Principles, drivers, and policy tools for just climate change adaptation in legacy cities

Climate change adaptation presents an opportunity for legacy cities to address growing social, racial, and economic inequality, or engage in just climate change adaptation. While the importance of just and equitable climate change adaptation is well understood, the policy and politics that underlie such efforts are less well understood. This paper focuses on the development of just climate change adaptation strategies in legacy cities, particularly those in the Great Lakes region of the U.S., where the challenges and opportunities for climate change adaptation are particularly high. Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio are used as illustrative case studies. These cities are two of the only two legacy cities of the Great Lakes region to have developed formal and explicit adaptation plans, and foregrounded justice and equity early in the process. A review of planning documents, and interviews with key stakeholders, in the two cities are used to identify the components of justice being included in climate change adaptation planning, the drivers or motivations for foregrounding justice in their adaptation planning, and the policy tools being used or developed to reach these goals. The findings reveal an awareness among stakeholders and decision makers in both cities of the importance of addressing inequality in climate change adaptation, some attention to justice principles in the adaptation plans themselves, and a diverse set of policy tools emerging to support this work. Importantly, despite relatively modest ambitions for climate change adaptation, both cities face implementation challenges that are likely to be common among legacy cities of the region.