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We’re starting a new project, with support of the Summit Foundation–to look more closely at the challenge of “managed retreat” by cities vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate impacts. Your thoughts and examples welcome.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n There is not the slightest doubt that beachfront development will retreat on a massive scale,\u00a0though widespread recognition of this and serious planning for it are lacking. . . .The sooner we recognize the truth about nature\u2019s intentions at the shoreline, the better. Neither time nor tide is in our favor.<\/p>\n —Retreat from a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change[1]<\/strong><\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Managed retreat is widely considered to be a \u201cthird rail\u201d of local politics\u2014there is great peril in touching it, even in discussing it. There are good reasons for this: The idea of retreat undercuts the conventional urban narrative of development and growth, and the related public revenues and economic activity that are generated, as the path to urban wellbeing. It also raises the specter of government \u201ctaking\u201d of private property. Depending on the actions that local government takes, property owners can suffer significant losses of asset value. Intentional retreat involves long-term changes to city land uses and more advance planning. It has significant equity and fairness implications: how do you decide which places are \u201cworth\u201d saving, which are not, and who should bear the costs? Its value is undercut by perverse incentives in government flood insurance programs and private insurance financial risk management. Finally, authority to enact the practices of retreat\u2014policies, regulations, subsidies, etc.\u2014is fragmented among levels of government and is filled with legal uncertainties as well as subject to scientific uncertainty about potential climate impacts. \u201cRetreat is at present mostly a legal theory,\u201d note J. Peter Byrne and Jessica Grannis in a chapter, \u201cCoastal Retreat Measures,\u201d for an American Bar Association publication. \u201cFew retreat policies have been implemented on the ground.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Yet, more and more cities are finding themselves responding to real and crippling climate changes or anticipating and planning for these in their future\u2014and having to decide where they will permit what to be built under what conditions. Even not deciding is a type of decision with consequences.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to recognize that as the emerging urban climate adaptation field of practice matures, it will need to develop practical knowledge about why managed retreat makes sense, what managed retreat involves, and how managed retreat can be enacted by cities<\/p>\n The focus of this project is the \u201cwhat\u201d of managed retreat. We intend to frame the multiple pathways that cities take to deciding what they want to do about using managed retreat as a city strategy for addressing climate change risks. And we will identify the city capacities needed to prepare, make, and implement decisions about which pathway(s) to take.<\/p>\n A preliminary, rudimentary look at the practice of managed retreat suggests three general, prevailing pathways:<\/p>\n Using this initial framing of pathways, the project will develop a more finely differentiated, nuanced set of pathways that cities are using or could be using. For each pathway the project will identify the city-based capacities needed to make pathway decisions. We will initially frame the capacities along the lines of the 7 capacities identified in INC\u2019s March 2017 \u201cEssential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation\u201d report:<\/p>\n Here, too, we expect to produce a more finely grained, nuanced version of capacities for managed retreat. For example, the capacity to manage legal challenges to managed retreat may loom larger than in our more general framing of urban adaptation capacities.<\/p>\n We believe that framing the pathways and capacities in this way will provide two kinds of value. It will help others in the urban climate adaptation field who are developing tools and other knowledge for cities. The project report will also be made available directly to cities, hundreds of which are in various stages of developing and implementing climate adaptation plans.<\/p>\n
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