The climate adaptation and sustainability implications of five strategies for a waterfront development

Changing climate should mean that urban infrastructures will be adversely affected by extremes in weather. Adaptation strategies to date have relied on the IPCC protect-retreataccommodate approach (Tol et al 2008) which has been applied to UK city studies and re-termed attack-retreat-defend (ICE 2009). We posit the need to connect climate adaptation with integrated assessments of sustainability. Based on this axiom we bring together emerging theories in sustainability science to analyse and assess the results of a transdisciplinary study of climate adaptation for a proposed development site in central Gothenburg. The outcome is five contiguous strategies for climate adaptation and sustainability.