Comprehensive plans as tools for enhancing coastal community resilience

Planning for change is critical to ensuring resilient coastal communities. In Maine, USA, the comprehensive planning process provides a platform for communities to articulate policies that address social, economic, and environmental issues. While comprehensive plans were initially required of municipalities to address urban sprawl over thirty years ago, a broad range of challenges face coastal communities today. Here, we report on an assessment of 30 comprehensive plans from coastal communities across the state. We analyzed the degree to which plans incorporate principles of social-ecological resilience. Our results reveal significant variability across comprehensive plans, with some communities addressing key indicators of resilience and others engaging with them in a limited way. By more explicitly incorporating principles of social-ecological resilience, the next-generation of comprehensive plans can be repurposed to serve as tools for communities to implement strategies that build adaptive capacity as they face unprecedented challenges and plan for a changing world.

为变革做好规划，是打造韧性沿海社区的核心要务。在美国缅因州，综合规划流程为各社区提供了制定政策的平台，用以应对社会、经济与环境层面的各类问题。尽管三十余年前，各市政当局最初制定综合规划的初衷是应对城市蔓延问题，但如今沿海社区仍面临着纷繁复杂的各类挑战。本研究针对全州范围内30份沿海社区的综合规划展开评估，并汇报相关研究成果。我们分析了这些规划纳入社会-生态韧性（social-ecological resilience）原则的程度。研究结果显示，各综合规划之间存在显著差异：部分社区充分覆盖了韧性的关键指标，而另一些社区仅有限地涉及相关内容。通过更明确地融入社会-生态韧性原则，新一代综合规划可被重新定位为有效工具，帮助社区在面临前所未有的挑战、为不断变化的世界制定规划时，落实提升自身适应能力的各类策略。