Climate change impacts are now a major problem faced by cities and their planners. The imperative to adapt cities to the impacts of climate change is strengthening both in Australia and internationally. This adaptation task involves an array of urban institutional actors. One of the key actors is the private development sector which undertakes the majority of urban development in Australia. The urban development sector is also a large economic sector and operates a mix of institutional and spatial scales and capabilities. This paper presents a framework-centred on diversity and the central role of risk-for conceptualising the climate change adaptation challenge in private real estate development.