Coastal urban climate adaptation and the advance onto aquatic surfaces using floating solutions: Historical challenges and potential future benefits of floating homes and similar structures

Abstract

Coastal urban adaptation to climate change and rising sea levels emerges from the increasing vulnerability to storm surges, flooding, and related concerns. Yet, research literature still largely does not address floating solutions like floating homes or larger floating structures. This article illustrates how these floating structures can serve as a strategy for coastal urban adaptation to climate change and rising sea levels by "advancing" (or shifting) parts of urbanization onto aquatic surfaces. It explains why their environmental impacts are generally much lower than those of widely used alternatives like land reclamation and why, historically, Western coastal management strategies have predominantly focused on terrestrialization rather than floating approaches. Historically, humans, particularly in parts of Asia prone to monsoon and typhoon flooding, have utilized floating, amphibious (sitting on the ground but floating during a flood), and stilted homes for millennia. Using a historical science methodology, the article argues that social acceptance of such adaptation practices in the West and other regions sharply declined during the nineteenth century with the advent of the Age of Coal's affordable energy supply, which in the twentieth century enabled more efficient water removal and control. However, following the twentieth century's terra-centric forms of coastal urbanization and socio-economic development, the climate change framework of the twenty-first century encourages researchers, intergovernmental organizations, governments (particularly in Asia), NGOs, and commercial companies to consider additional options, including the advance strategy and, situationally, shifting parts of urbanization onto aquatic surfaces.