William Veerbeek

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE

William Veerbeek

Delft Institute for Water Education Delft / The Netherlands

URBAN CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Homework for planners & architects

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”.

1. RETROFITTING THE EXISTING CITY

Vast urban areas are outdated and are gradually redeveloped. In Europe, currently, an estimated 70% of the building stock has reached the end of its lifecycle (ECTP 2005). Also elsewhere, urban redevelopment covers a substantial proportion of building activities. In China, for instance, extensive masshousing areas from the 1960s (Khrushchyovka’s) are rapidly developed into contemporary apartment blocks.Climate adaptation and resilience-thinking is often limited to the introduction of new standards or is adopted by a few flagship projects. Such a fragmented approach might lead to maladaptation, whereby solving a problem in one location increases those in adjacent areas. Homework: Refocus on the existing city and develop a transformation strategy as well as a climate resilient vision.

2. DESIGN IN SPACE, BUT ALSO IN

TIME

Developing climate resilience requires a continuous process of urban climate adaptation rather than the implementation of some one-off measures that will magically eradicate climaterelated risks. Furthermore, retrofitting the existing city will encompass a gradual urban transformation covering many decades. This means that in order to successfully integrate climate adaptation, designers need to explicitly address the temporal dimension as much as the spatial dimension (Veerbeek et al, 2012).Homework: Gain insight into urban dynamics: use urban renewal cycles to facilitate adaptation.

3. USE SCENARIO-BASED PROJECTIONS TO INFORM URBAN PLANNING

While after the financial crisis it became common practice to perform a stress-test on our banks, we do not yet apply the same for cities. This would give us insight into what conditions our cities fail to perform. Scenario development is an essential aspect of such an exercise. Typically designers tend to develop proposals for either business-as-usual projections or for a desired future. Yet, only rarely they design for different futures. They, therefore, fail to develop low- or no-regret measures that are independent of particular conditions. Homework: Assess design proposals under different (incl. extreme) conditions.

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4. RETROFIT HIGH-DENSITY URBAN AREAS

Urban climate adaptation is ironically often focussing on lowdensity suburban areas. The reason is simple: climate adaptation requires space, a commodity that is highly contested especially in many of the unplanned megacities in the global south. In high-density urban areas, the development of blue-green infrastructure (BGI) to increase climate resilience requires smart multifunctional solutions (e.g. Fletcher et al, 2015). While greening rooftops and facades might provide some space from BGI, rethinking public space as a climate management tool is essential. Homework: Rethink public space as a multifunctional BGI network that covers the entire city.

5. CLIMATE PROOFING CULTURAL HERITAGE

Climate change is challenging our urban areas with unprecedented weather events. In many cases, this means that our cultural heritage is under pressure (e.g. Sabbioni et al., 2010). While valuable ecosystems are under pressure especially from heat stress and droughts, urban cultural heritage is typically exposed to the effects of flooding. From the flooding of the historic buildings along the Seine in Paris or Prague to the Irrawaddy River flooding the historic temples of Bagan, in Myanmar. Homework: Develop proposals to protect cultural heritage against floods.

6. ADOPT CONTEMPORARY PLANNING FRAMEWORKS IN URBAN DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE

In most cases, architecture and urban planning are limited to the development of static design proposals without incorporating flexibility or alternative pathways. Yet, in policy development, many strategic planning frameworks that explicitly incorporate future uncertainties by developing robust as well as adaptive planning proposals (e.g. Walker et al, 2013)have been developed. Such methods could enrich the often one-dimensional design practise in which proposals are regarded as solutions instead of processes. This would imply a maturation of a research-by-design approach. Homework: Adapt and adopt adaptive planning methods into the domain of design. Most of all though, it requires designers not to use the topic of sustainability as mere window dressing, where green roofs and facades become a mere fad rather than a calculated means to, for instance, reduce stormwater peak flows or enhance evapotranspiration during hot periods. This requires close collaboration between experts from many domains. Many state-of-the-art strategic planning methods come, for instance, from the domain of policy and management. In social sciences, co-creation and transdisciplinary approaches are common practice. Hydraulic engineers, in turn, are able and willing to help thinking about the integration of urban drainage into public space design. Cross-collaboration does not limit creativity. Instead, it leads to an informed design process in which innovation is sought far beyond the limited discourse that often dominates the design disciplines. True, the above might require giving up some autonomy, but in return it will provide a much-needed contribution to the proactive adaptation of our cities to coping with future conditions.

REFERENCES

• De Bruijn, K., Buurman, J., Mens, M., Dahm, R., & Klijn, F. (2017). Resilience in practice: Five principles to enable societies to cope with extreme weather events. Environmental Science & Policy, 70, 21-30. • ECTP. European construction technology platform (2005) Strategic Research Agenda for the European Construction Sector: Achieving a sustainable and competitive construction sector by 2030. URL [http://www.cibworld.nl/ Accessed March 2019] • Fletcher, T. D., Shuster, W., Hunt, W. F., Ashley, R., Butler, D., Arthur, S., ... & Mikkelsen, P. S. (2015). SUDS, LID, BMPs, WSUD and more–The evolution and application of terminology surrounding urban drainage. Urban Water Journal, 12(7), 525-542. • Sabbioni, C., Brimblecombe, P., & Cassar, M. (Eds.). (2010). The atlas of climate change impact on European cultural heritage: scientific analysis and management strategies (No. 19). Anthem Press. • United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Divi-sion (2018). The World’s Cities in 2018—Data Booklet (ST/ESA/ SER.A/417) • Walker, W., Haasnoot, M., & Kwakkel, J. (2013). Adapt or perish: a review of planning approaches for adaptation under deep uncertainty. Sustainability, 5(3), 955-979. • Veerbeek, W., Ashley, R. M., Zevenbergen, C., Rijke, J., & Gersonius, B. (2012). Building adaptive capacity for flood proofing in urban areas through synergistic interventions. In WSUD 2012: Water sensitive urban design; Building the water sensitive community; 7th international conference on water sensitive urban design (p. 127). Engineers Australia. • Zevenbergen, C., Veerbeek, W., Gersonius, B., & Van Herk, S. (2008). Challenges in urban flood management: travelling across spatial and temporal scales. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 1(2), 81-88.