An official website of the United States government
Managing and adapting to climate change in urban areas will become increasingly important as urban populations grow, especially because unique features of cities amplify climate change impacts. High impervious cover exacerbates impacts of climate warming through urban heat island effects and of heavy rainfall by magnifying runoff and flooding. Concentration of human settlements along rivers and coastal zones increases exposure of people and infrastructure to climate change hazards, often disproportionately affecting those who are least prepared. Nature-based strategies (NBS), which use living organisms, soils and sediments, and/or landscape features to reduce climate change hazards, hold promise as being more flexible, multi-functional and adaptable to an uncertain and non-stationary climate future than traditional approaches. Nevertheless, future research should address the effectiveness of NBS for reducing climate change impacts and whether they can be implemented at scales appropriate to climate change hazards and impacts. Further, there is a need for accurate and comprehensive cost–benefit analyses that consider disservices and co-benefits, relative to grey alternatives, and how costs and benefits are distributed across different communities. NBS are most likely to be effective and fair when they match the scale of the challenge, are implemented with input from diverse voices and are appropriate to specific social, cultural, ecological and technological contexts. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions’.
more »
« less
How Planners Address Extreme Heat with Equitable Resilience
Problem, Approach, and Findings Extreme heat is one of the most concerning natural hazards facing cities today, forecasted to increase in frequency, duration, and intensity in the future. With close to 3.5 billion people projected to be impacted worldwide by extreme heat by 2070, it is critical that efforts focus on planning and adapting our built urban environment to reduce the risks that people will face from heat waves. A lack of data and monitoring has left uncertainty surrounding the full impact to people’s health from extreme heat. Currently, planners are undertaking important work to understand how extreme heat disproportionately affects communities historically discriminated against in planning practices. Implications This article looks at how local planners and municipalities, primarily in urban communities, can best address extreme heat within the lens of equitable resilience. Planners must go beyond unenforceable comprehensive plans to zoning regulations and unified development ordinances to change and adapt to threats posed by hazards. Equitable stakeholder engagement and environmental justice must be incorporated into the process, centering those with power and those most impacted, as these people will have the most at stake.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2023900
- PAR ID:
- 10393234
- Editor(s):
- McBroom-Fitterer, Cameron
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Carolina planning
- Volume:
- 47
- ISSN:
- 2472-3843
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract The impact of climate extremes upon human settlements is expected to accelerate. There are distinct global trends for a continued rise in urban dwellers and associated infrastructure. This growth is occurring amidst the increasing risk of extreme heat, rainfall, and flooding. Therefore, it is critical that the urban development and architectural communities recognize climate impacts are expected to be experienced globally, but the cities and urban regions they help create are far more vulnerable to these extremes than nonurban regions. Designing resilient human settlements responding to climate change needs an integrated framework. The critical elements at play are climate extremes, economic growth, human mobility, and livability. Heightened public awareness of extreme weather crises and demands for a more moral climate landscape has promoted the discussion of urban climate change ethics. With the growing urgency for considering environmental justice, we need to consider a transparent, data-driven geospatial design approach that strives to balance environmental justice, climate, and economic development needs. Communities can greatly manage their vulnerabilities under climate extremes and enhance their resilience through appropriate design and planning towards long-term stability. A holistic picture of urban climate science is thus needed to be adopted by urban designers and planners as a principle to guide urban development strategy and environmental regulation in the context of a growingly interdependent world.more » « less
-
Extreme heat is the cause of most US weather-related deaths and is a serious risk for older adults, children, and people with medical issues living in vulnerable neighborhoods. This study explored how extreme heat events affect vulnerable communities, focusing on people’s perceptions, adaptive behaviors, and social network support. Mobile ecological momentary assessment through Short Message Service was employed to collect real-time data from residents in a socioeconomically challenged urban neighborhood in Iowa. Participants responded to text messages with survey links twice daily during heat events over the summer, in which they were asked about their perceptions and behaviors. The results show the need for targeted, inclusive, and effective heat warnings and social network support to reduce heat risks and help vulnerable communities better cope with extreme heat.more » « less
-
Louisiana is one of the most hazard-prone states in the U.S., and many of its people are engaged directly or indirectly in agricultural activities that are impacted by an array of weather hazards. However, most hazard impact research on agriculture to date, for Louisiana and elsewhere, has focused on floods and hurricanes. This research develops a method of future crop loss risk assessment due to droughts, extreme low and high temperatures, hail, lightning, and tornadoes, using Louisiana as a case study. This approach improves future crop risk assessment by incorporating historical crop loss, historical and modeled future hazard intensity, cropland extent, population, consumer demand, cropping intensity, and technological development as predictors of future risk. The majority of crop activities occurred and will continue to occur in south-central and northeastern Louisiana along the river basins. Despite the fact that cropland is decreasing across most of the state, weather impacts to cropland are anticipated to increase substantially by 2050. Drought is by far the costliest among the six hazards, accounting for $56.1 million of $59.2 million (∼95%) in 2050-projected crop loss, followed by extreme cold ($1.4 million), extreme heat ($1.0 million), tornadoes ($0.4 million), hail ($0.2 million), and lightning ($0.05 million), respectively. These findings will assist decision-makers to minimize risk and enhance agricultural resilience to future weather hazards, thereby strengthening this economically-important industry in Louisiana and enhancing food security.more » « less
-
Abstract This paper presents a new coupled urban change and hazard consequence model that considers population growth, a changing built environment, natural hazard mitigation planning, and future acute hazards. Urban change is simulated as an agent‐based land market with six agent types and six land use types. Agents compete for parcels with successful bids leading to changes in both urban land use—affecting where agents are located—and structural properties of buildings—affecting the building's ability to resist damage to natural hazards. IN‐CORE, an open‐source community resilience model, is used to compute damages to the built environment. The coupled model operates under constraints imposed by planning policies defined at the start of a simulation. The model is applied to Seaside, Oregon, a coastal community in the North American Pacific Northwest subject to seismic‐tsunami hazards emanating from the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Ten planning scenarios are considered including caps on the number of vacation homes, relocating community assets, limiting new development, and mandatory seismic retrofits. By applying this coupled model to the testbed community, we show that: (a) placing a cap on the number of vacation homes results in more visitors in damaged buildings, (b) that mandatory seismic retrofits do not reduce the number of people in damaged buildings when considering population growth, (c) polices diverge beyond year 10 in the model, indicating that many policies take time to realize their implications, and (d) the most effective policies were those that incorporated elements of both urban planning and enforced building codes.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- The DOI is not currently available.
