Water has shaped everything about Charleston's identity since its 1670 founding: its iconic urban character, the slave trade and cultivation of Carolina Gold, and its cuisine and port-based economy. But new water risks are rising. In Charleston Harbor, over 70% of recorded major tidal floods have occurred since 2015. The City saw its highest-ever non-tropical tide in December 2023. By 2050, parts of Charleston may be underwater weekly.

This new era accelerates an existential question for the historic city, posed succinctly by Charleston’s Chief Resilience Officer Dale Morris: how do we stay here? In 2019, the City of Charleston and the Historic Charleston Foundation invited a team led by New Orleans-based Waggonner & Ball to convene Dutch Dialogues® Charleston, a collaborative process to develop new approaches to preservation and adaptation. Dutch Dialogues was conceived by the firm with Dale Morris, then with the Royal Netherlands Embassy, after Hurricane Katrina to transform water from threat to asset.

As in New Orleans, the Charleston Dialogues unified diverse stakeholders and developed a new paradigm for the future. Following the Dialogues, the City embarked on a suite of new policies and plans supported by the same team, including a Comprehensive Plan and elevation-based zoning code, a Coastal Storm Risk Management study of the historic peninsula with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the equity-centered Comprehensive, Integrated Water Plan. Charleston’s approach is a model for other coastal cities seeking to answer the question—how do we stay here?—while preserving their identity, culture, and inherent value.