INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE
URBAN CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Homework for planners & architects William Veerbeek Delft Institute for Water Education Delft / The Netherlands
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While architects and urban designers have embraced the topic of sustainability, a legitimate question is how their proposal actually contributes to climateresilient cities. Climate resilience typically refers to the ability to resist, cope, recover and adapt to an increasing amplitude and frequency of extreme weather events (de Bruin et al, 2017). This is obviously important since an increasing number of cities are experiencing such events. These days, every architectural rendering seems to be filled with vegetation; complete forests appear on the roofs of apartment blocks, extend over balconies to ultimately cover public spaces which are inhabited by a diverse crowd of cyclists, skaters and joggers that celebrate these garden cities as if it were the 1930s. Obviously, a few things changed over the past century. Unprecedented urban growth has resulted in a vast urban landscape currently hosting around 56% of the world’s population (UN, 2018). Megacities like Dhaka, Lagos or Manila are covered with high-density built-up areas where
ageing public utilities are barely able to provide basic services, let alone manage the impacts of extreme weather events that are becoming the new normal due to climate change. This has created an increasing discrepancy between a reinvented green urban utopianism promoted by designers and the actual realities of many urban areas where climate risks increasingly threaten a sustainable future. In order to make a serious contribution to climate adaptation, a systems approach needs to be adopted in which urban climate is managed throughout all scale levels (e.g. Zevenbergen et al, 2008), i.e. from the building level to the level of urban design and planning. Yet, this transition might take years and requires not only a rethinking of the discipline but also institutional changes as well as different financing models. In the meantime, it might be prudent to propose a set of actions based on insights obtained from years of international work in urban climate adaptation. These actions could be regarded as “homework for architects, urban designers and planners�.
