Coastal challengesHow Coastal Towns Can Meet the Challenge of Sea Level Rise

Published 28 May 2021

A group of Florida students was invited to participate in the community presentation of the “Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge,” a competition that tasked participating teams with reimaging how Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod, could meet the challenges of climate change and sea level rise.

A team of University of Miami School of Architecture students led by Sonia Chao, research associate professor, will be in Nantucket, Massachusetts, next week to participate in the community presentation of the “Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge,” a competition that tasked participating teams with reimaging how Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod, could meet the challenges of climate change and sea level rise.

Although Nantucket is 1,500 miles away from Miami, the threat of sea level rise is something both places share. It is estimated that by 2040, Miami could see 21 more inches of sea level rise. By 2100, that increases to 120 inches, according to the Unified Sea Level Rise Projection 2019 Update released by the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact.

“If you are at University of Miami School of Architecture and are not yet familiar with sea level rise, you haven’t been going to class,” said student Tanner Wall, who is part of the cohort. “We are thinking about coastal resilience in every single class we take; it’s a core part of the curriculum.”

Chao—who is the director of the School of Architecture’s outreach arm, the Center for Urban and Community Design, and is also co-director of its interdisciplinary Master of Professional Science in Urban Sustainability and Resilience program—was invited by Envision Resilience to lead a University of Miami team. Dean Rodolphe el-Khoury was supportive of the multi-institutional and interdisciplinary format of the course from its onset.

Three of the four students participating in Chao’s fall course, An Introduction to Resilient Building and Community Design, began their analysis of Nantucket aided with research carried out by a graduate student class and graduate teaching assistant Michael M. Ganom.

“There are several similarities, as well as contrasts, between Miami-Dade County and Nantucket, which make a comparative analysis interesting—from their tourism and port-based economies, iconic National Register Historic Districts, and their Atlantic Ocean-driven climate realities to their diverse scales, socioeconomic conditions, and terrain. And for these reasons, I wanted our students to be a part of this rich learning experience,” said Chao.

Equipped with the research, Wall, Thomas Long, Camila Zablah, and Paula Christina Viala continued work in their Special Problems course in the spring semester.

To prepare for the challenge each student participated in charrettes organized by Chao that looked at Nantucket’s history as a whaling community, its architecture—which includes many cedar-shingled buildings—its urban patterns, and geology.