A Region Recovers: Planning for Resilience after Superstorm Sandy

2012’s Superstorm Sandy had a devastating impact on the New York City metropolitan region, including the suburban Long Island coast and the New Jersey shore. Given the size, density, complexity, and diversity of the region, many approaches have been used to address poststorm recovery. Planning has been central to these efforts. Using in-depth interviews with recovery stakeholders, this analysis of the planning responses to Sandy illustrates what an emergent model of resilient recovery planning looks like and highlights the kinds of resources and approaches that help facilitate this approach. We argue that preexisting planning capacity, strong political leadership, and nongovernmental funding support were critically important aspects of resilience-focused Sandy recovery planning processes.