Green and Resilient Cities
Preparing for disasters, risk and climate change.
Start here · Essential guide
How development can create its own risks, from building on hazard-prone land to overloading networks, and how cities identify and reduce those risks.
How cities prepare for floods, earthquakes, storms and extreme heat through land use, building standards, warning systems and planned recovery.
How existing districts adapt over time through incremental retrofits, flexible zoning and phased investment, rather than waiting for one big rebuild.
How renewal projects can respond to heat, sea level and rainfall changes while trimming emissions, and why the benefits have realistic limits.
How disaster recovery planning organizes rebuilding in advance, from emergency response through temporary housing to long-term recovery after floods, quakes and storms.
What climate resilience means for a city as a whole, how it differs from cutting emissions, and why both are needed but answer different questions.
Why city centers run hotter than surrounding areas and what shading, materials and green space can and cannot do about urban heat islands.
How a city plans over decades when climate projections are uncertain, using scenarios, trigger points and flexible choices that can be adjusted later.
A menu of adaptation strategies, including protect, accommodate, retreat and avoid, and how cities weigh cost, fairness and uncertainty in choosing among them.
How land use planning, zoning and development limits steer new building away from hazard areas toward safer ground, and what trade-offs that creates.
How flood maps, floodplain rules and setbacks guide where and how buildings may be built, and what flood risk zoning does and does not guarantee.
How local networks, shelters, sturdy buildings and small-scale design help a single neighborhood absorb shocks and recover, plus the limits of local action.
How roads, power, water and communications systems are hardened, built with backups or designed to fail gracefully, and the cost trade-offs involved.
The contested choice between defending flood-prone areas with barriers and relocating away from them, with the costs, fairness issues and limits of each.
How wetlands, restored floodplains and urban forests are used to reduce flood, heat and storm risks, what they do well, and where their limits lie.
How siting, building rules and open space planning reduce exposure to hazards before they strike, and why prevention often needs less money than repair.
The planning decisions that follow a disaster: temporary housing, rebuilding rules, moratoria, and who decides what returns and what does not.
How the rebuilding window can reduce vulnerability instead of restoring old weaknesses, and why pressure to rebuild fast often works against that aim.
Framing adaptation as accepting changed conditions: the choices cities face between hardening, redesigning and retreating, and how to decide among them.
A comparison of broad resilience strategy categories, infrastructure, land use, governance and finance, and what each can and cannot contribute.
How cities decide which aging pipes, roads, bridges and buildings to repair first when money is short, and how those choices reshape the built environment.
How cities cope with rising temperatures through cooling places, building design, shade and warning systems aimed at the people most at risk from heat.
How a city builds a climate program that combines cutting emissions with preparing for impacts, and how the work is organized, governed and kept on track.
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