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The COVID-19 era has witnessed numerous successful and unsuccessful attempts to adapt or reconfigure physical, virtual, and hybrid aspects of the built environment in order to mitigate the risks of co-occuring (i.e., compound) hazards. But it has also witnessed major challenges to ensuring that the protections these reconfigurations afford are equitably distributed. Additional theoretical and empirical research is needed to inform transitions (via adaptive reconfiguration) toward short-term goals of health and well-being, as well as to guide transformations (via the establishment of stable configuration) toward longer-term goals of equitable societal function. To this end, this paper presents a framework for conceptualizing adaptation of the built environment as a series of state transitions in response to (or in anticipation of) compound hazards. It draws upon cases from recent experience in the areas of food production, shelter, and education to critique, clarify, and explicate this framework. It concludes with implications for further research on the management of transitions in the built environment under a range of hazard scenarios.