Currently 40% of the world’s human population lives within 100km of a coast. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicting that sea levels will rise between 0.52 and 0.98m by 2100, and with increasing climate change induced extreme weather events affecting urban settings, the ways in which people reside in coastal areas needs to be addressed. As water levels rise, both permanently through sea level rise, and temporarily through storm surge events, areas of high population in low lying areas will have to reconsider their typical housing and infrastructure design methods, and/or their lifestyles to address this more frequent or potentially permanent influx of water into towns and cities.