk assessment and lessons learned have been surprisingly divergent.

Key insights include:

• Almost immediately after Hurricane Sandy, Hoboken’s political leadership began to robustly seek out assessment and resiliency mechanisms, in an effort to more quickly recover from the severe wind and flood damage and initiate as set of policy directives toward better future preparedness.
• By virtue of its larger geographic area and population size, Jersey City was statistically more negatively affected by the storm. However, post-Sandy resiliency planning has yet to develop into a significant component of local governance in Jersey City.
• While some local-level and endogenous factors may have a correlational affect on DRR policy trajectories, international agents effectuate not only more measurable change, but can incentivize mayors to adopt durable, longer-term policies.