NPCC

New York City Panel on Climate Change

NPCC4: Concepts and tools for envisioning New York City’s futures

Introduction

In addition to the projected climate hazards, including potential exposure of vulnerable populations, critical infrastructure, and ecosystems discussed in this NPCC 4th assessment (NPCC4), there are a myriad socio-demographic, economic, infrastructure, and ecological futures that will unfold in the complex urban system of New York City (NYC) that, in turn, will impact the city’s future risk and resilience to climate change.

This NPCC4 chapter is the first effort by the NPCC to describe positive future visions, scenarios, and their intersections with current challenges, which can inform new opportunities for equitable climate change policy, planning, and engagement across the diverse fabric of NYC.

The chapter begins with a description of concepts and tools used for exploring the future. It provides a historical overview of NYC’s major urban planning approaches adopted over the last 100 years and discusses scenario planning as a useful approach for improving urban planning and decision-making in an uncertain world. It describes climate and population projections, and health valuation as tools that can help the City understand its possible futures. And it describes the usefulness of exploring possible and desired futures.

Government (upper) and non-government (lower) climate adaptation & resilience plans in NYC

This chapter also offers a way to understand the city as a complex urban system with interdependencies among social, ecological, and technical infrastructure components. To illustrate this complexity, it provides an overview of community-centered climate adaptation and resilience plans enacted in the city, across temporal and spatial scales, that address concerns ranging from transportation to energy and heat resilience. Understanding the interdependencies and gaps in a range of planning efforts can help reduce siloing in future efforts.

The chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current scenarios and approaches for envisioning the future of New York City, uncertainty with analyses and future scenario planning, and the need for sustained engagement and research in this area.

Photo Credit: Williamsburg Bridge: Climate Adaptation Partners

Read the Chapter

Authors

Deborah Balk, Ph.D. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, NY., CUNY Institute for Demographic Research, City University of New York, New York, NY.

Timon McPhearson, Ph.D. Urban Systems Lab, The New School, New York, NY, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Elizabeth Cook, Ph.D. Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY.

Kim Knowlton, DrPH. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY.

Nicole Maher, Ph.D. The Nature Conservancy, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.

Peter Marcotullio, Ph.D. Institute for Sustainable Cities, Hunter College, New York, NY., City University of New York, New York, NY.

Thomas Matte, MD, MPH Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY.

Richard Moss, Ph.D. University of Maryland, College Park, MD

Luis Ortiz, Ph.D. Urban Systems Lab, The New School, New York, NY., George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

Joel Towers, MArch. Parsons School of Design, New York, NY., The New School, New York, NY.

Jennifer Ventrella, Doctoral Candidate The New School, New York, NY.

Gernot Wagner, Ph.D. Columbia Business School, New York, NY.

Summary

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  • Key Message 1

    NYC is projected to be hotter, wetter, and more flood prone, with multiple types of tropical and winter storms that are likely to increase in frequency, intensity, and severity.

    At the same time, the population of the city is expected to age. Long traditions of in- and out-migration have shaped the city and are expected to continue to be an important part of its future, anchoring it in the region and the nation. The built environment will largely remain in place, yet changes in land use and land cover, including conversions in impervious and natural areas, are expected. Managing and planning the future NYC to be more adapted and resilient to diverse climate, economic, and social pressures will require understanding these diverse futures that also interact dynamically in real-time.

  • Key Message 2

    Future complexity and uncertainty due to climate change demands new ways to plan our cities.

    Scenario-based planning can incorporate important urban dynamics and complexities and uncertainties common to the non-anecdotal challenges of the Anthropocene that other planning tools cannot, partly by addressing uncertainty over the mid-to-long term. By incorporating scenario planning into NYC futuring exercises, a range of new opportunities for envisioning and shaping health, social, environmental, economic, and population change outcomes can be applied to meet broad or sectoral adaptation and mitigation planning.

  • Key Message 3

    Equity and social justice should be explicitly centered in future climate adaptation goals, implementation efforts, and future planning.

    Planning without centering equity will likely result in unintended negative consequences, such as green gentrification or displacement, which exacerbate inequity. Centering equity in climate adaptation and mitigation actions provides an opportunity to decrease impacts on the most vulnerable.

  • Key Message 4

    NYC is dynamic, and the scale and complexity of NYC requires managing interacting socio-economic, ecological-biophysical, and technological-infrastructure components.

    However, there is often a lack of understanding by planners of the fundamental drivers of behaviors and patterns that are important for planning and designing more resilient, equitable, and adapted NYC and metropolitan region. Inherent in these interdependencies are trade-offs between temporal and spatial scales in planning activities, as well as between sectors; identifying these trade-offs is integral to transparency in planning and adaptation. Incorporating approaches that acknowledge interdependencies in future planning will prevent a siloed understanding of trade-offs and uncertainties.

  • Key Message 5

    In the context of climate change risks in NYC and the metropolitan region, changes in key sectors and deployment of technologies have included some which are adaptive and beneficial and others that are unintentionally maladaptive, causing risks and inequities that are costly to reverse.

    The adaptive or maladaptive potential of such changes have depended on the extent to which their costs, benefits, and risks are balanced and equitably distributed. Local examples considered in this chapter include mechanical cooling, flood protection measures, and spatial allocation of the public right of way (ROW, mainly streets and sidewalks). Maladaptation can be caused by ignoring climate risks and equity considerations and by siloed planning, within and among sectors, levels of government, government agencies, non-governmental institutions, and the private sector. Potential for maladaptive and inequitable effects of climate adaptation strategies and other sectoral actions influencing climate risks should be weighed to ensure that near-term actions are not maladaptive in the long term.

  • Key Message 6

    Without shared positive visions for the future, it is unlikely that plans made now will achieve the equity, justice, sustainability, and resilience goals desired for the future of NYC and its communities.

    Participatory processes are critical in co-developing shared visions that bring together diverse perspectives and forms of knowledge, and a sustained engagement process is critically needed to identify the City’s climate research priorities and co-produce a future public climate research agenda for the city. Co-produced visions, goals, and strategies can involve perspectives across multiple sectors, scales, and communities to gather the full range of ideas, innovations, and possible actions to address trade-offs and inform transitions toward a climate-adapted future for NYC. However, tools for longer-term (beyond 2050) transitions and pathways to achieve future plans for NYC are currently missing and needed to guide efforts to secure an inclusive climate resilient future for all New Yorkers. In order to track progress towards these goals, periodic and systematic monitoring and evaluation are necessary.

  • Key Message 7

    Transitioning the built environment to be more climate resilient while addressing fundamental challenges to equity and sustainability requires policies and investments to retrofit, rebuild, and improve the built infrastructure to support population health.

    Prioritizing active and sustainable modes, including transit, walking, and cycling can provide multiple, equitable health benefits through increased physical activity, reduced air pollution exposure, more affordable transportation options, and reduced risk of conditions that increase vulnerability to climate change. At the same time, reducing miles driven by private motor vehicles within, into, and out of the city will reduce greenhouse gas remissions and expand space available on streets and sidewalks for uses that provide climate resilience and social and equity benefits.

  • Key Message 8

    Nature-based solutions are critical for addressing climate adaptation needs in the city and can simultaneously provide co-benefits for public health, society, and natural systems that help create a resilient city.

    Planning, implementation, and management of nature-based solutions to achieve equitable distribution and holistic resilience in a complex city system is still a developing practice.