Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In the face of climate change, design is increasingly implicated in environmental governance. Environmental governance necessitates the simplification of an otherwise complex and multi-scalar definition of ecosystems. Biophysical characteristics of ecosystems can be identified, and even measured to a certain extent through scientific instruments, but such knowledge does not consider the social and cultural hand in the making of those environments. In other words, environmental processes cannot be studied independently of how they are narrated, scientifically and otherwise. In this research I look at the various strategies along the coast of cities in Northern and Southern California, specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Los Angeles, and along the San Diego coastline, in response to the threat of rising sea level that threatens each coastal landscape’s heritage. Key to understanding how these strategies differ among the various cities and neighborhoods along the California coast are differences in the sociodemographic makeup of each community. When environmental policy is heavily directed by income, race, gender, ethnicity, and land tenure, the question of how we define community in the act of community building is a critical one.