Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of coastal storms around the globe, and the anticipated rise of sea levels will have enormous impact on fragile and vulnerable coastal regions. In the U.S., more than 50% of the population inhabits coastal areas. In Planning for Coastal Resilience, Tim Beatley argues that, in the face of such threats, all future coastal planning and management must reflect a commitment to the concept of resilience. In this timely book, he writes that coastal resilience must become the primary design and planning principle to guide all future development and all future infrastructure decisions. Resilience, Beatley explains, is a profoundly new way of viewing coastal infrastructure—an approach that values smaller, decentralized kinds of energy, water, and transport more suited to the serious physical conditions coastal communities will likely face. Implicit in the notion is an emphasis on taking steps to build adaptive capacity, to be ready ahead of a crisis or disaster. It is anticipatory, conscious, and intentional in its outlook. After defining and explaining coastal resilience, Beatley focuses on what it means in practice. Resilience goes beyond reactive steps to prevent or handle a disaster. It takes a holistic approach to what makes a community resilient, including such factors as social capital and sense of place. Beatley provides case studies of five U.S. coastal communities, and “resilience profiles” of six North American communities, to suggest best practices and to propose guidelines for increasing resilience in threatened communities.

Front Cover -- Title Page -- Half Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Foreword by Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic, The New York Times -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. Designing for Coastal Resiliency -- Chapter 2. Visualizing the Coast -- Chapter 3. Reimagining the Floodplain -- Chapter 4. Mapping Coastal Futures -- Chapter 5. Centennial Projections -- Afterword by Jeffrey P. Hebert, vice-president for adaptation and resilience, The Water Institute of the Gulf -- Endnotes -- Glossary -- Index

Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation identifies a bold new research and policy agenda and provides implementable options for coastal communities responding to these threats. In this book, coastal adaptation experts present a range of climate adaptation policies that could protect coastal communities against increasing risk, including concrete financing recommendations. Coastal adaptation will not be easy, but it is achievable using varied approaches. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation will inspire innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local level while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers.

As different parts of the globe deal with the challenges of coastal settlements in the Anthropcene landscape of increasing uncertainty, the methods of design offer new strategies for developing and testing solutions. These complex problems require collaboration across disciplines, with scientists, planners, engineers, designers, and others able to work together in finding new ways of living in coastal and changing landscapes. Sustainable Coastal Design and Planning is an outstanding collection of essays by leading practitioners and academics from across the globe on design and planning for coastal resilience in the face of climate change. It thoroughly explores the questions of coastal change at different scales and provides international case studies that illustrate diverse strategies in different geographies and cultures. Taken as a whole, they canvas a broad palette of approaches and techniques for engaging these complex problems. Divided in two parts, this book focuses on how to develop solutions through multidisciplinary design thinking and informs all stakeholders on specific methods and practices that will be needed to work effectively in this dynamic space.

This book reports on national, state, and local responses to climate-related risks of sea level rise and storm surge, drought and water shortage, floods, wildfires, and heat waves in nine coastal city regions: New York City, the Southeastern states, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in the United States; and Melbourne, Sydney, South East Queensland, and Perth in Australia.

Report describes RAND contributions to Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan for policymakers in other coastal regions. It highlights the value of a solid technical foundation to support decision-making on strategies to protect and restore coastal regions.

This book interrogates the multi-scalar complexities that need to be considered in moving towards a more sustainable coastal zone through the lenses of economic geography.