Introduction : Galveston Island and Hurricane Ike / W. Dwayne Jones -- Evolution of the Texas coast / John Anderson -- Storm surge : one of the world's foremost natural hazards / Hal Needham -- Reshaping Galveston Island after the 1900 hurricane / Jodi Wright-Gidley -- Resilient housing lessons from Katrina / Claudette Hanks Reichel -- Miami Beach rising above / Bruce A. Mowry -- Hurricane Harvey : arts and cultural recovery six months after the storm / Debbie McNulty -- The Dutch tradition of flood control : shifting attitudes toward flood risk reduction / B.L.M. "Bee" Kothuis and A.D. "Nikki" Brand -- Conclusion / Matthew Pelz

This new volume in the GCI's Readings in Conservation series brings together a selection of seminal writings on the conservation of historic cities. This book, the eighth in the Getty Conservation Institute’s Readings in Conservation series, fills a significant gap in the published literature on urban conservation. This topic is distinct from both heritage conservation and urban planning despite the recent growth of urbanism worldwide, no single volume has presented a comprehensive selection of these important writings until now. This anthology, profusely illustrated throughout, is organized into eight parts, covering such subjects as geographic diversity, reactions to the transformation of traditional cities, reading the historic city, the search for contextual continuities, the search for values, and the challenges of sustainability. With more than sixty-five texts, ranging from early polemics by Victor Hugo and John Ruskin to a generous selection of recent scholarship, this book thoroughly addresses regions around the globe. Each reading is introduced by short prefatory remarks explaining the rationale for its selection and the principal matters covered. The book will serve as an easy reference for administrators, professionals, teachers, and students faced with the day-to-day challenges confronting the historic city under siege by rampant development.

COVID-19 put a temporary stop to the crisis of overtourism. Yet there is no question that travel will resume; the only question is, when it does, what will it look like? Overtourism: Lessons for a Better Future charts a path toward tourism that is truly sustainable, focusing on the triple bottom line of people, planet, and prosperity. This practical book examines the causes and effects of overtourism before turning to emerging management strategies. Visitor education, traffic planning, and redirection to lesser known sites are among the measures that can protect the economic benefit of tourism without overwhelming local communities. As tourism revives around the world, these innovations will guide government agencies, parks officials, site managers, civic groups, environmental NGOs, tourism operators, and others with a stake in protecting our most iconic places.

The consequences of climate change, increasing storm surge, and rising sea levels are being seen and felt by coastal communities across the globe as hurricanes, coastal storms, and flooding increase in intensity and frequency. Understanding how coastal communities around the world have adapted to these challenging environments can help identify not only the strategies to better prepare our vulnerable cities, but also the attitudes that are most effective in producing constructive solutions. Protecting Historic Coastal Cities presents an overview of how historic communities in coastal environments understand and confront the unique challenges they face. It represents a variety of disciplines including historical preservation, public history, environmental science, engineering, and architecture. Authors explore communities that take a proactive approach to the special circumstance of living on a coast—historic preservation efforts in the midst of hurricane response, the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and the subsequent raising of Galveston Island, resilient housing initiatives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, aggressive public infrastructure changes in Miami Beach, and pioneering advances in flood protection in the Netherlands. Each disaster is different, and the unique characteristics of the event determine approaches to recovery as well as funding from both insurance and government. As we prepare for future disasters, we must understand the underlying conditions that make us vulnerable as human beings and recognize the links between the built environment and the natural environment. In Protecting Historic Coastal Cities, the authors assert that building resilient coastal communities requires a profound understanding of this relationship to confront the extreme conditions of living and working in coastal areas around the world.

Climate change is now creating enhanced risks of coastal erosion through storms and rising sea levels. This text provides a comprehensive review of the entire coastline of Europe, and provides a comparative analysis of the various erosion problems and solutions from across the continent.

Hurricane- and coastal-storm-related losses have increased substantially during the past century, largely due to increases in population and development in the most susceptible coastal areas. Climate change poses additional threats to coastal communities from sea level rise and possible increases in strength of the largest hurricanes. Several large cities in the United States have extensive assets at risk to coastal storms, along with countless smaller cities and developed areas. The devastation from Superstorm Sandy has heightened the nation's awareness of these vulnerabilities. What can we do to better prepare for and respond to the increasing risks of loss? Reducing Coastal Risk on the East and Gulf Coasts reviews the coastal risk-reduction strategies and levels of protection that have been used along the United States East and Gulf Coasts to reduce the impacts of coastal flooding associated with storm surges. This report evaluates their effectiveness in terms of economic return, protection of life safety, and minimization of environmental effects. According to this report, the vast majority of the funding for coastal risk-related issues is provided only after a disaster occurs. This report calls for the development of a national vision for coastal risk management that includes a long-term view, regional solutions, and recognition of the full array of economic, social, environmental, and life-safety benefits that come from risk reduction efforts. To support this vision, Reducing Coastal Risk states that a national coastal risk assessment is needed to identify those areas with the greatest risks that are high priorities for risk reduction efforts. The report discusses the implications of expanding the extent and levels of coastal storm surge protection in terms of operation and maintenance costs and the availability of resources. Reducing Coastal Risk recommends that benefit-cost analysis, constrained by acceptable risk criteria and other important environmental and social factors, be used as a framework for evaluating national investments in coastal risk reduction. The recommendations of this report will assist engineers, planners and policy makers at national, regional, state, and local levels to move from a nation that is primarily reactive to coastal disasters to one that invests wisely in coastal risk reduction and builds resilience among coastal communities.