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

Abstract

This chapter of the New York City Panel on Climate Change 4 (NPCC4) report discusses the many intersecting social, ecological, and technological‐infrastructure dimensions of New York City (NYC) and their interactions that are critical to address in order to transition to and secure a climate‐adapted future for all New Yorkers. The authors provide an assessment of current approaches to “future visioning and scenarios” across community and city‐level initiatives and examine diverse dimensions of the NYC urban system to reduce risk and vulnerability and enable a future‐adapted NYC. Methods for the integration of community and stakeholder ideas about what would make NYC thrive with scientific and technical information on the possibilities presented by different policies and actions are discussed. This chapter synthesizes the state of knowledge on how different communities of scholarship or practice envision futures and provides brief descriptions of the social‐demographic and housing, transportation, energy, nature‐based, and health futures and many other subsystems of the complex system of NYC that will all interact to determine NYC futures.