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Coastal cities are on the front line of a slow-moving emergency. Rising seas, intensifying storms, and saltwater intrusion are no longer hypothetical — they are recurring line items in municipal budgets. This essay argues that the most durable adaptation strategies are not the largest, but the ones that fold ecological infrastructure into everyday civic life.

Most coverage of coastal adaptation focuses on seawalls. Seawalls are visible, expensive, and easy to photograph for a press release. But studies of Rotterdam, Surat, and parts of New Orleans show that hybrid green-grey systems outperform monolithic barriers on both cost and resilience.

The second leg of durable adaptation is governance. A 2021 study found that cities with standing climate adaptation offices respond 40% faster to flood events than those without.