Planning

Coastal climate change in the form of rising sea levels and more frequent and extreme weather events can threaten community assets, residences, and infrastructure. This presents a particular concern for vulnerable residents—such as seniors aged 75 years and older. Our spatial study combines census area cohort population model projections, community asset mapping, and a municipal policy review with coastal sea rise scenarios to the year 2025–2026. This integrated information provides the basis to assess the vulnerability of our case study communities in Nova Scotia, Canada. Nova Scotia has the oldest population of any Canadian province, the majority of whom reside in coastal communities on the Atlantic, making it an ideal site for such analysis. Through this work we forward a useful decision-making support tool for policy and planning—one that can help coastal communities respond to the particular needs of seniors in [End Page 166] rural areas and adapt to impacts of coastal climate change. Throughout we argue that social vulnerability must be considered alongside place vulnerability in the design of climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. This is not just an issue for coastal communities, but for all communities facing the effects of extreme weather events.

Numerous strategies for sourcing renewable energy are available for development and expansion, yet for many countries the idea of eventually transitioning to a completely renewable energy supply using domestic resources currently appears unfeasible. As a large country with low population density, Canada may be expected to face fewer obstacles in this regard. However, not only are Canada's population centers clustered largely in its south, but energy policy is significantly devolved to the level of provinces, making a match between energy demand and renewable supply more challenging. In order to address this challenge, we collect data from a variety of sources and combine it with our own geographical analysis to develop a scenario of renewable portfolios at the provincial level. We explicitly estimate the optimal sites, based on straightforward criteria, for development of each resource. In order to keep the analysis transparent, we focus on physical feasibility rather than economic details and, by lumping together all energy demand, we assume substitutability between electrically-provided and fuel-based energy delivery. Our assessments include wind, solar, hydro, tidal, wave, and geothermal energy, with a limited discussion of bioenergy. For comparison, we also break down current energy demand in each province according to categories intended to be meaningful to households. We find that overall with current technology Canada could more than provide for its energy needs using renewables, two-thirds of which would come from onshore and offshore wind, with much of the remainder coming from hydro. However, we find large differences across provinces in both the mix and magnitude of renewable potential. We find each province individually to be easily capable of renewable energy self-sufficiency at current levels of demand, with the exception of Ontario and Alberta. We believe this is the first combined, geographically-resolved inventory of renewable energy sources in Canada.

Despite signing the Mayors Climate Change Agreement, few US cities have made significant progress in either climate mitigation or adaptation. For the most part, European cities have been more effective, albeit with assistance from the European Union and their national governments. Several of the most successful European cities have implemented eco-districts, which have offered many lessons for overall sustainability planning. Using Malmö, Sweden as a case study, we ask how planners and elected officials learned from implementing an eco-district, focusing on experimentation with new technologies and approaches to planning. We identify how “double-loop learning”, a term coined by Argyris and Shön, was at play in changing planning practice. As eco-districts are catching on in North American cities, there is much to be learned from European practice.

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