Cities Fall Short on Preparing for Disaster

The first game of this year’s World Series earned a dubious distinction for the highest temperature ever recorded at the Fall Classic. At 103 degrees, the temperature at 5 p.m. Tuesday in Los Angeles was far above the previous record of 94 degrees set in Phoenix in 2001. Up the California coast, San Luis Obispo matched the highest temperature ever recorded in the U.S. so late in the calendar year. This exceptional heat is only one of the ways in which cities are experiencing climate change. Too few are prepared for what's in store.

Sea-level rise is another problem. Cape Coral, Florida, the fastest-growing city in the U.S., for example, is also “a precarious civilization engineered out of a watery wilderness” that one big storm could wipe off the map. Urban vulnerability in the face of rising seas and ever-more-intense storms isn’t unique to Florida, either.