In the face of accelerating sea-level rise, people continue to live near anddevelop the coast. In the United States, we have chosen adaptation andprotection, via coastal defenses, over retreat from the coast despite theunsustainable nature of efforts to rebuild our towns after storms. Coastalresilience has emerged as the dominant post-disaster narrative and hasreinvigorated efforts to help our coasts recover from storms, but the application oftheory-based principles of coastal resilience remains unclear. Here, I show thatcoastal resilience plans incorporate theory-based elements of coastal resiliencesignificantly more than beach management plans. I reviewed over 3,000 pagesin 22 planning documents and recorded use of 27 management techniques infive categories associated with coastal resilience. A Mann-Whiney U test foundthat resilience plans (n=10) contained significantly more (p < 0.05) techniquesthan beach management plans (n=12) overall, but none of the differences in planscores was significant when examined by category of technique. This researchuncovers inadequacies of the current level of adaptation for sea-level rise,challenges the current process of coastal land use planning, and suggestsimprovements municipalities can implement to maximize impacts of coastalresilience planning such as developing holistic, diverse plans that include socioeconomicresilience and collaboration between practitioners and theorists.