Handling river risks is crucial within urban environment, whether it has concerned one-off events or long-term evolution. Riverine inhabitants and authorities had to struggle with different temporal rhythms, dealing either with isolated events, as floods or ice jams, or long-term river migration. An ongoing postdoctoral project, dealing with the impact of the LIA on Burgundian rivers in France, following multidisciplinary research programs on the Middle Loire River, bring opportunities to discuss the way riverside towns have dealt with river instability. It also enlightens the differences in rivers changes. On the Loire River, geomorphological analyses of the floodplain mostly underline the Loire channels' high instability. From Middle Ages to nowadays, these landscapes have deeply evolved, thus implying a dire need to adapt infrastructures (bridges,…) and even the urbanism itself on the moving banks. Archaeological remains in La Charité-sur-Loire or medieval accountings in Nevers have revealed accurately the local communities' endeavours intended to deal with the shifts of the channel position between the 13th and 14th century. Amongst them, two main technical and mind-set changes: the passage from wooden to stone bridges and the growing constraint on the channel's wanderings. If dealing with the aftermath is mandatory, historical sources mainly reveal the significant increase of beforehand works. The strategies developed to constrain the Loire's channels in their former positions, maintain the water flows under the bridge and at the port, reveal the great change in the way local then royal administrations dealt with their environment during the Little Ice Age. The issues are different on other river courses, as the Saône and Doubs rivers, where local communities mostly had to strike against floods. Solutions thus has been adapted to that particular risk and leading to a range of strategies aiming to lands and towns protection, with dikes and even bypass canals.