We are living in a man-made era called Anthropocene, where global warming is its most emblematic crisis and cities are the engines of economic growth and social change. The paradox is that the structures that have made its development possible are nowadays responsible for their lack of resilience. In this context of an over- designed world we may think that this is consequence of bad design. This is even more evident in coastal areas where more than a billion people live. Many of them have already suffered the catastrophic effects of climate change, but all of them are increasingly vulnerable.

Thus, it is necessary a renewed conceptual framework for coastal planning and design that recognizes the coast as complex adaptive socio-ecological systems with the capacity and knowledge to change and adapt to face climate change effects. As a result of this conceptual reformulation special concepts arise which are directly linked to a vocabulary that is unknown in some cases and even inexistent in some others. This is the aim of the Coastal resilience lexicon for cities.

Because prior to the physical changes to promote coastal resilience it becomes essential a conceptual metamorphosis supported by its own semantics, generated through design. Both technical and scientific languages remain always alive and their evolution has addressed their own adaptation to different contexts and societies along the centuries, shaping the substrate of its culture.

The preliminary taxonomy of design families for coastal resilience proposed is the result of the study of strategies and design structures developed in cities worldwide attending to the its hazards under a changing climate. The site-specific development of these new structures will be capable of transforming the demand for simple objects (projects or plans) in renewed coastal landscapes: hybrids of nature and culture, hand in hand with design and technology.