Information infrastructures have become integral components of policy debates related to climate change and sustainability. To better understand this relationship, we studied the tools used to forecast and respond to sea-level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area, where active debates on how to best prepare for this issues are underway and will have important consequences for the future of the region. Drawing on 18 months of qualitative research we argue that competing visions of the problem are intimately intertwined with different elements of information infrastructure and beliefs about the role of data in policymaking. Current infrastructure in the region, far from being a neutral actor in these debates, exhibits an infrastructural bias, privileging some approaches over others. We identify some of the tactics that community organizations deploy to subvert the claims of sea-level rise experts and advance their own perspective, which prioritizes considerations of justice over technical expertise.
The scale and scope of climate change has triggered widespread acknowledgement of the need to adapt to it. Out of recent work attempting to understand, define, and contribute to the family of concepts related to adaptation efforts, considerable contributions and research have emerged. Yet, the field of climate adaptation constantly grapples with complex ideas whose relational interplay is not always clear. Similarly, understanding how applied climate change adaptation efforts unfold through planning processes that are embedded in broader institutional settings can be difficult to apprehend. We present a review of important theory, themes, and terms evident in the literature of spatial planning and climate change adaptation to integrate them and synthesize a conceptual framework illustrating their dynamic interplay. This leads to consideration of how institutions, urban governance, and the practice of planning are involved, and evolving, in shaping climate adaptation efforts. While examining the practice of adaptation planning is useful in framing how core climate change concepts are related, the role of institutional processes in shaping and defining these concepts—and adaptation planning itself—remains complex. Our framework presents a useful tool for approaching and improving an understanding of the interactive relationships of central climate change adaptation concepts, with implications for future work focused on change within the domains of planning and institutions addressing challenges in the climate change era.
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