Speaker
Description
As extreme weather events are becoming more common, the urgency to transform cities worldwide to become more resilient and adaptive is steadily increasing. Both in literature and practice nature-based solutions (NBS) have been identified as a key approach to making cities more adaptive, as they offer multiple co-benefits such as recreation, biodiversity, aesthetic qualities, and health improvement in often dense urban neighborhoods. However, their implementation remains slow and mostly limited to urban experimentation or pilot projects, while the need to scale-up NBS is enormous. In this contribution we ask what kind of planning is needed to accelerate the uptake of nature based solutions in adaptation plans. Spatial planning has repeatedly been identified as a key tool to govern urban adaptation to climate change in an urban context. Yet, especially in the West, spatial planning has often been reduced to mechanisms of control or prevention based on policy, codes and/or regulation, requiring private initiatives to lead urban transformations. This reliance on private initiatives to drive urban transformation has rendered spatial planning more ‘passive’ than ‘active’ and less oriented toward implementation.
Our research is based on the results of the FWO (Research Foundation Flanders) funded research project ‘InnoFiNS’ on planning and financing NBS in four Flemish cities (the northern region of Belgium). This contribution focuses on the cities of Genk and Antwerp specifically, as both have developed spatial visions related to ‘water strategies’ based on NBS to become more adaptive, and both are now focusing on upscaling implementation. Despite both cities working in a context of austerity, they have each developed strategies to acquire resources, expand collaborative partnerships (both public and private), and seize opportunities to maximize implementation. Additionally, spatial planners involved in both cities are continuously expanding their knowledge base, both within partnerships and through learning-by-doing.
In conclusion, we argue that accelerating the adoption and implementation of NBS requires cities to adopt more proactive and entrepreneurial planning approaches. Developing climate-adaptive cities necessitates innovative transformations of the urban landscape-infrastructure layer. Current project-based practices, in which NBS development is negotiated as part of private developments, alongside ‘passive planning,’ are no longer sufficient.
References
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| Keywords | Climate change adaptation, Nature-based solutions, urban planning, urban intrapreneurialism |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
