b'Central Coast and Climate Change: designing resilient futures through scenario planningIn 2019 students from the Master of Urban Development & Design Studio 2 and the Master of Landscape Architecture City as Site class addressed the challenge of developing strategies for increasing the urban resilience of communities surrounding Brisbane Water on the Central Coast of NSW. Brisbane Water is an estuarine environment of ecological richness and diversity. It orientates the southern communities of the central coast. Some communities such as Woy Woy were founded one hundred years ago on precarious sand dune Dr Scott Hawken landscapes prone to areal flooding. Others such as Saratoga, have evolved over recent decades on low lying land through development processes that have been largely blind to the looming dangers of climate change. Such developments, precarious as they are, are symptomatic of what the contemporary writer Amitav Ghosh has called a great derangement in the face of climate change realities (Ghosh 2016).The local folklore of the Central Coast is full of stories of islands appearing, of collapsing sandbanks of floods and fires. In Ghoshs (2016, p.6) words this is a landscape so dynamic that . . . I do believe it to be true that the landscape here is demonstrably alive, that it does not exist solely or even incidentally, as a stage for the enactment of human history; that it is [itself] a protagonist. Although the Central Coast local government has developed a climate resilience policy the risks at hand are unpredictable and dynamic, blindsiding local communities. In 2020 Central Coast Council was evacuated from the council office block due to smoke setting the alarms off and compromising the risk management systems of the building. Other communities within the area are regularly flooded with the stormwater systems dysfunctional with rising tidal waters and storm surges. The recent national report on climate change risks to Australias coastal built environment indicated that the number of uninsurable addresses in Australia is projected to double by 2100 to nearly 720,000 - or 1 in 20 - if no action is taken to mitigate the increasing risks (Mallon et al 2019). Local governments in Australia are caught between managing their residents safety in the face of increasing hazard risks, and the political and financial risk of private and public property devaluation. Increasing insurance premiums and the risk of property devaluation 53P3-20200301-SYDNEY STUDIO.indd 18 2020/3/8 11:22:10'