In 2020, ReMain Nantucket announced that five universities that will participate in the Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge during the spring 2021 semester to address sea level rise: University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, University of Miami School of Architecture, The School of Architecture at Northeastern University and Yale School of Architecture. 

With the goal of inspiring Nantucket and other coastal communities around the world to envision innovative adaptations to sea level rise, Envision Resilience brings together graduate students from five geographically diverse universities to collaboratively re-imagine the Nantucket waterfront. Each school participating in the spring 2021 design studio will assemble a team of eight to 10 students from across disciplines, who will be tasked with identifying threats, researching possible solutions and proposing adaptive pathways forward. Equipped with the latest climate research, planning guidelines and an expert cohort of 23 Nantucket advisors, students will be encouraged to engage with community members to better understand the unique challenges of the Island.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “high” sea level rise projections, which the Town of Nantucket has adopted for planning purposes, predict the Island will regularly see 4.13 feet of water above local mean sea level rise by 2060, 6.36 feet by 2080 and 9.25 feet by 2100. Fortunately, the multidisciplinary nature of the challenge promises holistic insight to the unique complexities coastal communities face with rising sea levels, especially since the teams will be guided by leaders in the field: Jeff Carney of the University of Florida, Chris Reed and Alysoun Wright of Harvard, Sonia Chao of the University of Miami, Sara Carr and Cullen Meves of Northeastern and Alan Plattus and Andrei Harwell of Yale.