ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a way of thinking about adaptation to climate change in regional coastal areas that relies not on financial incentives and government policy, but rather on a community-based approach. Adaptation for climate change and resilience in coastal regions outside urban centers will be a protracted program. The combination of moves suggests a contingent relationship between climate change impacts, thresholds, and adaptive responses. Design processes enable land-based decision making on the growing availability of fine-grained geographic, climatic, social, and cultural data. The authors examine their two regional case studies in light of these ideas. In the first: High Ground Low Ground, they worked together with VUW designer and research associate Caitlin Wallis, to address the suburbs in Kapiti's lowlands beside the sea. In the second, Wai o Papa/Waterlands, they propose evolving solutions for farmland in the Horowhenua.
