Multi-sited assessment of sea-level rise exposure and planning responses in community defined-historic places

As coastal communities confront accelerating sea-level rise, planning practice faces a growing tension between preserving heritage and ensuring climate resilience. A critical gap exists regarding how designation practice has hampered the integration of community-defined historic places (sites whose significance is rooted in local narratives, social relationships, working landscapes, and social continuity) into local hazard resilience planning systems. This study evaluates 2050 SLR exposure across three historic coastal places in South Carolina and assesses how local planning documents respond to these modeled risks. Using GIS-based Enhanced Bathtub Modeling, plan evaluation, and computational text analysis, the study identifies three findings revealing a protection gap. First, physical exposure is heterogeneous and operates through multiple mechanisms: direct inundation of vernacular fabric, widespread areal flooding, and lifeline severance that isolates communities even when standing fabric remains dry, each capable of dissolving intangible heritage. Second, planning documents both in their factual basis and their stated goals omit socially embedded values central to community-defined historic places, including narratives, gathering spaces, procession routes, working waterfronts, and place attachment. Third, network-based text analysis shows preservation concepts occupying peripheral positions within local resilience discourse, a marginalization that echoes the fragmented coordination observed across planning agencies. The results call for planning approaches that integrate equitable, people-centered preservation into long-range adaptation strategies, even where some loss is unavoidable.