On defense: Cities get serious about climate resilience in 2013

http://grist.org/cities/the-walls-go-up-cities-get-serious-about-climate-defenses-in-2013/

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Here’s a quick roundup of Grist’s cities coverage from 2013, broken into five acts and peppered with links to stories we ran over the year. Happy reading — and here’s to 2014!

Act 1 Caught flat-footed

You will recall that the year opened as residents of New York and New Jersey were picking up the pieces after Sandy beat the hell out of the Eastern Seaboard. The superstorm was a major reality check — and not just for the Big Apple, where many residents had forgotten that their hometown occasionally gets taken out by Atlantic hurricanes. We expect that kind of storm along the Gulf Coast; not so much in the nation’s financial and cultural capital.

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Act 2 To the barricades!

To the surprise of no one, it was New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg who took the lead on making cities more hardy to climate-driven disasters. Bloomberg unveiled a $20 billion plan in June designed to protect his city from storms, floods, and heat waves. A week later, the mayors of Washington, D.C., Denver, Nashville, and 42 other U.S. cities signed a “Resilient Communities for America” agreement, pledging “to prepare and protect their communities from the increasing disasters and disruptions fueled by climate change.”

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Act 3 Protecting the most vulnerable

One of the central challenges in this undertaking will be looking out for the poor, disadvantaged, and underserved people who will suffer the most in a warming world. With this in mind, we’ve launched another blog — Brentin Mock’s Read, Black, and Green.