Urban climate resilience through socio-ecological planning: a case study in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

Climate change impacts, especially on coastal cities, can no longer be ignored and in order to avoid significant losses in the built environment, the economy, and, by consequence, human health and life, it is imperative to address these impacts. We extrapolate the three pathways to urban resilience (persistence, adaptation, and transformation), as a function of the interrelations among the design of built forms (urban and landscape design), blue and green infrastructure (ecosystems), and knowledge-to-action (inclusion of local people and their knowledge). Accordingly, four urban and landscape design theories that integrate urban ecosystems are identified and linked to urban resilience and to the local ecological knowledge (LEK) through an inclusive design process (the charrette). The model is then applied to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, a city that is increasingly subjected to intense storm surges and to sea level rise in Atlantic Canada, where a series of design charrettes integrated the LEK into urban climate resilience proposals that serve as policy recommendations for future action.