Radical Adaptation

The book is for city dwellers, urban planners, and students interested in how climate change is unfolding in cities. It is the first book to explore the range and extent of adaptive transformations required to manage growing climate-related shocks that are only beginning to play out in large cities worldwide.

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This book considers the everyday conduits through which climate instability is revealing itself: the storm sewer drain on your street, the powerlines transporting your electricity, the mix of vegetation in your backyard or neighborhood park – these are the pathways through which climate change is most likely to impact your life. For many, these are the last places we expect it to. The first book to establish a framework for climate change adaptation, Stone's aim is to understand how climate change is altering our lives in the present period – this period of transition between the ancient, stable climate of our ancestors and the unfolding, no longer stable climate of our children – and how our cities might adapt to these changes. Stone's concern is with the risks posed by a new environmental regime for which our modes of living are ill-adapted, and with how these modes of living must be altered – radically altered – to persist in a climate changed world.