As urban coastal communities face increasingly concentrated hazard risks, governments at all levels are recognizing the need for long-term adaption through land use planning and management, a critical policy domain to build urban resilience to disasters. Moreover, by linking hazards risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives, land use planning offers a coherent strategic approach to long-term risk management. Yet, there is little knowledge of specific strategies employed by local governments that align with such an approach. Further, while catastrophic events can trigger reorganization in land use systems and modify long-term land use trajectories, such land use transitions are not well understood. Our comprehension of specific long-term local land use adaptation strategies after catastrophic events thus remains limited. As a result, this study proposes to compare and assess local land use adaptation among urban coastal communities after catastrophic events and the land use policy frameworks that inform them in Japan and the United States. The study compares coastal cities impacted by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan and by the 2012 Hurricane Sandy in the United States. In doing so the long-term research goal in this study is to advance scholarship on land use policy and planning mechanisms that are employed to strengthen urban resilience to hazards in general. The objective in this proposal is to advance knowledge and understanding of long-term local land use adaptation initiatives specifically after disasters. The focus on hazard risks in coastal cities makes the study contemporary, while the comparison of land use adaptation initiatives in Japan and the United States provides the study with a comparative dimension on land use planning and management, a key policy domain. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods and involves multiple visits to the study sites. Qualitative data from interviews and public documents on reconstruction plans will be used to identify land use change initiatives, assess factors that can lead to land use change decisions after a disaster, and trace local decision-making processes. Quantitative spatial analysis using GIS data on land cover and parcel level land use will be conducted to calculate changes in land use types prior to the disaster at each study site and compare to proposed land use plans in order to map land use change. A combination of within- and cross-case analysis using matrices will be carried out to provide insight into land use adaptation within each study site and on the similarities and differences in land use adaptation across sites in Japan and the United States. Findings from the study will substantially contribute to a better understanding of land use change after disasters, on land use policy that inform local land use change, and on local land use adaptation strategies to hazards and climate change risks.