Land Use Planning and its Potential to Reduce Hazard Vulnerability: Current Practices and Future Possibilities

The concentration of people and infrastructure along the nation's coastline has increased our vulnerability to severe coastal storms and other natural hazards, as evidenced by the substantial social, economic and environmental impacts of recent hurricanes. Competing policy objectives and stakeholder interests pose challenges to planners' and public officials' attempts to increase resilience using land development-based approaches. This paper describes theses issues for researchers outside the urban and regional planning discipline. It presents the typical approaches to hazard mitigation and the primary land-use tools used to manage coastal development. It strives to inspire interdisciplinary visioning of sustainable coastal development patterns needed to advance resiliency.