ABSTRACT
As climate change intensifies, it is expected that urban areas will need to navigate a host of challenges associated with greater variability in temperature and precipitation as well as increases in the intensity of storms and incidence of natural disasters. Conditions such as these have the potential to overwhelm infrastructure, threaten urban plant and animal life, alter the habitability of many buildings, and stress existing infrastructure, emergency services, social services, and management systems in urban areas (Adger et al. 2003; Satterthwaite et al. 2007; Dodman and Satterthwaite 2008; Gasper et al. 2011). Already, more than half of the global population is living in urban areas and, between 2011 and 2050, the number of people residing in cities is expected to increase from 3.6 to approximately 6.3 billion (UN 2012). This means that, as climate conditions change over time, most of the world’s population will be at risk from climate impacts with the most vulnerable populations encountering the greatest housing, health, and livelihood hardships (Satterthwaite et al. 2007; Dodman and Satterthwaite 2008).
