This panel provides a critical overview of different approaches to dealing with the

challenges faced by and opportunities available to contemporary coastal cities:

Over 400 million people around the world live less than five metres above sea

level. With predicted rises in sea level, people living in these coastal settlements

will experience many detrimental effects, including loss of land, the impacts of

more intense storm surges, deterioration of urban and natural environments,

infrastructure vulnerabilities, human health risks, food insecurity and,

consequently, profound climate-related existential threats.

Developing and applying new digital and physical models in combination with

traditional research methods and adaptable design strategies is a key feature of

the methodological innovations pioneered by the presenting members of the

SeaCities group. This holistic research approach—that spans and includes the

disciplines of engineering, architecture and urban design, urban and regional

planning and other environmental sciences—enables research in the group to

develop new approaches to building with and for nature, to create ecosystem-

based developments on land and sea that respond to the challenges faced by

coastal communities in an adaptive and compatible fashion.

The transition from terrestrial to amphibious to aquatic developments creates

exciting design opportunities that can relieve land-based population pressures and

foster innovative development solutions. Furthermore, it shifts the focus of

research and its application from defining and managing increasing risks for

coastal communities towards the exploration and development of novel design,

engineering, ecological and infrastructure solutions. These can seek to blend and

merge the sea and land environments in a productive and sustainable fashion.

(see also Springer book SeaCities: Urban Tactics for Sea-Level Rise by Joerg

Baumeister et al.; 2021)

Challenged to Adapt: coastal edges and future mortality

In 2020 world travel changed, with the imminent disaster of now, where the exploration of
hope in our surrounding environments is ever more imperative in how we can adapt for
future change. “Dying is pointless,” Baudrillard once wrote. "You have to know how to
disappear." Through an artistic lens, this conversation brings the aquatic edge and its
mortality into focus. With a backdrop of video projections, the narrative begins with a tool-
kit for buoyancy in Count the Waves (2015) and then meditates on The Slow Decline
(2013), where a journey underwater unfolds. Islands come into focus with Expedition to
Paradise Adrift (2016), considering islands as dreamlands and graveyards. As world
ecological disasters increase, should we be building a boat or explore adapted ecological
edges? In considering Noah’s Ark Problem, we must consider a biodiversity of
explorations of the ecological argument that our understanding of the world we inhabit is
formed by our surroundings and actions, rather than being derived from any constructed
“nature.” This allows us to further explore new landscapes and ecological designs while
developing dreams on coastal edges which Bellotto considers in the video Challenged to
Adapt (2021). To be an anchor and not a mirage, it considers how to (re)frame or consider
the way forward through environmental and social uncertainties, developing dreams which
reach new island or coastal destinations in the future, before we ourselves disappear.