Cultivating Social-ecological Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation Through Green Infrastructure in Long Beach, California

Abstract

The geographic variability and uneven distribution of climate-related impacts in urban environments pose serious challenges to achieving social-ecological resilience and environmental justice. There are no generalizable solutions for the anticipated climate challenges facing urban environments, which vary from increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events to flooding, heat waves, droughts, and worsening air quality. Densely populated coastal urban areas, like Long Beach, California, are further exposed to sea level rise, coastal erosion, and saltwater intrusion. In response, ecosystem-based adaptation plans have gained traction in the scientific literature and policy circles as viable, multi-beneficial strategies to build urban resilience to withstand anticipated climate threats. Green infrastructure (GI) offers flexible, place-based solutions and as such, has surged in popularity as an urban planning strategy, reflecting the focus of planners and policy-makers to design and implement location-specific interventions. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, this empirical case study analyzes the spatial distribution and projected intensity of climate-related impacts in Long Beach, California. Integrating geospatial data, surveys, and key informant interviews, this study explores citizen perception of climate risk and desirability of GI solutions to increase adaptive capacity across two high risk communities with unevenly distributed biophysical and social vulnerabilities.