Smart Growth Fixes for Climate Adaptation and Resilience
As cities and towns seek ways to adapt to current and projected climate change impacts, Smart Growth Fixes for Climate Adaptation and Resilience (pdf) can help governments identify policy strategies that can save lives, protect property, offer a good quality of life and strengthen their economies by adapting to climate change.
Determining what a community needs to be resilient to is a critical part in building resilience, so this publication addresses barriers and impacts communities are likely to face as the climate changes, with chapters on social and legal barriers, overall strategies, flooding and extreme participation, sea level rise, extreme heat and drought and wildfire.
Find more information on a sortable table of the policy options included in the publication.
Which policy and code changes are the most appropriate depends on a community's capacity, desire, and need to make changes. To help communities evaluate their choices, the options in each chapter are categorized as modest adjustments, major modifications, and wholesale changes. These categorizations are meant as basic guidance; a modest adjustment for one town could be a major modification in another.
To help ease the administrative burden, these strategies can also be worked into a community’s regular processes and policies. For example, a community could incorporate strategies incrementally through scheduled updates to zoning and building codes based on the most up-to-date climate observations and projections. This approach costs little or nothing extra compared to “business as usual.”
Additional Resources
- Learn more about smart growth and climate change.
- Essential Smart Growth Fixes for Communities has several publications to help support urban, suburban and rural communities improve local zoning codes and policies to implement smart growth approaches.