<p> In the face of accelerating sea-level rise, people continue to live near and develop the coast. In the United States, we have chosen adaptation and protection, via coastal defenses, over retreat from the coast despite the unsustainable nature of efforts to rebuild our towns after storms. Coastal resilience has emerged as the dominant post-disaster narrative and has reinvigorated efforts to help our coasts recover from storms, but the application of theory-based principles of coastal resilience remains unclear. Here, I show that coastal resilience plans incorporate theory-based elements of coastal resilience significantly more than beach management plans. I reviewed over 3,000 pages in 22 planning documents and recorded use of 27 management techniques in five categories associated with coastal resilience. A Mann-Whiney U test found that resilience plans (n = 10) contained significantly more (p &lt; 0.05) techniques than beach management plans (n = 12) overall, but none of the differences in plan scores was significant when examined by category of technique. This research uncovers inadequacies of the current level of adaptation for sea-level rise, challenges the current process of coastal land use planning, and suggests improvements municipalities can implement to maximize impacts of coastal resilience planning such as developing holistic, diverse plans that include socioeconomic resilience and collaboration between practitioners and theorists.</p><p>