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Normative future visioning for city resilience and development
... This information may, however, not be actionable https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00133-6 and, thus, are mostly climate science-led, top down 14,17,18 and overlook the aspirational climate imaginaries of affected actors [19][20][21] . Thus, they might inadvertently reproduce unjust climate futures, in which the impacts of climate change will continue to fall disproportionately on low-income and marginalized groups. ...
... For instance, normative future visioning aims to create pedagogical spaces where a range of social actors, including municipal government, organized civil society and private sector, are engaged in articulating desired and feasible urban adaptation pathways. Datasets generated by climate and social scientists and urban planners, and a set of questions on everyday life experiences and aspirations enable participants to craft their own ideas-plans and policies, with clarity on urban assets to change, preserve and protect-on desirable future cities 21,82 . This can help to set concrete priorities and measures for risk reduction and climate action, which could be implemented once options are tempered with considerations of probable and plausible futures. ...
... For instance, it is not uncommon for marginalized groups to reproduce dominant development imaginaries and aspire to conventional networked infrastructure (for example, asphalt roads), which could lead to high-carbon development pathways. Similarly, desires for greener cities also may incorporate visions of low-density neighborhoods, which in some contexts could lead to increased land and housing values and their associated effects (that is, green gentrification) 21 . Thus, aspirational storylines are powerful tools to create alternative narratives to climate catastrophe but must be developed carefully for pathways that are both desirable and just, and strategically incorporated into adaptation planning cycles for meaningful impact. ...
Managing climate change-related risks requires robust and actionable insights into future climates. Here we develop the plural climate storylines framework to complement existing physical climate storylines, which have strengthened the usability of climate projections yet struggled to generate action for just climate futures. By taking urban adaptation as a case in point, we illustrate the plural climate storylines framework through four complementary methodological schools that bring together multiple knowledges on complex social and climatic processes: power-sensitive storylines, decolonizing storylines, co-producing storylines and aspirational storylines. Our framework generates storylines with the potential to advance transformative policies and new pathways towards climate-just futures.
Read-only open access link: rdcu.be/dWEXZ
... First, engaging communities in decision-making processes, such as developing shared visions and goals, needs to be based on higher levels of participation (as per the IAP2 framework, see Figure 1) to foster motivation and responsibility. Participatory visioning and goal setting holds immense power as it empowers individuals and communities to shape their future (Pelling et al. 2023;West and Michie 2020). Involving all relevant stakeholders ensures diversity of perspectives, fosters inclusivity, and promotes transparency and accountability (Correia et al. 2023). ...
... Participants feel a sense of ownership and commitment, leading to increased motivation and cooperation (Nourikia and Zivdar 2020). Additionally, participatory goal setting enhances the relevance and feasibility of objectives, aligning them with the real needs and aspirations of the people involved (Pelling et al. 2023). As a result, it drives more effective decision-making, resource allocation, and implementation, ultimately leading to sustainable development, stronger partnerships, and positive societal transformations (West and Michie 2020;Pelling et al. 2023;Cernesson et al. 2005). ...
... Additionally, participatory goal setting enhances the relevance and feasibility of objectives, aligning them with the real needs and aspirations of the people involved (Pelling et al. 2023). As a result, it drives more effective decision-making, resource allocation, and implementation, ultimately leading to sustainable development, stronger partnerships, and positive societal transformations (West and Michie 2020;Pelling et al. 2023;Cernesson et al. 2005). ...
Melbourne is renowned for its urban waterways management. With the introduction of the Healthy Waterways strategy 2018–2028, decision-makers aimed to involve the community more collaboratively. However, the reality of doing so is complex, and outcomes have not always been as intended. We identify three dilemmas that limit the effectiveness of community collaboration, drawing on a study of how communities were involved in the governance of the Melbourne waterways of Merri Creek and Moonee Ponds Creek. The dilemmas are that: resources are stretched; a lack of focus and unclear responsibilities can undermine efforts; and the effectiveness of engagement practices is uncertain and depends on context. We argue that these dilemmas make community collaboration challenging and limit its potential for co-benefits. However, there is an opportunity to develop shared visions and goals that motivates ongoing action, drawing on the strengths of the community and choosing methods more purposefully with consideration of constraints, ensuring that the aims are both achieved and legitimate. This allows for the integration of fragmented resources, capacities, roles, and benefits into a central vision, fostering collaborative principles of transparency, responsibility, ownership, and accountability.
... First, engaging communities in decision-making processes, such as developing shared visions and goals, needs to be based on higher levels of participation (as per the IAP2 framework, see Figure 1) to foster motivation and responsibility. Participatory visioning and goal setting holds immense power as it empowers individuals and communities to shape their future (Pelling et al. 2023;West and Michie 2020). Involving all relevant stakeholders ensures diversity of perspectives, fosters inclusivity, and promotes transparency and accountability (Correia et al. 2023). ...
... Participants feel a sense of ownership and commitment, leading to increased motivation and cooperation (Nourikia and Zivdar 2020). Additionally, participatory goal setting enhances the relevance and feasibility of objectives, aligning them with the real needs and aspirations of the people involved (Pelling et al. 2023). As a result, it drives more effective decision-making, resource allocation, and implementation, ultimately leading to sustainable development, stronger partnerships, and positive societal transformations (West and Michie 2020;Pelling et al. 2023;Cernesson et al. 2005). ...
... Additionally, participatory goal setting enhances the relevance and feasibility of objectives, aligning them with the real needs and aspirations of the people involved (Pelling et al. 2023). As a result, it drives more effective decision-making, resource allocation, and implementation, ultimately leading to sustainable development, stronger partnerships, and positive societal transformations (West and Michie 2020;Pelling et al. 2023;Cernesson et al. 2005). ...
Melbourne is renowned for its urban waterways management. With the introduction of the Healthy Waterways strategy 2018–2028, decision-makers aimed to involve the community more collaboratively. However, the reality of doing so is complex, and outcomes have not always been as intended. We identify three dilemmas that limit the effectiveness of community collaboration, drawing on a study of how communities were involved in the governance of the Melbourne waterways of Merri Creek and Moonee Ponds Creek. The dilemmas are that: resources are stretched; a lack of focus and unclear responsibilities can undermine efforts; and the effectiveness of engagement practices is uncertain and depends on context. We argue that these dilemmas make community collaboration challenging and limit its potential for co-benefits. However, there is an opportunity to develop shared visions and goals that motivates ongoing action, drawing on the strengths of the community and choosing methods more purposefully with consideration of constraints, ensuring that the aims are both achieved and legitimate. This allows for the integration of fragmented resources, capacities, roles, and benefits into a central vision, fostering collaborative principles of transparency, responsibility, ownership, and accountability.
... However, there has been little empirical use of the concept of climate imaginaries applied to urban NbS in attempting to challenge dominant framings of (urban) adaptation , with recent research suggesting instead that adaptation planning has become increasingly homogenised (and globalised) over time (Westman and Castán Broto 2022;Westman et al. 2023). Analysing local urban climate imaginaries is therefore critical and timely (Nalau and Cobb 2022;Castán Broto et al. 2024;Pelling et al. 2024). Urban NbS make a particularly interesting application of the concept of urban imaginaries because of the unique entry point of urban NbS to adaptation that centres the importance of highly contextdependent human-nature relationships that contradict technocratic narratives on adaptation (Dorst et al. 2019;Pörtner et al. 2023;Rochell et al. 2024). 1 To fill this gap, and thus, understand how imaginaries, goals, and their evaluation connect with framing urban NbS to climate adaptation, we ask two interconnected research questions: (1) What does adaptation success mean in the context of urban NbS according to local NbS practitioners, and (2) whose and what types of knowledge are important for developing their definitions and assessing progress towards adaptation goals? ...
... A key challenge is to provide practical guidance on how these imaginaries can be incorporated into adaptation planning across governance levels in ways that are inclusive yet decisive. Progress is already being made, such as using normative future visioning tools to enhance local monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes (Pelling et al. 2024). ...
The emergence of nature-based solutions (NbS) in science, policy, and practice signals a paradigmatic shift in urban climate change adaptation, yet empirical investigations into its impact on adaptation definitions and progress tracking remain scarce. Addressing this gap, we conducted thematic analysis on semi-structured interviews (n = 15) with practitioners responsible for implementing and evaluating urban NbS in different countries. We provide a nuanced understanding of urban adaptation goals within urban NbS according to the insights from these practitioners, extending beyond hazard mitigation and towards cultivating and strengthening relationships between humans and nature. Tracking adaptation progress towards such relational adaptation goals requires acknowledging knowledge pluralism and the diversity of human-nature relations. We propose an alternative definition of adaptation supported by our data that aims to foster a more holistic approach to urban climate adaptation that accounts for the potential benefits of urban NbS across interconnected climate, biodiversity, and social goals.
... Similarly, to transform urban adaptation futures in the face of intensifying climate change, Pelling et al. (2023) have developed a research agenda around normative future visioning (NFV). This approach combines aspirational futures of urban communities affected by climate change with an in-depth understanding of context-specific urban planning regulations, trends and climate data to generate long-term adaptation plans that proliferate possibilities for alternative values and planning priorities. ...
... Engaging with questions about the possible, alternative, and desirable futures contributes to questioning assumptions about the inevitability of current and future socionatural configurations. Concurrently, centering research on desired futures can strengthen commitments to these futures by provoking stakeholders' reflections on how to achieve them and, potentially, reconfigure decision-making around these aspirations (Smith and Vasudevan 2017;Heynen and Ybarra 2021;Pelling et al. 2023;Willemin and Backhaus 2021). ...
This review highlights the potential of a political ecology that approaches socionatures more experimentally and speculatively. We first consider theoretical frameworks which can help elucidate a conceptual and methodological pathway for more experimental and speculative political ecology scholarship. Next, we bring together and systematize multiple threads of political ecology scholarship that already lean into experimentation and speculation. We highlight what we see as their potential, particularly focusing on ongoing struggles for climate and environmental justice. First, we conclude that experimental and speculative approaches are critical for laying the foundations of a future-oriented and reparative mode of critique that illuminates emerging possibilities for alternative worlds. Second, these approaches can generate new registers of consciousness that make room for hope, possibility, creativity, and action. Third, experimental and speculative approaches reconfigure political ecological praxis by fostering a more proactive role for the researcher in addressing socioecological challenges as they emerge. It is our hope that this intervention inspires others to do work that is intentionally more experimental or speculative, creating conditions that could potentially lead to a more equitable society in the present with ramifications for a more just future.
... Individual and collective visions and social expectations for a climate-adapted future (also called imaginaries) influence institutional arrangements for how adaptation is planned and executed, with real-life implications for policy processes and investment practices [1]. How future visions and imaginaries are produced and who gets to be part of this process is critical for defining successful adaptation and learning from on-the-ground practice [2][3][4]. Without careful consideration of whose and which views are included within adaptation planning and evaluation processes, there is a risk of privileging certain ways of seeing the world that can further create and reinforce structural inequality, vulnerability, and marginalisation within adaptation processes. Pluralistic and inclusive imaginaries emerge from collective processes of reflection, solidarity, and experimentation that acknowledge multiple visions of the future as well as experiences from the past [4]. ...
Imaginaries of adaptation are currently dominated by technocratic, homogenous, top-down approaches that hinder sustainable, just, and effective adaptation worldwide. We have identified three practices that contribute to this problem: (1) an assumption of universality in adaptation; (2) a neglect of pluralistic knowledge systems and values; and (3) an oversimplification of adaptation processes. These three practices have been found to lead to reproductions of vulnerabilities, unsustainable outcomes, or ephemeral changes. New ways of conceptualising and doing adaptation are necessary to expand imaginaries and visions around what adaptation can and cannot be. Through two examples (everyday adaptations and nature-based solutions), our review indicates that expanding or adopting alternative imaginaries of adaptation can help localise adaptation practice, particularly by acknowledging the need for multiple forms of knowledge and the iterative nature of adaptation governance processes.
... We show that low-income migrants are capable of imagining and articulating alternative or desired urban futures and can play an active role in eliciting solutions to contemporary urban challenges. This resonates with participatory research with low-income marginalised groups in other cities 49,50 . Indeed, experiences from earlier research in cities have demonstrated that participatory planning presents an opportunity for reorienting power relationships in cities and for redefining urban citizenship 50,51 . ...
New migrant populations in rapidly growing cities globally are often socially and politically marginalized, limiting their potential to contribute to the positive transformation of urban futures. Such marginalisation can potentially be overcome through deliberate efforts to build empathy between groups. Here we apply insights on empathic action to planning processes with the aim of diversifying planning processes to provide plural perspectives on risk and sustainability and giving marginalised groups opportunities to shape key decisions. We report on action research to examine whether empathic connection between urban planners and new migrant populations leads to processes that enhance and integrate new voices and perspectives. The intervention involved photo-elicitation interviews, focus groups and perspective exchange workshops over eighteen months of intensive engagement in Chattogram, Bangladesh. The findings demonstrate that empathy for diverse social groups has practical implications for sustainability where individuals have agency and feel empowered to enhance each other’s wellbeing.
... On the one hand, this approach draws on the global SSP narratives and database and builds on global and national socioeconomic development assumptions. On the other hand, bottom-up input from local stakeholders facilitates the identification of local political, technological, and social barriers and opportunities 21 . For example, investment and public resources rely on global and regional economic conditions, funding for public health services depends on national policies, and local infrastructure development depends on local and regional governmental planning. ...
Populations in many coastal urban areas are increasingly exposed to climate-related hazards. At the same time, the number of people residing in coastal cities is growing, and, especially in the Global South, these cities are characterised by rapid urbanisation and social inequality. However, the progress of adaptation is lagging, and there is a limited understanding of how future socioeconomic urban developments will affect cities’ social vulnerability and challenges to adaptation. We use the case study of Mumbai to apply a participatory scenario approach, in which we downscale the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) narratives to the local level. Our results stress the relevance of addressing social inequality in urban change processes across different sectors, including labour, housing, transport, and health and streamlining urban planning across different governance scales. Our study lays the ground for integrated modelling of future vulnerability and exposure scenarios and the development of local adaptation pathways.
Las iniciativas de investigación, planificación y gestión de riesgos en Quito se sustentan en esfuerzos colectivos de larga trayectoria. En este libro se ofrece un balance articulado en tres secciones. En la primera se documentan las principales nociones del riesgo: vulnerabilidad y amenaza. El enfoque de la segunda está en la gestión del riesgo, los instrumentos y la información disponibles, pero también las distintas visiones para comprenderlo e interpretarlo. En la tercera se exploran casos emblemáticos, con énfasis en los desafíos del proceso urbano de Quito.Mediante este ejercicio reflexivo, se pone en evidencia la brecha persistente entre la producción de conocimiento y las acciones para reducir la vulnerabilidad y encarar las amenazas. Se trata de una oportunidad para pensar nuevas estrategias de investigación, mejor vinculadas con las posibilidades y limitaciones de la gestión del riesgo en la ciudad.
Decision-making about and for climate change adaptation has fascinated the field of adaptation science for decades. We now have a solid set of decision-support tools, frameworks and approaches available to support decision-makers. Yet, in this piece, I argue that the black box of decision-making requires unravelling for us to better understand what heuristics (rule of thumb) are used about climate adaptation and how these impact the very decisions made. I also point out areas in need of more research including a new focus on decision quality, artificial intelligence and data, and the role of imagination in driving climate adaptation decision-making.
Las iniciativas de investigación, planificación y gestión de riesgos en Quito se sustentan en esfuerzos colectivos de larga trayectoria. En este libro se ofrece un balance articulado en tres secciones. En la primera se documentan las principales nociones del riesgo: vulnerabilidad y amenaza. El enfoque de la segunda está en la gestión del riesgo, los instrumentos y la información disponibles, pero también las distintas visiones para comprenderlo e interpretarlo. En la tercera se exploran casos emblemáticos, con énfasis en los desafíos del proceso urbano de Quito.
Mediante este ejercicio reflexivo, se pone en evidencia la brecha persistente entre la producción de conocimiento y las acciones para reducir la vulnerabilidad y encarar las amenazas. Se trata de una oportunidad para pensar nuevas estrategias de investigación, mejor vinculadas con las posibilidades y limitaciones de la gestión del riesgo en la ciudad.
Las iniciativas de investigación, planificación y gestión de riesgos en Quito se sustentan en esfuerzos colectivos de larga trayectoria. En este libro se ofrece un balance articulado en tres secciones. En la primera se documentan las principales nociones del riesgo: vulnerabilidad y amenaza. El enfoque de la segunda está en la gestión del riesgo, los instrumentos y la información disponibles, pero también las distintas visiones para comprenderlo e interpretarlo. En la tercera se exploran casos emblemáticos, con énfasis en los desafíos del proceso urbano de Quito.Mediante este ejercicio reflexivo, se pone en evidencia la brecha persistente entre la producción de conocimiento y las acciones para reducir la vulnerabilidad y encarar las amenazas. Se trata de una oportunidad para pensar nuevas estrategias de investigación, mejor vinculadas con las posibilidades y limitaciones de la gestión del riesgo en la ciudad.
This paper builds on the expansion of urban ecology from a biologically based discipline—ecology in the city—to an increasingly interdisciplinary field—ecology of the city—to a transdisciplinary, knowledge to action endeavor—an ecology for and with the city. We build on this “prepositional journey” by proposing a transformative shift in urban ecology, and we present a framework for how the field may continue this shift. We conceptualize that urban ecology is in a state of flux, and that this shift is needed to transform urban ecology into a more engaged and action based field, and one that includes a diversity of actors willing to participate in the future of their cities. In this transformative shift, these actors will engage, collaborate, and participate in a continuous spiral of knowledge → action → knowledge spiral and back to knowledge loop, with the goal of co producing sustainable and resilient solutions to myriad urban challenges. Our framework for this transformative shift includes three pathways: (1) a repeating knowledge → action → knowledge spiral of ideas, information, and solutions produced by a diverse community of agents of urban change working together in an “urban sandbox”; (2) incorporation of a social–ecological–technological systems framework in this spiral and expanding the spiral temporally to include the “deep future,” where future scenarios are based on a visioning of seemingly unimaginable or plausible future states of cities that are sustainable and resilient; and (3) the expansion of the spiral in space, to include rural areas and places that are not yet cities. The three interrelated pathways that define the transformative shift demonstrate the power of an urban ecology that has moved beyond urban systems science and into a realm where collaborations among diverse knowledges and voices are working together to understand cities and what is urban while producing sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges and envisioning futures of socially, ecologically, and technologically resilient cities. We present case study examples of each of the three pathways that make up this transformative shift in urban ecology and discuss both limitations and opportunities for future research and action with this transdisciplinary broadening of the field.
Unlabelled:
This paper explores how claims for transformative adaptation toward more equitable and sustainable societies can be assessed. We build on a theoretical framework describing transformative adaptation as it manifests across four core elements of the public-sector adaptation lifecycle: vision, planning, institutional frameworks, and interventions. For each element, we identify characteristics that can help track adaptation as transformative. Our purpose is to identify how governance systems can constrain or support transformative choices and thus enable targeted interventions. We demonstrate and test the usefulness of the framework with reference to three government-led adaptation projects of nature-based solutions (NBS): river restoration (Germany), forest conservation (China), and landslide risk reduction (Italy). Building on a desktop study and open-ended interviews, our analysis adds evidence to the view that transformation is not an abrupt system change, but a dynamic complex process that evolves over time. While each of the NBS cases fails to fulfill all the transformation characteristics, there are important transformative elements in their visions, planning, and interventions. There is a deficit, however, in the transformation of institutional frameworks. The cases show institutional commonalities in multi-scale and cross-sectoral (polycentric) collaboration as well as innovative processes for inclusive stakeholder engagement; yet, these arrangements are ad hoc, short-term, dependent on local champions, and lacking the permanency needed for upscaling. For the public sector, this result highlights the potential for establishing cross-competing priorities among agencies, cross-sectoral formal mechanisms, new dedicated institutions, and programmatic and regulatory mainstreaming.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-023-02066-7.
Background
‘Co-production’ is one of the key concepts in evidence-informed policy and practice – in terms of both its theoretical importance and its practical applications − being consistently discussed as the most effective strategy for mobilising evidence in policy and practice contexts. The concept of co-production was developed (almost) independently across multiple disciplines and has been employed in various policy and practice fields including environment, sustainability, and health.
Aims and objectives
This paper surveys the literature to identify different meanings of co-production across different disciplinary bodies of knowledge. Such exploration is aimed at identifying the key points of convergence and divergence across different disciplinary and theoretical traditions.
Methods
We performed a systematic search of Web of Science via a query designed to capture literature likely focusing on co-production, and then manually examined each document for relevance. Citation network analysis was then used to ‘map’ this literature by grouping papers into clusters based on the density of citation links between papers. The top-cited papers within each cluster were thematically analysed.
Findings
This research identified five meanings of co-production, understood as a science-politics relationship, as knowledge democracy, as transdisciplinarity, as boundary management, and as an evidence-use intervention.
Discussion and conclusions
Even though different clusters of scholarship exploring co-production are closely connected, this concept is mobilised to capture phenomena at different levels of abstraction – from post-structuralist theories of knowledge and power to specific strategies to be employed by researchers and policymakers.
COVID-19 recovery is an opportunity to enhance life chances by Building Back Better, an objective promoted by the UN and deployed politically at national level. To help understand emergent and intentional opportunities to Build Back Better, we propose a research agenda drawing from geographical thinking on social contracts, assemblage theory and the politics of knowledge. This points research towards the ways in which everyday and professional knowledge cocreation constrains vision and action. Whose knowledge is legitimate, how legitimacy is ascribed and the place of science, the media and government in these processes become sites for progressive Building Back Better.
Indices assessing country-level climate and disaster risk at the global scale have experienced a steep rise in popularity both in science and international climate policy. A number of widely cited products have been developed and published over the recent years, argued to contribute critical knowledge for prioritizing action and funding. However, it remains unclear how their results compare, and how consistent their findings are on country-level risk, exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping, as well as adaptive capacity. This paper analyses and compares the design, data, and results of four of the leading global climate and disaster risk indices: The World Risk Index, the INFORM Risk Index, ND-GAIN Index, and the Climate Risk Index. Our analysis clearly shows that there is considerable degree of cross-index variation regarding countries’ risk levels and comparative ranks. At the same time, there is above-average agreement for high-risk countries. In terms of risk sub-components, there is surprisingly little agreement in the results on hazard exposure, while strong inter-index correlations can be observed when ranking countries according to their socio-economic vulnerability and lack of coping as well as adaptive capacity. Vulnerability and capacity hotspots can hence be identified more robustly than risk and exposure hotspots. Our findings speak both to the potential as well as limitations of index-based approaches. They show that a solid understanding of index-based assessment tools, and their conceptual and methodological underpinnings, is necessary to navigate them properly and interpret as well as use their results in triangulation.
Development processes and action on climate change are closely interlinked. This is recognised by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fifth assessment report, which reports on climate-resilient pathways, understood as development trajectories towards sustainable development which include adaptation and mitigation. The upcoming sixth assessment report dedicates a chapter to climate resilient development pathways. In this context, this paper asks what conceptual and empirical advances on climate resilient devel-opment pathways were made since the fifth assessment report. Through a literature review, this paper analyses goals and approaches for climate resilient development pathways, and discusses what conceptual advances have and could still be made. We find little evidence of dedicated concept development. Rather, we observe con-ceptual ambiguity. Literature showed four non-exclusive clusters of approaches: (a) climate action oriented, (b) social-learning and co-creation oriented, (c) mainstreaming oriented and (d) transformation oriented. We recommend operationalising climate resilient development pathways as the process of consolidating climate action and development decisions towards long-term sustainable development. This process requires explicit engagement with aspirations of actors, and connecting past developments with future aspirations and un-derstandings of risk. Working with multiple pathways allows us to embed flexibility, anticipation and learning in planning. A greater focus is needed on issues linked to justice and equity as climate resilient development pathways will inevitably involve trade-offs. Substantiating the concept of climate resilient development path-ways has the potential to bridge climate and development perspectives, which may otherwise remain separated in development and climate policy, practice and science.
Tomorrow’s Cities is the £20m United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF) Urban Disaster Risk Hub. The Hub aims to support the delivery of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and priorities 1 to 3 of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) 2015-2030. We work in four cities: Istanbul, Kathmandu, Nairobi, and Quito. We collaborate with local, national, and global organisations to strengthen disaster risk governance by undertaking integrated, multi-scale, and multi-disciplinary research to better understand natural multi-hazard risks and their drivers. Ongoing rapid urbanisation and urban expansion provide a time-limited opportunity to reduce disaster risk for the marginalised and most vulnerable in tomorrow’s cities. We aim to catalyse and support a transition from crisis management to pro-poor, multihazard risk-informed urban planning and people-centred decision-making in expanding cities worldwide. Tomorrow’s Cities is a fully-functioning, fully-funded international collaboration of communities, governance organisations, researchers, and risk professionals. We are developing our Phase 2 programme planned for 2021-24, which will build on the Phase 1 research and partnerships forged since our inception in early 2019. We seek global partners to co-produce and implement a new approach to risk reduction, through risksensitive design of tomorrow’s cities.
A scenario approach is often used to envision sustainable futures. Several important scenario design factors are identified in the literature, which include the demonstration of deliberation and the participation of stakeholders; however, specific methodologies of scenario design are yet to be established. Accordingly, in this study, we demonstrate a series of workshops involving ordinary citizens for energy visioning in Suita city, Japan, and propose a new citizen-participatory scenario design methodology based on the combination of scenario design and future design approaches. It is shown that the inclusion of future generations in deliberation is effective for creating future visions in a specific context and deriving policy implications. Specifically, by analyzing the deliberation process and the proposed scenarios, it was confirmed that the scenarios proposed by future generations were proactive in terms of paying the costs incurred to facilitate the realization of policies toward achieving a long-term vision. Furthermore, even though the proposals made by the future generations imposed additional burdens for current generations, post-workshop scenario assessment revealed that current generations are supportive of these scenarios. It is concluded that the proposed methodology is effective since it can overcome uncertainties, include holistic scopes, and consider a long-term time horizon.
Scenarios are a tool to develop plausible, coherent visions about the future and to foster anticipatory knowledge. We present the Sustainable Future Scenarios (SFS) framework and demonstrate its application through the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) urban site. The SFS approach emphasizes the co-development of positive and long-term alternative future visions. Through a collaboration of practitioner and academic stakeholders, this research integrates participatory scenario development, modeling, and qualitative scenario assessments. The SFS engagement process creates space to question the limits of what is normally considered possible, desirable, or inevitable in the face of future challenges. Comparative analyses among the future scenarios demonstrate trade-offs among regional and microscale temperature, water use, land-use change, and co-developed resilience and sustainability indices. SFS incorporate diverse perspectives in co-producing positive future visions, thereby expanding traditional future projections. The iterative, interactive process also creates opportunities to bridge science and policy by building anticipatory and systems-based decision-making and research capacity for long-term sustainability planning.
The rationale for developing vulnerability and adaptation scenarios – in the TRUC project and more generally – builds on observations of mismatches in the field of risk and adaptation research that often focus on future climatic conditions in for example 2030 or 2050 or 2100, while at the same time considering primarily or even exclusively the vulnerability and exposure patterns of societies and systems exposed today. This paper presents a new scenario method for developing qualitative vulnerability and adaptation scenarios at the local level, using a participatory approach.
In the context of global environmental change much hope is placed in the ability of resilience thinking to help address environment-related risks. Numerous initiatives aim at incorporating resilience into urban planning practices. The purpose of this paper is to open up a conversation on urban resilience by unpacking how diverse science methods contribute to the production of different narratives of urban resilience mobilizing different experts and forms of evidence. A number of scholars have cautioned against uncritical approaches to resilience and asked what resilience means and for whom, also pointing out the normative dimension of the concept. Building on this emerging scholarship we use insights from science and technology studies (STS) and critical social sciences to look at the knowledge infrastructures and networks of actors involved in the development of resilience strategies. Drawing on fieldwork in Manila, Nairobi, and Cape Town, we map different narratives of urban resilience identifying the ways in which science serves to legitimate or alienate particular perspectives on what should be done. We discuss the multiple roles that science methods have for resilience planning. Whereas urban resilience is often portrayed as consensual, we show that a range of narratives, with diverse socio-material implications, exist at the city level. In this way we unearth the conflict that lies beneath an apparent consensus for resilience policy and outline future research directions for urban sustainability.
Transforming cities into low-carbon, resilient, and sustainable places will require action encompassing most segments of society. However, local governments struggle to overview and assess all ongoing climate activities in a city, constraining well-informed decision-making and transformative capacity. This paper proposes and tests an assessment framework developed to visualize the implementation of urban climate transition (UCT). Integrating key transition activities and process progression, the framework was applied to three Swedish cities. Climate coordinators and municipal councillors evaluated the visual UCT representations. Results indicate that their understanding of UCT actions and implementation bottlenecks became clearer, making transition more governable. To facilitate UCT, involving external actors and shifting priorities between areas were found to be key. The visual UCT representations improved system awareness and memory, building local transformative capacity. The study recommends systematic assessment and visualization of process progression as a promising method to facilitate UCT governance, but potentially also broader sustainability transitions.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-018-1109-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
The emergence of urban (or city) foresight techniques focuses on the need to create coherent city visions to plan and manage for future long-term change and create opportunities for new investment into the local urban economy. This paper reviews the concepts of ‘co-created’ city visioning and urban foresight, setting this in the context of new and emerging practice and policy in the UK, and elsewhere. The paper critically reviews the development of the vision for a small city (the ‘Reading 2050’ project, linked to the UK Future of Cities Foresight Programme), and the lessons it holds for visioning, foresight and planning, using the ‘quadruple helix’ framework as a conceptual lens for analysis.
The purpose of this article is to examine the urban visions articulated in two large projects in Johannesburg. Using the Corridors of Freedom project, led by the Johannesburg metropolitan municipality, and Modderfontein, initiated by a Shanghai-based developer, we show that the intention of large projects varies significantly despite often similar rhetoric. We show also that the actors and interests involved are more diverse than may initially appear, and that the outcomes are less certain than the confident public pronouncements suggest. Each project promises to make a distinct and positive impact on the morphology of the city, with the Corridors of Freedom project attempting to densify and diversify urban use along transit corridors through a long-term process of encouraging transformation within existing areas of the city. Modderfontein, by contrast, is intended as one of the largest privately-led residential, commercial and industrial developments in South Africa and would occur on previously undeveloped land. Both projects speak languages of sustainability and of inclusion, although neither is likely to address the housing needs of the poorest populations in Gauteng Province. The article underscores the sometimes arbitrary uptake of these projects into policy frameworks at different levels of government. With the Gauteng provincial government having defined megaprojects in terms of new cities, it enthusiastically endorsed Modderfontein, and left Corridors of Freedom somewhat outside of its initial frame of interest.
In response to the environmental and social challenges of an uncertain future, practitioners and communities across Europe and beyond have started to engage with the concept of ‘resilience’ and experiment with forms of local resilience. However, many of these initiatives tend to remain localised, isolated projects, with little capacity to instigate broader change and at risk to disappear by not having the means to become sustainable in the longer term. We suggest that one way of sustaining and scaling local resilience practices is by developing digital tools that could enable connections and knowledge sharing across locations, through commoning in the digital realm. In this paper, we introduce the specific co-design process we devised with the aim to develop an initial ‘brief’ for potential tools. By creating a co-design process that is situated, mediated, networked and open-source, we argue that the commoning process initiated in this project has the potential to evolve and expand, beyond the project time and initial user base—an essential quality in the context of collectively enhancing urban resilience through knowledge sharing and mutual support.
(eprint here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/fEUpRNZMY2gVpdCwK9H4/full)
Cities in India are increasingly at risk from natural hazards and the effects of climate change. In Kolkata, urban development on the low-lying periphery has produced uneven geographies of risk, with well-protected suburban settlements surrounded by overcrowded slums with poor infrastructure and a lack of basic services. This article connects proximate conditions of vulnerability in peri-urban Kolkata to their root causes based on a mixed-method case study of the satellite township Salt Lake. I locate roots of risk in four trends in the political economy of urban development—the commodification of hazardous land, inadequate provision of affordable housing and amenities, exclusion of the poor, and interdependence of spatially separated groups. Together these trends constitute a key social dynamic that is shaping development and risk in peri-urban Kolkata, the desire of urban elites to live separately from the poor while depending on their labor. I conclude with a discussion of how these trends are shaping disaster geographies elsewhere in Kolkata and urban India and argue that we must go beyond proximate understandings of urban disaster risk if we are to address its production and proliferation.
Ongoing climate change is encouraging cities to reevaluate their risk management strategies. Urban communities increasingly are being forced to respond to climate shifts with actions that promote resistance, resilience, or even larger scale transformations. Our objective is to present a conceptual framework that facilitates examination of how the transition from one type of risk management strategy or regime to another takes place. The research framework is built around a set of assumptions regarding the process of transition between risk management regimes. The framework includes five basic conceptual elements: (1) risk management regimes, (2) development pathways, (3) activity spheres, (4) activity spaces, and (5) root, contextual, and proximate drivers. The interaction among these elements and the potential for transition between four different possible regime states including resistance, resilience, transformation, and collapse are presented. The framework facilitates and guides analysis on whether and how transition is emergent, constrained, or accelerated in specific contexts. A case study of post-Hurricane Sandy New York is used to illustrate the framework and its overall effectiveness.
Lagos, a coastal megacity with more than 11 million inhabitants faces serious development challenges in addition to climatic risks and extreme weather events. There are uncertainties about future disaster risk trends and about how to manage and adapt to existing threats in ways that ensure a just and sustainable development trajectory. In this paper, we explore the changes that have occurred in risk management in Lagos over the last 20 years, as part of a broader endeavor towards sustainability. We draw on transition theory to analyze data collected from a scenario workshop and expert interviews conducted over a period of two years, to understand the influences, processes and actors that shape the adaptation-development nexus in Lagos. Findings based on stakeholders’ voices present a risk management regime firmly oriented towards protecting contemporary development gains and policies, despite Nigeria’s contested development strategy. Future positioning of risk management is described as either maintaining its current goals or shifting towards a position where development is seen as a root cause of risk and a focus for change. Resilience (marginal changes in development to maintain stability) is not foreseen as a likely future choice for Lagos. This is in contrast to many global agendas that promote resilience and reflects the realities of managing risks in the context of contested development.
Local risk managers in New York City were keenly aware that the city’s residents, businesses, and infrastructure were vulnerable to significant flooding events before Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2016. The storm and its aftermath have influenced the structure of the city’s approach to risk management and urban development in many ways. The objective of this manuscript is to characterize the current risk management regime in New York City, how it is changing, and how it might shift with the further onset of climate change. More specifically, the paper addresses three basic questions: 1. How does current risk management policy in New York City intersect with climate change adaptation and urban development?; 2. Is there sentiment that transition to a new risk management paradigm is needed?; and 3. If transition is necessary, how will it be enabled or blocked by the current actors, organizations and policy-making networks for adaptation and risk management in the city? In the analysis we focus on examining the relative importance of a suite of possible factors and drivers. Two sources of data are reviewed and integrated. These include results from a workshop with local risk managers, and as well as face-to-face extended interviews with risk manager stakeholders and practitioners. The results indicate that there is significant need for a transition to wider and more comprehensive transformative adaptation policy but the means and opportunities to do is limited.
The critical literature on participation warns that a focus on ‘consensus’ evades the political in planning, preventing citizens from confronting and challenging discourse and prevailing orthodoxy about the way the urban ought to be constituted. These critiques raise important questions about the efficacy of participatory planning and its political formation. Moreover, the extent to which citizen’s participation can ever challenge dominant trajectories has reached a point of conceptual ‘crisis’. In this article, I explore the different ways in which participation manifests from the politicising participatory moments in planning. Examining a single case study in Melbourne, Australia, I draw upon 15 key informant interviews with community campaigners who mounted a successful campaign to defeat the controversial East West Link road project. By examining the formal and informal political manifestations of participation over a period of 2 years, this article challenges the sentiment that there is a crisis of participatory planning. It shows how decisions to engage the citizenry in prescribed ways induce other manifestations and formations of citizen’s participation through politics and how these manifestations garner a pervasive and influential trajectory to reshape participatory planning.
As cities increasingly engage in climate adaptation planning, many are seeking to promote public participation and facilitate the engagement of different civil society actors. Still, the variations that exist among participatory approaches and the merits and tradeoffs associated with each are not well understood. This article examines the experiences of Quito (Ecuador) and Surat (India) to assess how civil society actors contribute to adaptation planning and implementation. The results showcase two distinct approaches to public engagement. The first emphasizes participation of experts, affected communities, and a wide array of citizens to sustain broadly inclusive programmes that incorporate local needs and concerns into adaptation processes and outcomes. The second approach focuses on building targeted partnerships between key government, private, and civil society actors to institutionalize robust decision-making structures, enhance abilities to raise funds, and increase means to directly engage with local community and international actors. A critical analysis of these approaches suggests more inclusive planning processes correspond to higher climate equity and justice outcomes in the short term, but the results also indicate that an emphasis on building dedicated multi-sector governance institutions may enhance long-term programme stability, while ensuring that diverse civil society actors have an ongoing voice in climate adaptation planning and implementation.
The purpose of the paper is to contribute to the debate on existing planning approaches—more specifically, strategic spatial planning—and the search for new ideas. Therefore, after briefly dealing with the history, logic, aims of strategic planning, and some critiques the paper sketches the contours of a more radical strategic planning, introduces coproduction as a corner stone of this approach, and opts for working with conflicts and legitimacy as additional building blocks. The paper relies on a selective review of critical planning literature and the authors’ experience in practice.
Labelled as the "last frontier" for international property development, sub-Saharan Africa's larger cities are currently being revisioned in the image of cities such as Dubai, Shanghai and Singapore, which claim top positions in the world-class city leagues. Draped in the rhetoric of "smart cities" and "eco-cities", these plans promise to modernize African cities and turn them into gateways for international investors and showpieces for ambitious politicians. Yet the reality in all of these cities stands in stark contrast to the glass-box towers, manicured lawns and water features on developers' and architects' websites. With the majority of urban populations living in deep poverty and with minimal urban services, the most likely outcome of these fantasy plans is a steady worsening of the marginalization and inequalities that already beset these cities.
There is increasing scientific and political interest in the links between urbanization and human vulnerability to climate change. However, our literature review shows that the existing scholarship has largely focused on exposure resulting from urbanization, while other dimensions of urban vulnerability such as sensitivity or capacity to cope and adapt have been insufficiently represented or understood. Furthermore, most attention has been given to the negative effects of urbanization, while opportunities for vulnerability reduction have been underemphasized. Therefore, this paper takes a broader perspective to explore key relationships between urbanization, economic development and socio-economic vulnerability on a global scale. Using data with national resolution, we applied a clustering approach to identify ten country groups sharing similar patterns of urbanization and national income. We then explored associations between these country groups and selected indicators of exposure, sensitivity, coping capacity, and adaptive capacity drawing upon data from the World Risk Index. Our findings suggest that countries with rapid urbanization and economic transformation face significant challenges with respect to sensitivity and the lack of capacities. Additionally, these challenges tend to be greater the lower the income of the respective country. Yet, at the same time, urbanization can be a main driver for enhancing response capacity. The analysis suggests that urbanization can, hence, have nuanced effects on overall vulnerability. We argue that climate change science needs to be more balanced in terms of acknowledging and examining the different possible pathways of vulnerability effects related to urbanization. The country group analysis can provide a first entry point.
Five years ago Yiftachel (2006) called on planning theorists to focus attention on cities of the global ‘South-East’ where issues differ significantly from northern contexts – which currently inform much planning theory work. This article asks if any such new directions have emerged in this period. It first reviews recent writings on socio-political and material conditions in these cities and suggests a set of assumptions to inform thinking about planning in these regions. It then identifies and assesses new strands of planning thought (some with older roots), and considers the project of taking forward planning theory-building in the global South-East.
Building on Henri Lefebvre’s work on the role of imagination in crafting socially just urban conditions and “rights to the city,” this paper asks whether new ideas and urban practices can be produced through the use of experimental visioning techniques. Using empirical evidence drawn from an ideas competition for Jerusalem, one of the world’s most intractable conflict cities, the paper considers the extent to which the global call to create alternative visions for a just, peaceful, and sustainable Jerusalem resulted in new strategies considered fundamentally different from those routinely deployed in conventional planning practice, how and why.
The shift in planning theory from technical-instrumental to relational conceptions of rationality is helpful in relating to urban environments in Africa that are characterised by the intersection of multiple rationalities and also by spatially extensive and shifting networks of economic and social transaction. However, the relevance of contemporary planning theory is limited by its origins within the intellectual traditions and experiences of the West. If we are to engage effectively with the multiple rationalities that are shaping the cities of the world-cities that are increasingly centred in the global South-then we must bring Western intellectual tradition into a critical relationship with the epistemologies, rationalities and value-based traditions of the non-Occidental world. This paper argues that post-colonial literature and theory may provide some of the intellectual resources needed to sustain such an engagement, as post-colonial thought directs attention to the hybrid intellectual formations and practices that emerge in the on-going interaction between colonised and coloniser. By using Johannesburg as the prism through which to look at cities and at planning, this paper provides some thoughts on how to construct an 'other way' of thinking that is situated both within and outside dominant representations.
Vision and visioning are terms now used around the world in planning practice and theory. They refer to a variety of strategic planning techniques and are used in more general discussion of planning. The terms are used by planners as though their meanings were clear but the concepts have not been critically examined. This study traces the origins of the words and the development of the concepts prior to their introduction into planning discourse. The intent is not to narrowly define the terms, which have a wide range of possible meanings, but to provide practitioners and researchers with a background to assist in making their own evaluations of vision and visioning as they are presently applied to planning.
Water management strategies in times of global change need to be developed within a complex and uncertain environment. Scenarios are often used to deal with uncertainty. A novel backcasting methodology has been tested in which a normative objective (e.g. adaptive water management) is backcasted within the context of exploratory scenarios that sketch four different plausible futures (Economy First, Policy Rules, Fortress Europe, and Sustainability Eventually). The main advantage of combining exploratory and normative scenarios is in the identification of robust actions: actions that are effective in the different socio-environmental contexts sketched in the exploratory scenarios. This paper has three objectives: (1) to present the methodology, focussing on its novel aspects (2) to test the methodology and evaluate its perceived success by analysing organiser and stakeholder feedback and (3) to analyse and evaluate the results, in order to study the impact of the exploratory scenarios on the backcasting results and the added value of robust actions. The methodology was successfully tested in 9 local and one regional case study in a water project water scenarios for Europe and for Neighbouring States (SCENES). Results showed that the exploratory scenarios influenced the content of the backcasts, thus making the identification of robust strategies possible. The list of robust strategies includes both technological and social/organisational strategies, highlighting the need for an integrated approach. The approach shows high potential, but as the methodology is in its infancy more research is needed, particularly in methods to facilitate and monitor information flow between exploratory scenarios and backcasts.
The roles and responsibilities of planners in managing culturally diverse cities are beginning to be recognized. “Visioning”, as planners have used it in recent years, has the potential to help realize “multicultural planning” insofar as it involves broad public parti-cipation and represents diverse interests. How the City of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada has involved ethno-cultural groups through a visioning process is examined. Information for this study was gathered through a critical review of planning documents related to Vancouver's “Community Visions Program” and key informant interviews with staff and community participants, including those of visible minority background. Results indicate that visioning, as it has been used in Vancouver, is a useful technique in carrying out multicultural planning. However, there appears to be more general satisfaction with the inclusive visioning process than with the end results. If planners are serious about engaging in a multicultural planning process, they will need to guarantee some tangible results that can be seen in the community and that acknowledge and respect cultural diversity.“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
Adaptation to climate change is about planning for the future while responding to current pressures and challenges. Adaptation scientists are increasingly using future visioning exercises embedded in co-production and co-development techniques to assist stakeholders in imagining futures in a changing climate. Even if these exercises are growing in popularity, surprisingly little scrutiny has been placed on understanding the fundamental assumptions and choices in scenario approaches, timeframes, scales, or methods, and whether they result in meaningful changes in how adaptation is being thought about. Here, we unpack key insights and experiences across 62 case studies that specifically report on using future visioning exercises to engage stakeholders in climate change adaptation. We focus on three key areas: 1) Stakeholder diversity and scales; 2) Tools, methods, and data, and 3) Practical constraints, enablers, and outcomes. Our results show that most studies focus on the regional scale (n = 32; 52%), involve mainly formal decision makers and employ vast array of different methods, tools, and data. Interestingly, most exercises adopt either predictive (what will happen) and explorative (what could happen) scenarios while only a fraction use the more normative (what should happen) scenarios that could enable more transformative thinking. Reported positive outcomes include demonstrated increases in climate change literacy and support for climate change adaptation planning. Unintended and unexpected outcomes include increased anxiety in cases where introduced timeframes go beyond an individual’s expected life span and decreased perceived necessity for undertaking adaptation at all. Key agreed factors that underpin co-production and equal representation, such as gender, age, and diversity, are not well reported, and most case studies do not use reflective processes to harness participant feedback that could enable more robust methodology development. This is a missed opportunity in developing a more fundamental understanding of how these exercises can effectively shift individual and collective mindsets and advance the inclusion of different viewpoints as a pathway for more equitable and just climate adaptation.
Real-time data from urban and rural regions is increasingly being used by policymakers to achieve environmental sustainability goals within smart cities. At the same time, smart urban governance has been criticized for its technocratic and human-centric approach that sacrifices long-term planning for the here-and-now and overlooks the more-than-human in sustainability-related city-region foresight strategies. By reviewing two city-region foresight strategies employed in Australia–namely, the Atlas of Living Australia and Greenprints–this paper argues for the merits of including foresight strategies that account for multispecies entanglements. The paper mobilizes more-than-human perspectives to propose multispecies foresight for better urban and regional sustainability outcomes.
This chapter challenges politico-legal representations of indigeneity as static social category associated predominantly with rurality, ancestral lands, and traditions but not with cities and modern ways of living. By deploying a combined intra- and inter-categorical intersectionality approach and drawing on empirical research in two peri-urban neighbourhoods in La Paz (Bolivia), it shifts attention to diverse articulations of indigeneity articulated by a growing number of people, with distinct backgrounds in terms of age, class, gender and political position, who self-identify as indigenous in urban areas. The chapter demonstrates that urban indigeneity has multiple and conflicting connotations, leading people to articulate distinct needs, interests, and rights-based claims. It also highlights power imbalances between and within urban indigenous communities, which often lead to the exclusion of women and youth. Reflecting on these insights, the chapter calls for more inclusive policy and planning approaches which, firstly, recognise indigenous peoples wherever they live, including in urban areas, and, secondly, embrace conflict and challenge power imbalances within indigenous communities and between indigenous communities and other stakeholder groups.
The growing interest in urban areas as sites for climate action has led to new ways of conceiving and planning the urban. As climate actions reshape existing understandings of what cities are or ought to be, they constitute new modalities of what recent scholarship has referred to as ‘climate urbanism’. This research has framed climate urbanism as a climate‐inflected iteration of neoliberal urban development, geared towards the mobilization of ‘green’ private capital for large‐scale infrastructural projects, focused on carbon metrics, and conducive to population displacement through eco‐gentrification. In this intervention, we commend these efforts to deliver a critical perspective on how climate change gives rise to forms of urbanism that reproduce urban injustices without addressing the root causes of the climate crisis. However, we warn against two biases in recent scholarship, namely an emphasis on technological solutions and an overreliance on familiar contexts of climate action. The literature on climate urbanism does not yet reflect the diversity of urban responses emerging under the broad umbrella of urban climate action. Adopting a post‐colonial perspective on climate urbanism, we call for a greater engagement with the heterogeneous character of climate‐changed urban futures.
Models of urban planning after authoritarian modernism raise the question of democratic control over the city and the possibility of imagining as a collective act. The paper examines systemic hindrances to free-thinking, and thus free-acting, embedded in urban communities. Through the case study of recent work by the art collective Department of Play, it illustrates the rationale for engaging public imagination specifically via play as world-building; and it posits the potential implications and limits of such activity as an intervention into city planning processes. Interested in liminal spaces between territory, language and social affiliation, the collective advances an agenda of productive dissent in public space through play and performance. Department of Play begins from the position that we can only plan that which we imagine, and thus exists as an effort to free the public imagination from modes of thinking dictated by the capitalist context.
Much of the discourse around urban and global futures tends to be dystopian with visions of environmental and societal collapse, and business as usual forecasts that challenge planning and policymaking for more optimistic urban futures. More recently, research and practice demonstrate the role of positives visions that allow exploration of alternative and desirable futures in developing positive plans and delivering desirable outcomes for cities. We review the role of positive visioning and associated future scenarios for transformations that can guide decision-making for plausible, desirable, and sustainable urban futures. We discuss key challenges and tensions in visioning processes and suggest paths forward for positive visioning as a key tool for resilience and sustainability planning and to guide implementation.
Climate change adaptation coevolves with urban development trajectories presenting decision-makers with a choice of positioning adaptation to protect or revise development. This relational view of adaptation in the context of large cities opens questions on the ways in which city and other actors interact. This interaction may be as or more important than resource and information access for shaping the adaptive capacity and direction of such assemblages. Transitions between modes of adaptation are little understood and will likely combine autonomous and deliberate change both incremental and transformative. Using London as a case study, the paper identifies the contemporary adaptation regime to extreme events and its lines of movement. Interviews and a scenario workshop with resilience planners and emergency managers show the orientation of London’s adaptation is firmly positioned in a mode of resilience, protecting development through flexibility. Maintaining resilience to extremes under conditions of economic austerity is seen to result in the shifting of risk management burdens onto those at risk. Self-reliance is emerging as a mechanism for deepening the resilience mode of adaptation. At the same time, when considering potential risks for extreme events in 2035, most planners express a desire for more transformative adaptation that can tackle root causes in social conditions. A gap is revealed between the professional judgment of risk and resilience planning needs and likely trajectories constrained by national administrations and policy.
Morphological analysis allows any number of dimensions to be retained when framing future conditions, and techniques within morphological analysis determine which combinations of those dimensions represent plausible futures. However, even a relatively low number of dimensions in future conditions can lead to hundreds or even thousands of plausible future scenarios. Creating highly diverse but conceivable visions of the future in which to explore decision-making, exploratory futures techniques rely on the selection of a small number of plausible scenarios from the larger set. In this paper we describe a new method for finding maximally diverse sets containing a small number of plausible scenarios from a multi-dimensional morphological analysis. It is based on a mathematical optimization of diversity that is robust to the uncertainty in the framing of future factors and states and in what stakeholders might consider diverse combinations of those factors and states. We also describe implementation of the method as a software tool and its performance in recent exploratory scenario development by CGIAR and partners for regional environmental change, food security and livelihoods.
The impacts of climate change are already being felt. Learning how to live with these impacts is a priority for human development. In this context, it is too easy to see adaptation as a narrowly defensive task - protecting core assets or functions from the risks of climate change. A more profound engagement, which sees climate change risks as a product and driver of social as well as natural systems, and their interaction, is called for. Adaptation to Climate Change argues that, without care, adaptive actions can deny the deeper political and cultural roots that call for significant change in social and political relations if human vulnerability to climate change associated risk is to be reduced. This book presents a framework for making sense of the range of choices facing humanity, structured around resilience (stability), transition (incremental social change and the exercising of existing rights) and transformation (new rights claims and changes in political regimes). The resilience-transition-transformation framework is supported by three detailed case study chapters. These also illustrate the diversity of contexts where adaption is unfolding, from organizations to urban governance and the national polity. This text is the first comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions to climate change adaptation. Clearly written in an engaging style, it provides detailed theoretical and empirical chapters and serves as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in climate change, geography and development studies.
Notes on contributors Acknowledgements 1. The Idiom of Co-production Sheila Jasanoff 2. Ordering Knowledge, Ordering Society Sheila Jasanoff 3. Climate Science and the Making of a Global Political Order Clark A. Miller 4. Co-producing CITES and the African Elephant Charis Thompson 5. Knowledge and Political Order in the European Environment Agency Claire Waterton and Brian Wynne 6. Plants, Power and Development: Founding the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies, 1880-1914 William K. Storey 7. Mapping Systems and Moral Order: Constituting property in genome laboratories Stephen Hilgartner 8. Patients and Scientists in French Muscular Dystrophy Research Vololona Rabeharisoa and Michel Callon 9. Circumscribing Expertise: Membership categories in courtroom testimony Michael Lynch 10. The Science of Merit and the Merit of Science: Mental order and social order in early twentieth-century France and America John Carson 11. Mysteries of State, Mysteries of Nature: Authority, knowledge and expertise in the seventeenth century Peter Dear 12. Reconstructing Sociotechnical Order: Vannevar Bush and US science policy Michael Aaron Dennis 13. Science and the Political Imagination in Contemporary Democracies Yaron Ezrah 14. Afterword Sheila Jasanoff References Index
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This book provides a comprehensive account of flood warning, forecasting and emergency response processes, including techniques for predicting the development of flood events and for issuing appropriate warnings. Topics such as telemetry and information systems, flood warning economics, and river and coastal monitoring are also discussed. This book brings together many aspects of this interesting multidisciplinary topic and will serve as a valuable reference for researchers, policy makers and engineers. Kevin Sene is a civil engineer and researcher whose experience includes developing flood warning and forecasting investment strategies, writing best practice guidelines in flood forecasting, and designing operational systems. With more than 20 years of experience, he has published some 45 scientific and conference papers on topics in hydrology, hydrometeorology and hydraulics.
This article, based on empirical work by the authors over the past decade, argues that city planners and policy-makers lack an effective future-oriented approach enabling them to comprehend current complexity, anticipate impending change and shape a preferred future condition.Reflecting on more than a dozen recent city futures exercises, three overriding themes emerge: changing values systems will be the single biggest driver over the next thirty years; the forging of shared visions is a prerequisite to strategic city planning; and the nature, force and direction of the various vectors of collaborative leadership by constituent stakeholders will determine the future success or otherwise of city stewardship.The article concludes by calling for the formulation of a Unified Theory for Sustainable Cities by reference to Gaia and the application of a futures oriented approach such as Prospective Through Scenarios.
There is an urgent need for meaningful information and effective public processes at the local level to build awareness, capacity, and agency on climate change, and support planning and decision-making. This paper describes a conceptual framework to meet these requirements by generating alternative, coherent, holistic climate change scenarios and visualizations at the local scale, in collaboration with local stakeholders and scientists. The framework provides a template for a process to integrate emission scenarios with both mitigation and adaptation strategies, and to link local manifestations of impacts and responses with global climate change scenarios. The article outlines the empirical application of this framework in the Local Climate Change Visioning Project in British Columbia, Canada. The project collaboratively localized, spatialized, and visualized possible climate change effects and community responses in the community's ‘backyards’. The article concludes with lessons learned and suggested principles for future visioning efforts to engage communities in possible policy and behavioural choices.
Many plans and strategies these days are underpinned by ‘visions’. This article examines the cultural and policy shift in planning in the UK toward more integrated and participative practice, and the potential role of visioning in this new climate. Reviewing examples of vision planning in the US, where the process has a longer lineage, it argues that these interventions suffer from a lack of evaluation of the effects of ‘visioning’. Yet this visioning approach has been adopted in certain cities and towns in Northern Ireland in recent years. This article assesses the impact of this approach in a detailed case study and finds the impact to have been modest.