During the 20th century there has been a dramatic development of the coastline leading to substantial population growth in coastal areas worldwide. Given that this trend is expected to continue in the future it raises critical challenges as climate change is likely to exacerbate the exposure of coastal populations to extreme weather events. While the severity of extreme events affecting those areas may lead to widespread damage and disasters, they might generate opportunities for change to occur in their socioeconomic, political and organisational systems improving their adaptation to climate change. For example, opportunities might be created to review how those areas are planned and managed as well as to gather lessons from past extreme events.

This paper investigates how those opportunities emerge and are optimised by focusing on the Cardwell community in Far North Queensland, Australia. Like many other coastal locations worldwide, Cardwell is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and tropical cyclones leading to severe storm surges and intense rainfall events. Cardwell’s vulnerability to extreme weather events was confirmed in February 2011 when category five tropical cyclone Yasi affected the town causing widespread damage to its coastal community. Nonetheless, this community has begun a distinctive recovery phase by initiating the preparation of a long term strategy for its future independent of official planning processes of State and local governments.

The paper focuses on this distinctive recovery phase in which the Cardwell community took the initiative of developing a long term strategy to maximise the opportunities presented in the post Yasi reconstruction phase and beyond. The paper describes the collaborative process involved in developing this strategic planning initiative which culminated in the proposition of a long term vision as well as a set of priority actions to improve adaptation of the Cardwell community. We also discuss how this bottom-up, community initiated and led, visioning and strategic planning initiative, may contribute to inform the planning process for climate change adaptation in urbanised coastal areas.