Pathways to Coastal Resiliency: the Adaptive Gradients Framework

Current and future climate-related coastal impacts such as catastrophic and repetitive flooding, hurricane intensity, and sea level rise necessitate a new approach to developing and managing coastal infrastructure. Traditional “hard” or “grey” engineering solutions are proving both expensive and inflexible in the face of a rapidly changing coastal environment. Hybrid solutions that incorporate natural, nature-based, structural, and non-structural features may better achieve a broad set of goals such as ecological enhancement, long-term adaptation, and social benefits, but broad consideration and uptake of these approaches has been slow. One barrier to the widespread implementation of hybrid solutions is the lack of a relatively quick but holistic evaluation framework that places these broader environmental and societal goals on equal footing with the more traditional goal of exposure reduction. To respond to this need, the Adaptive Gradients Framework was developed and pilot-tested as a qualitative, flexible, and collaborative process guide for organizations to understand, evaluate, and potentially select more diverse kinds of infrastructural responses. These responses would ideally include natural, nature-based, and regulatory/cultural approaches, as well as hybrid designs combining multiple approaches. It enables rapid expert review of project designs based on eight metrics called “gradients”, which include exposure reduction, cost efficiency, institutional capacity, ecological enhancement, adaptation over time, greenhouse gas reduction, participatory process, and social benefits. The framework was conceptualized and developed in three phases: relevant factors and barriers were collected from practitioners and experts by survey; these factors were ranked by importance and used to develop the initial framework; several case studies were iteratively evaluated using this technique; and the framework was finalized for implementation. The article presents the framework and a pilot test of its application, along with resources that would enable wider application of the framework by practitioners and theorists

Teaching across disciplines: a case study of a project-based short course to teach holistic coastal adaptation design

Climate change has led to the need for innovation in resilient infrastructure and the social policies which will support those. This requires greater interdisciplinary interactions and knowledge building among emerging professionals. This paper presents a case study of a pilot short course intended to immerse graduate students in the design of resilient infrastructure using place-based and interdisciplinary active team learning. This course helps graduate students bridge the gap between research and practice on the social science and engineering of resilient infrastructure for coastal adaptation. The intellectual framework for the course (the Adaptive Gradients Framework) provides a holistic evaluation of adaptation design proposals and was used to recognize the complexity of social, ecological and engineering aspects and varied social benefits. The course provides a model to move outside rigid boundaries of institutions and disciplines to begin to build, in both students and instructors, the ability to work more effectively on complex social-ecological-engineering problems. Finally, this paper presents a summary of lessons learned from this pilot short course

Pathways to Coastal Resiliency: The Adaptive Gradients Framework

Current and future climate-related coastal impacts such as catastrophic and repetitive flooding, hurricane intensity, and sea level rise necessitate a new approach to developing and managing coastal infrastructure. Traditional “hard” or “grey” engineering solutions are proving both expensive and inflexible in the face of a rapidly changing coastal environment. Hybrid solutions that incorporate natural, nature-based, structural, and non-structural features may better achieve a broad set of goals such as ecological enhancement, long-term adaptation, and social benefits, but broad consideration and uptake of these approaches has been slow. One barrier to the widespread implementation of hybrid solutions is the lack of a relatively quick but holistic evaluation framework that places these broader environmental and societal goals on equal footing with the more traditional goal of exposure reduction. To respond to this need, the Adaptive Gradients Framework was developed and pilot-tested as a qualitative, flexible, and collaborative process guide for organizations to understand, evaluate, and potentially select more diverse kinds of infrastructural responses. These responses would ideally include natural, nature-based, and regulatory/cultural approaches, as well as hybrid designs combining multiple approaches. It enables rapid expert review of project designs based on eight metrics called “gradients”, which include exposure reduction, cost efficiency, institutional capacity, ecological enhancement, adaptation over time, greenhouse gas reduction, participatory process, and social benefits. The framework was conceptualized and developed in three phases: relevant factors and barriers were collected from practitioners and experts by survey; these factors were ranked by importance and used to develop the initial framework; several case studies were iteratively evaluated using this technique; and the framework was finalized for implementation. The article presents the framework and a pilot test of its application, along with resources that would enable wider application of the framework by practitioners and theorists

Planning for Sustainability in Small Municipalities: The Influence of Interest Groups, Growth Patterns, and Institutional Characteristics

How and why small municipalities promote sustainability through planning efforts is poorly understood. We analyzed ordinances in 451 Maine municipalities and tested theories of policy adoption using regression analysis.We found that smaller communities do adopt programs that contribute to sustainability relevant to their scale and context. In line with the political market theory, we found that municipalities with strong environmental interests, higher growth, and more formal governments were more likely to adopt these policies. Consideration of context and capacity in planning for sustainability will help planners better identify and benefit from collaboration, training, and outreach opportunities

Regional Conservation Partnerships in New England

Across New England, a new model of regional collaboration is increasingly being used by land conservation trusts, watershed associations, state agencies and others. Regional conservation partnerships (RCPs) serve multiple purposes, such as coordinating among the various active groups in the region and allowing them to leverage funding and staff capacity. However, their essential missions are the same—protect more land from development. We use interviews, geographic information systems (GIS), and statistical analysis on 20 case studies to document RCP growth and characteristics and to analyze which attributes most contribute to their ability to conserve land. Along with well-known factors of organizational development, we find that the RCPs that match the size of the partnership region with the territory and capacity of the host partner organization are better able to achieve measurable conservation gains

Do Bylaws Matter? Evaluating Conservation Subdivision Design

This research investigates what public and private purposes are being achieved in projects permitted as conservation or open space subdivisions. An expert panel evaluated nine conservation subdivision designs (CSD), and found that CSDs overall provide more ecologically functional designs than would occur under traditional subdivision layout. In particular, open space goals tend to be well-achieved, while other aspects such as creativity, housing diversity, and other public goods are less satisfactory. However, evidence suggests that underlying socioeconomic and planning board issues are more explanatory in overall quality of projects than the specific contents of individual CSD bylaws. Results of related research in other regions indicate that CSDs tend to occur in the direct path of development pressure, tend to increase rural sprawl, and occur under a wide spectrum of bylaws. The study finds that CSD outcomes could be improved through support for well-trained and empowered planning boards. Improvements in bylaws are recommended, including stronger design quality components, connection of open space to form habitat corridors, and development of clear evaluation rubric(s) that could help planning boards better negotiate for higher quality projects

By Stealth or by Spotlight: Matching Barriers to Adaptation Approaches

The goal of this research is testing existing frameworks that theorize the barriers to uptake of climate change adaptation (CCA) in municipal governments, and then connecting those barriers to alternative approaches to achieving adaptation within municipal organizations. The alternative approaches are argued to include full-on adaptation planning, a more technically-oriented mainstreaming approach, and a ‘stealth’ approach wherein policies with co-benefits are highlighted without much discussion of climate per se. We interviewed planners in 15 coastal communities in Massachusetts, U.S.A., to inquire into local efforts toward CCA and what they viewed as required to move forward locally. The case studies are suburban and small towns, because these tend to be underresearched and, we argue, if CCA is to influence the majority of U.S. population, it will need to move beyond global cities and into typical suburban and smaller cities and town situations. We use qualitative analysis to characterize the findings on barriers. The most commonly listed are lack of resources, challenges from public support, limitations in the planners’ knowledge and climate information, lack of support from elected officials or state mandates, and opposition from property interests. These largely match what would be expected given previous research, including characterizations of endogenous and external economic and institutional contexts for the communities and the staff – with one major addition. In these municipalities coastal property is largely the province of the very wealthy. Overcoming landowners opposition to changing regulatory regimes is a very significant barrier to implementing, or even discussing, change. The results suggest that the existing frameworks, while quite helpful, need to better address the real politic of coastal land use planning. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that most communities are using the ‘stealth’ noregrets/ co-benefits approach. Some are undertaking a planning approach framed within hazards planning. Mainstreaming, while popular among researchers and perhaps in larger cities, proves to be more difficult for these smaller cities and towns to do, in part because they have no officially-sanctioned climate projections to use in developing regulations. While the interviews do not demonstrate direct this barrier-this approach outcomes, it nevertheless appears helpful to characterize CCA responses as by plan, by mainstreaming, or by stealth

Legislating Growth Management: Power, Politics and Planning

State-level growth management legislation involves a complex constellation of political support and opposition. This article uses narrative policy analysis techniques to examine the politics behind Iowa\u27s late-1990s effort at such legislation, identifying a model of factors participants use in determining political support for a bill. While much of the debate in Iowa focused explicitly on the technical issues, at heart the issue was the redistribution of power the proposed policy entailed, along with its fit to a largely rural state culture. Passing growth management legislation will require greater attention by planners to both of these topics