September 10, 2026

Guide to Nature-Based Infrastructure in the Bay Area

Any talk of infrastructure usually brings to mind roads, bridges, pipelines, and potholes. It suggests big, bulky, costly, and grey. Visions of storm drains and culverts, cement mixers and backhoes, seawalls and tide gates dance before our eyes.

But in the San Francisco Bay Area, as the region confronts rising sea levels and wetter storms, this infrastructure is being reinvented. Engineers and scientists are using different materials and different designs to make grey infrastructure bluer and greener. To soften the hard edges with plants and more absorbent and moveable materials. To use oyster reefs and gravel beaches and humpbacked levees to make our shores more resilient to flooding.

This “nature-based” infrastructure isn’t a new thing, but it’s trending. In this new guide, KneeDeep distills the basics about horizontal levees, living seawalls, gravel beaches, and more, and translates technicalities into an easy access guide to infrastructure resilient to change right here in our backyard. Photo: Karl Nielsen; Map: SFEI & Darren Campeau

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S U M M I T

Local Leaders Discuss How Nature Can Help California's Coast Weather Fire and Floods

Climate change is giving the upper hand to the winds, weather, and water we spend so much time trying to control.

In recent weeks, like a mass shooting, intense floods and wind took aim across our country and abroad, sweeping away our puny homes, felling trees, sending rocks and water caterwauling down canyons from Zion to Nepal, and hammering Long Beach with hurricane-strength waves here at home. And this right after a summer of fire and heat.

"The fact is that a lot of our communities and infrastructure were never built with nature in mind, and as nature becomes more unstable from climate change, we're increasingly vulnerable," California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot said in an interview after a September 2 summit hosted by his agency and the Nature Conservancy at the Metro Center in San Francisco.

Attended by more than 100 Bay Area leaders in climate adaptation policy, funding, and project implementation, the summit sought to identify ways nature-based solutions can improve the resilience of the California coast to climate change. Photo: Steve Kuehl

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C H A T T E R

Check out KneeDeep's growing shortlist of climate adaptation and resilience specialists, resources, plans, organizations, and authorities for the San Francisco Bay Area.

Help us fill out our hub. Send ideas and resources!

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Our September 2026 paper zine is out! The zine offers nine stories in short form, an easy introduction to KneeDeep, and local climate resilience news for the casual reader or busy professional.

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