Assessing local land use planning's awareness, analysis, and actions for climate change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous larger-scale climate policy studies to the local jurisdiction level to evaluate local land use planning capacity for climate change. Design/methodology/approach – This paper evaluated 53 recently developed local comprehensive land use plans in California and analyzes how well these plans recognized the concepts of climate change and prepared for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Findings – The descriptive results show that local land use plans reflect very low awareness and little analysis for climate change; however, the actions for climate change varied widely in scope and content in their plans. Originality/value – This paper provides policymakers important empirical evidence to improve local land use planning capacities for climate change.