Frankly, TCNs are fairly irrelevant, at least in the US.  We're lucky if we can get cities across a state boundary to work together!  I think you can find literature describing how they could work, I have seen very little on them actually working.  Perhaps more fruitful would be an investigation of barriers to them working:  $, language, culture, laws and regulatory regimes...one of the biggest barriers is actually our lack of knowledge about the translation of data to action.  I've tried to provide some thoughts in my recent blogs at www.resilientus.org but these are certainly not validated by experience and are simply my attempt to synthesize both my own experiences and what I've read in the literature. 

The crux of the problem is that we haven't adequately understood community action.  Academia has focused on some inchoate collaborative processes that are poor representations (IMO) of what actually happens.  They pay too much attention to the "horizontal" gathering of information and defining of goals and too little to how (and even if!) these goals are achieved through the "vertical" hierarchies that actually act.

Kenneth, I recently moved from Norfolk, VA, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Not in retreat of sea-level rise but with work. While living in the Hampton Roads area I saw first-hand the resistance you describe. I looked at the political, economic, and social factors competing for the status quo and change and was fascinated by the tenacity of ideology over data.  Thank you for your thoughts.

Hello Claudia,

I have no direct answer to your question, but the city of Bologna has a project about adaptation to climate change with the words "resilient city" in the title so perhaps you'll find something of interest here (partly in english)

http://www.blueap.eu/site/category/blueap/

Claudia,

Nauru (voted to be the happiest place on earth? a few years ago) has just started a resilience program. This island nation is not far from you now.