Long Beach Is/Could Be: Place-Based Scenarios for a Cultural Landscape in a Changing Climate
On Saturday, February 1st TownGreen sponsored a scenario planning workshop to discuss coastal climate adaptation on Long Beach in Rockport. Kira Clingen, lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, led the workshop. Scenario planning is a form of strategic planning used to build models that shift from probability to plausibility in situations with high degrees of uncertainty. This type of planning brings together different voices and perspectives to discuss relevant issues through the lens of short plausible futures, or scenarios. These scenarios are used to generate, understand, and assess the value of different strategies.
The aim of the workshop was not to make any type of decision for Long Beach but to open a discussion about the built environment at Long Beach. The intent was to engage in good-faith debate, and to collaboratively discuss how the Long Beach landscape has changed, is changing, and might continue to change.
The scenarios on which the workshop focused were produced as part of a research project at Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Office for Urbanization. This is an exploratory scenario planning report, meaning there is no specific, preferred future in any of the scenarios. Instead, the report seeks to inform readers about the past, present, and future of the built environment and ecosystems at Long Beach, and to open discussion about the beach.
The report (click here) is split into two sections that can be read together or individually.
The first part, Long Beach Is…? (pages 15-182) is a cultural landscape story that uses a series of questions and visual storytelling to build “climate landscape literacy” about how this place has changed, is changing, and will continue to change, and to reveal the cultural value systems that have shaped Long Beach. It proposes that building a shared understanding or “common ground” is the first step before making long-term climate adaptation decisions. The second part, Long Beach Could Be…? (pages 183-268) is a series of six place-based scenarios or plausible futures for Long Beach that focus on the built environment, natural systems, and physical infrastructures.
During the workshop, Kira assigned participants to “represent” one of these six scenarios (pages 221-268) and asked them to debate the relative pros and cons of that specific scenario in a small group using maps, cross-sections, and architectural drawings that she provided to guide the discussion. At the end of the workshop, she asked the participants to share their small group discussions. At the end of the workshop, a straw poll found that 83% of the participants favored scenarios that would relocate some or all of the cottages. Only one participant favored renewing all of the leases and only one participant favored selling Long Beach.
