Flows and Fragmentations Collective Strategies for Managing Water and Protecting People in the Face of Climate Change

Inclusive crisis recovery is more likely to be attainable if there are integrated civic planning processes throughout ‘blue sky’ days, before loss and chaos consume decision making during and after a disaster. In thinking through the stages before the destructive forces of hazards, this paper focuses on water, an unpredictable force that creates significant global challenges, particularly in low lying areas. In the United States, floods are the most frequent and costly disaster, with annual residential losses estimated at $32.1 billion in 2022 and projected to rise by 26.4 per cent by 2050 (Wing et al., 2022). As scholars have noted, climate change is transforming notions of the urban. Using Boston’s resilience checklist as a primary case, supplemented by Copenhagen’s district-scale water management and Tokyo’s evacuation workshops, the study highlights how resilience is negotiated through regulation, collective funding, and civic participation. The study’s findings indicate that Boston’s Climate Resiliency Checklist, although advanced when compared to other US cities, lacks the ability to promote sufficient cross-property linkages and neighbourhood-scale climate adaptation. Comparing this research with examples in Copenhagen and Japan reveals how certain processes and structures ‐ including broader participation, funding structures, and preparation ‐ can help integrate collective design thinking to foreground the urban ground floor as a collective asset. Expanding collective action and participation in the production of urban ground floors is more than ever crucial in fostering more equitable and safe futures in the face of flooding.