As Climate Threats Rise, These Cities Are Working To Become More Resilient (PHOTOS)

As our planet becomes increasingly more unpredictable, the world's big cities will need a plan to become more resilient to a slew of threats.

That's why the Rockefeller Foundation started an initiative that will help 100 cities become better prepared for the expected and unexpected challenges of the 21st century. Through the 100 Resilient Cities organization, the foundation is working with the cities chosen to develop plans for weather disasters, like drought, tropical storms and extreme heat, as well as other challenges created by extreme weather, like floods, fires and food and water shortages.

So far, 67 of the 100 cities have been chosen; you can browse through the first 67 cities in the slideshow at the top of this page. The final 33 cities will be announced at the end of this year.

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One of the 67 cities selected to participate in this program is New Orleans, which in August will mark 10 years since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. With the horrors of that storm behind them, New Orleans residents continue to work on a plan to ensure a similar disaster doesn't happen again.

"The city has been here a long time and has suffered tremendous obstacles over those three centuries," Herbert said, citing weather events, health crises and even a couple of times when the city burned down in the early years. "It has bounced back from those disasters and calamities, and New Orleans has always learned how to live within the environment that the city was settled by the French for strategic reasons."

In the 21st century, however, there are new challenges for the Big Easy. Climate change is pushing the seas higher and closer to the top of the levees that keep the city dry, and southeastern Louisiana is losing land at a rapid pace.

And 10 years after Katrina led to a massive failure of infrastructure that flooded the city and killed some 1,500 people, Hebert is thankful for a program like 100 Resilient Cities, which doesn't just focus on improving weather-related resilience, but also social and economic resilience.

"It allows us a platform to really start pulling together all of these seemingly disparate pieces into one line of thinking around how the city can be here for another three centuries," he said. "Most projects like this either look through the lens of the environment or look through the lens of infrastructure, or you have economic development on one side, but this pulls them all together to show that they're equally dependent on each other for cities to have a vibrant future."