MON-A03: Soft Retreat: Balancing Risk, Recreation, and Resilience on the Island of Nantucket

Monday, October 30, 2023

9:00am – 10:30am CT

1.50 PDH, LA CES/HSW, AICP, FL, NY/HSW

Lead Speaker(s)

Gena Morgis, ASLA

Senior Designer
SCAPE Landscape Architecture
New York , New York

Speaker(s)

Jesse A. Bell

Executive Director
Nantucket Islands Land Bank
Nantucket, Massachusetts
Kirk Bosma, PE

Senior Coastal Engineer
Woods Hole Group
Bourne, Massachusetts

What does retreat look like in communities defined by their relationship with the coast? On Nantucket, a strategic transformation of public lands led by a local land bank lays out a playbook—demonstrating how communities can navigate complex risk-reduction needs while expanding access to culturally significant shorelines.

Learning Outcomes:

Learn how land conservation programs (specifically land banks) acquire, hold, and manage public property along the waterfront, and how landscape architects can support this work.
Understand the design process of a multidisciplinary team, how coastal modeling informs resilient design, and how landscape architects work with coastal modelers.
Explore an expanded definition of “retreat” and discuss design strategies that balance transformations of site use with continued access to coastlines vulnerable to flood risk.
Understand the importance of establishing a comprehensive design vision that prioritizes public access in near-term and long-term conditions, accounting for the realities of a climate-changed future.