TY - JOUR
T1 - Do the Adaptations of Venice and Miami to Sea Level Rise Offer Lessons for Other Vulnerable Coastal Cities?
AU - Molinaroli, Emanuela
AU - Guerzoni, Stefano
AU - Suman, Daniel
N1 - Funding Information:
In Miami awareness and concern about SLR is recent but growing rapidly. Initial efforts to address the threats have begun at the county and city levels with little direct political and financial support from the national and state levels (with the exception of beach renourishment projects). However, actual implementation of adaptive measures is minimal to date. South Florida opted for a high-tech engineering solution to flooding over half a century ago with the Central and Southern Florida Project for Flood Control and is now attempting to remedy the resultant environmental damage with the Greater Everglades Ecosystem Restoration Plan (CERP). This flood control infrastructure project reduced the potential of the ecosystem to respond to climate change. Moreover, the comprehensive package of restoration projects initially failed to consider climate change and SLR. This situation has now begun to change, but the linkages between adaptive management of Everglades restoration and resilience of coastal MDC to SLR have yet to be fully developed.
Funding Information:
We would like to thank Andrea Barbanti for preliminary discussion on the outline of the paper. The authors wish to thank Gian Marco Scarpa for the support drawing Fig. 1 and Keren Bolter for Fig. 5. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on our manuscript. This study was financed by IRIDE Program 2016, “DAIS Incentivi alla ricerca individuale”, funded by University Ca’ Foscari of Venice.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
Copyright:
Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - Both Venice and Miami are high-density coastal cities that are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and climate change. Aside from their sea-level location, they are both characterized by large populations, valuable infrastructure and real estate, and economic dependence on tourism, as well as the availability of advanced scientific data and technological expertize. Yet their responses have been quite different. We examine the biophysical environments of the two cities, as well as their socio-economic features, administrative arrangements vulnerabilities, and responses to sea level rise and flooding. Our study uses a qualitative approach to illustrate how adaptation policies have emerged in these two coastal cities. Based on this information, we critically compare the different adaptive responses of Venice and Miami and suggest what each city may learn from the other, as well as offer lessons for other vulnerable coastal cities. In the two cases presented here it would seem that adaptation to SLR has not yet led to a reformulation of the problem or a structural transformation of the relevant institutions. Decision-makers must address the complex issue of rising seas with a combination of scientific knowledge, socio-economic expertize, and good governance. In this regard, the “hi-tech” approach of Venice has generated problems of its own (as did the flood control projects in South Florida over half a century ago), while the increasing public mobilization in Miami appears more promising. The importance of continued long-term adaptation measures is essential in both cities.
AB - Both Venice and Miami are high-density coastal cities that are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and climate change. Aside from their sea-level location, they are both characterized by large populations, valuable infrastructure and real estate, and economic dependence on tourism, as well as the availability of advanced scientific data and technological expertize. Yet their responses have been quite different. We examine the biophysical environments of the two cities, as well as their socio-economic features, administrative arrangements vulnerabilities, and responses to sea level rise and flooding. Our study uses a qualitative approach to illustrate how adaptation policies have emerged in these two coastal cities. Based on this information, we critically compare the different adaptive responses of Venice and Miami and suggest what each city may learn from the other, as well as offer lessons for other vulnerable coastal cities. In the two cases presented here it would seem that adaptation to SLR has not yet led to a reformulation of the problem or a structural transformation of the relevant institutions. Decision-makers must address the complex issue of rising seas with a combination of scientific knowledge, socio-economic expertize, and good governance. In this regard, the “hi-tech” approach of Venice has generated problems of its own (as did the flood control projects in South Florida over half a century ago), while the increasing public mobilization in Miami appears more promising. The importance of continued long-term adaptation measures is essential in both cities.
KW - Adaptive management
KW - Barrier islands
KW - Climate change
KW - Coastal cities
KW - Resilience
KW - Vulnerability
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U2 - 10.1007/s00267-019-01198-z
DO - 10.1007/s00267-019-01198-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 31423556
AN - SCOPUS:85071101958
VL - 64
SP - 391
EP - 415
JO - Environmental Management
JF - Environmental Management
SN - 0364-152X
IS - 4
ER -