The Urban Climate Change Research Network's Second Assessment Report on Climate Change in Cities (ARC3.2) is the second in a series of global, science-based reports to examine climate risk, adaptation, and mitigation efforts in cities. The book explicitly seeks to explore the implications of changing climatic conditions on critical urban physical and social infrastructure sectors and intersectoral concerns. The primary purpose of ARC3.2 is to inform the development and implementation of effective urban climate change policies, leveraging ongoing and planned investments for populations in cities of developing, emerging, and developed countries. This volume, like its predecessor, will be invaluable for a range of audiences involved with climate change and cities: mayors, city officials and policymakers; urban planners; policymakers charged with developing climate change mitigation and adaptation programs; and a broad spectrum of researchers and advanced students in the environmental sciences.

Given the realities of climate change and sea level rise, coastal cities around the world are struggling with questions of resilience. Resilience, at its core, is about desirable states of the urban social-ecological system and understanding how to sustain those states in an uncertain and tumultuous future. How do physical conditions ecological processes, social objectives, human politics, and history shape the prospects for resilience? Most books set out "the answer." This book sets out a process of grappling with holistic resilience from multiple perspectives, drawing on the insights and experiences of more than fifty Scholars and practitioners working together to make Jamaica Bay in New York-City an example for the world. Prospects for Resilience establishes a framework for understanding resilience practice in urban watersheds. Using Jamaica Bay, the largest contiguous natural area in New York, home to millions of New Yorkers, and a hub of global air travel with John F.Kennedy International Airport, the authors demonstrate how various components of social ecological systems interact, ranging from climatic factors to plant populations to human demographics. They also highlight essential tools for creating resilient Watersheds, including monitoring and identifying system indicators; computer modelling; green infrastructure; and decision science methods. Finally, they look at the role and importance of a "boundary organisation" like the new Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay in coordinating and facilitating resilience work, and consider significant research questions and prospects for the future-of urban watersheds. Prospects for Resilience sets forth an essential foundation of information and advice for researchers, urban planners, students and others who need to create more resilient cities that work with, not against, nature.

Urban areas are home to over half the world's people and are at the forefront of the climate change issue. The need for a global research effort to establish the current understanding of climate change adaptation and mitigation at the city level is urgent. To meet this goal a coalition of international researchers - the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) - was formed at the time of the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York in 2007. This book is the First UCCRN Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities. The authors are all international experts from a diverse range of cities with varying socio-economic conditions, from both the developing and developed world. It is invaluable for mayors, city officials and policymakers; urban sustainability officers and urban planners; and researchers, professors and advanced students.