Landscape Architecture for Sea Level Rise: Innovative Global Solutions

This book assesses and illustrates innovative and practical world-wide measures for combating sea level rise from the profession of landscape architecture. The work explores how the appropriate mixture of integrated, multi-scalar flood protection mechanisms can reduce risks associated with flood events including sea level rise.

Because sea level rise is a global issue, illustrative case studies performed from the United States, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, China, and the Netherlands identify the structural (engineered), non-structural (nature-based), and hybrid mechanisms (mixed) used to combat sea level rise and increase flood resilience. The alternative flood risk reduction mechanisms are extracted and analyzed from each case study to develop and explain a set of design-based typologies to combat sea level rise which can then be applied to help proctor new and existing communities.

It is important for those located within the current or future floodplain considering sea level rise and those responsible for land use, developmental, and population-related activities within these areas to strategically implement a series of integrated constructed and green infrastructure-based flood risk reduction mechanisms to adequately protect threatened areas. As a result, this book is beneficial to both academics and practitioners related to multiple design professions such as urban designers, urban planners, architects, real estate developers, and landscape architects.

Dr. Galen D. Newman is Associate Professor and Interim Department Head in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. He also serves as the Director of the Center for Housing and Urban Development. Dr. Newman’s research overlaps the fields of community resilience, land use science, urban analytics, landscape performance and advanced visualization. He has published over 70 peer reviewed articles in high-quality journals and has received over 31 million dollars in interdisciplinary funded research projects.

Zixu Qiao has a Master of Landscape Architecture from Texas A&M University. She is a professional landscape architect, guest speaker at University of Guelph, and the founder of Land.Space Architecture. Her work includes research, design, and planning on a variety of site planning and landscape architecture projects in the US and China. Her design is committed to improving cities’ economic and environmental sustainability, resilience, and quality of life. She founded Land.Space Architecture in 2019, an online educational platform committed to improving young professionals’ visualization skills in landscape architecture.