Land Use and Built Environment Planning Guides
This tab includes guides to help practitioners prepare adaptation plans for land use and the built environment.
Resources are automatically presented by rating, but can be sorted by date or title. Apply additional filters to narrow the list by impact, jurisdictional focus, state, or region.
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February 6, 2024
The Community Change Grant Equitable Resilience technical assistance program, an initiative spearheaded by the U.S. the Environmental Protection Agency, will provide free assistance to entities applying for Community Change Grants. EPA plans to offer this technical assistance to up to 50 Community Change Grants applicants. The program will provide free project development assistance, community engagement, and partnership development workshops.
Related Organizations: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Resource Category: Data and tools
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July 23, 2023
In July 2023, the Washington State Legislature enacted HB 1181, requiring many local governments in the state to plan for climate change impacts as part of their comprehensive planning processes. The legislation integrates these new requirements by amending the local planning requirements in the state’s Growth Management Law.
Related Organizations: Washington State Department of Ecology
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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June 16, 2022
In recent years, Asheville, North Carolina has faced population growth and affordable housing challenges compounded by climate change. Against this backdrop, Asheville also recognizes the importance of retaining its unique sense of place, culture, and character, including protecting trees and natural landscapes. As such, the city is working to ensure that it creates a healthy, livable community resilient to these and other impacts. Over the last two decades, Asheville has released several plans, assessments, and policies related to growing the city’s climate and environmental resilience and ensuring an adequate affordable housing stock. Accordingly, the city has pursued — and plans to continue pursuing — strategies that preserve the city’s culture and character while making the area a safer, more affordable place. Many of these strategies are facilitated through prioritizing the environment and affordable housing in different city plans and incentives-based amendments to zoning ordinances. Asheville serves as an example for other jurisdictions seeking to integrate climate and resilience elements within local governance structures, plans, and zoning ordinances while tackling other local challenges, such as maintaining or increasing affordable housing stock or retaining a distinct local culture. This case study is one of 24 case studies featured in a report written by the Georgetown Climate Center, Greauxing Resilience at Home: A Collection of Lessons and Case Studies from Louisiana and Beyond
Related Organizations: Georgetown Climate Center
Resource Category: Solutions
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May 20, 2022
The Main Street America program offers financial and technical support to help revitalize older and historic downtowns and commercial districts in both rural and urban environments. Many states have Coordinating Programs to implement Main Street America across the country. Louisiana Main Street is Louisiana’s Coordinating Program and works with local governments in the state to preserve and maintain historic districts in Louisiana.
Local governments can look to Main Street America and state-specific programs to enhance local resilience in downtown and commercial districts by investing in municipalities and economies, including by restoring and preserving vacant lots and degraded buildings. Program grants and federal and state historic tax credits can also be used to supplement other types of funding to support overall community revitalization efforts.
Resource Category: Organizations
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February 2021
In February 2021, Miami-Dade County, in collaboration with private consulting partners, released the Miami-Dade County Sea Level Rise Strategy. The strategy outlines the five different ways that the County, its agencies, and its partners can facilitate county-wide adaptation to climate impacts, especially sea-level rise: 1. ) building on fill; 2. ) building like the keys; 3. ) building on high ground around transit; 4. ) expanding greenways and blueways; and 5. ) creating blue and green neighborhoods.
Resource Category: Planning
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August 2020
In 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published this guide to help communities identify the multiple benefits of nature-based solutions (NBS) and incorporate NBS into their efforts to build resilience to increasing climate change hazards. The guide includes a range of information about different types of NBS, determining their value, and implementing NBS to aid communities at different phases of the hazard mitigation process. Communities looking to build community and political support for NBS, to fund NBS, and to incorporate NBS into new and existing local plans and policies can all benefit from this guide.
Related Organizations: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Resource Category: Solutions
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April 29, 2019
From the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), this comprehensive Toolkit provides a series of modules to help NAACP chapters and other advocates mediate climate adaptation planning processes and ensure that adaptation plans and policies meet local needs, while focusing on frontline communities, environmental and climate justice, and equity. The Toolkit provides guidance to help community groups and advocates develop an Environmental and Climate Justice (ECJ) Committee to inform adaptation planning and policy through 19 different Modules.
Related Organizations: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Author or Affiliated User: Jacqui Patterson
Resource Category: Planning
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April 2019
From May 2016 until April 2019, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Office of Planning partnered with the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program to create three tools that support adaptation at the local level: an interactive data map — the Hawaii Sea-Level Rise Viewer , and two guidance documents — Integrating Coastal Hazards and Sea-Level Rise Resilience in Community Planning and Guidance for Disaster Recovery Preparedness in Hawaii . Much of Hawaii’s population and development exist on low-lying coastal plains that are vulnerable to erosion, flooding, and inundation. Building on the state’s 2017 Hawaii Sea Level Rise Vulnerability and Adaptation Report , the complementary tools are aimed at helping communities better prepare for future sea-level rise and other climate change impacts.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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April 2019
The Louisiana Land Use Toolkit was created by the Center of Planning Excellence (CPEX), as a model development code to support economically, culturally, and environmentally sustainable development for communities of Louisiana. The Toolkit applies “Smart Growth” principles to future development planning, aiming to create resilient communities, revitalized neighborhoods, increased land value, affordable housing, and protected rural, natural, and open space areas. The Toolkit is a free, online resource designed for Louisiana parishes and municipalities to tailor to local needs by adopting a zoning code, a subdivision code, or an individual ordinance — or to be customized into a complete development code.
Related Organizations: Center for Planning Excellence
Resource Category: Data and tools
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November 2018
Created by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute with support from Adaptation International, this guidebook provides a climate change adaptation planning framework for tribal communities. The report offers a stepwise framework on adaptation planning, and over 30 case studies of tribes already in the adaptation process. It identifies opportunities for working with both Traditional Knowledges (TKs) and western science, and is designed to be useful for tribes at any stage of adaptation planning.
Related Organizations: Oregon Climate Change Research Institute (OCCRI)
Resource Category: Planning
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