Main themes
Water
Sustainable Cities
Resilience
Planning and Design
Climate Change

Title
Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise

Focus
“Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise” aims to introduce design responses to sea level rise, drawing from past and present examples around the globe.

Issues which the lecture addresses
Climate change is a severe and growing challenge for the 21st century cities. Urban areas will encounter tremendous challenges when facing sea level rise and flooding issues. “Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise” will provide an overview of best practice resilient strategies. Going against standard engineering solutions, it argues for approaches that are integrated with the public realm, nature based, and sensitive to local conditions and the community.

Short analysis of the above issues
As climate change threatens major cities and delta regions, the most promising resilient strategies combine flood management infrastructure with place-making and nature. Going against standard flood management solutions epitomized by sea walls that obstruct access to the waterfront and reduce biodiversity, this lecture argues for design responses to resilience that create new civic and ecological assets for cities.

Propositions for addressing the issue
Stefan Al proposes four fundamental design responses to sea level rise, including:
1. Protect; 2. Adapt; 3. Restore; and 4. Retreat.

1. Protect
Examples of protect strategies include: breakwaters, floodwalls, surge barriers, seawalls, dikes, and revetments. Various public programs can occur with these type of infrastructures to expand the public realm, including boardwalks, plazas, and parks.

2. Adapt
Examples of adapt strategies include living shorelines, polders, floating islands, and infiltration beds. Adaptation is a nature based approach that accomplishes long-term resiliency and can expand the ecological and recreational assets of cities.

3. Store
Examples of store strategies include floodable squares, water capture, floodplain parks, and storm-water infiltration. Upland storage of water, while not a method of flood protection, helps to control water during floods, plus can enhance the experience of public spaces.

4. Retreat
Examples of retreat strategies include temporary evacuation, strategic retreat, raised ground plains, and the elevation of land. As a planned and design response, retreat can avoid the cost or other adverse effects of coastal protection, and can accomplish long-term resiliency.

Additional Reading Materials
Managing Water: Flooding and Scarcity
Coursera lecture
https://www.coursera.org/learn/designing-cities/lecture/kZ3yt/managing-water-flooding-and-scarcity

Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise
Book forthcoming in 2017
http://www.stefanal.com/news/2016/9/1/adapting-cities-to-sea-level-rise

Draft presentation
http://uni.unhabitat.org/index.php?gf-download=2016%2F10%2FAdapting-Cities-to-Sea-Level-Rise_Stefan-Al.pdf&form-id=9&field-id=33&hash=d43df8636c46294f7520e7fc77c744584f179977bb4f434ba80a5887cbe54445