Urban and Regional Planning in Global Climate Change

Dear Colleagues,

(1) Introduction, including scientific background and highlighting the importance of this research area.

Cities and regions are complex systems made up of communities, economies and built, blue and green infrastructure. They sustain a wide range of values from essential services that maintain livelihoods, health and well-being and through to so-called intangibles, the environmental and social values that sustain the culture and identity of a place.

Climate change has the potential to impact cities and regions at the system-wide scale, especially where rapid change and successive extreme events can lead to cascading risks and risk contagion. Linear approaches to decision-making such as predict-and-act, or rational optimization are not well-suited to problems at this scale, being fitter for single issues. Such methods are also well-represented in the literature.

In the last two decades, risk management has expanded from its linear, hazard-based focus, to take on a more holistic approach framed as “the effect of uncertainty on objectives”. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s framing of risk in its Sixth Assessment Report focused on the hazard-vulnerability relationship, so expanding this focus to achieving overall objectives is a logical next step. Here, the focus is on cities and regions.

(2) Aim of the Special Issue and how the subject relates to the journal scope.

The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight systemic risks that climate change poses to specific places, including cities and regions, and how those risks can be managed. The emphasis on management is practical application and outcomes. Preference will be given to work that incorporates how to achieve those outcomes as part of the initial project design rather than as an afterthought.

The ultimate objective is to strive for sustainability at the system scale, so the issue is not restricted to any particular methodology and diverse approaches are welcomed. The only condition is that the principles of sound risk management be applied, either explicitly or implicitly. We invite papers that address lessons learned, even if they describe a failure to achieve their initial objectives. We need to learn from failures in addition to success.

(3) Suggested themes.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Transdisciplinary approaches involving both researchers and end-users in the development of shared knowledge to achieve stated objectives under climate change.
• Integration of different types of infrastructure, e.g., built, blue and green, to achieve greater levels of sustainability, e.g., low carbon adaptation pathways.
• Value-led risk assessments as an alternative/addition to hazard-driven assessments.
• Public, private and community collaborations at the regional and urban scale.
• Reviews of urban and regional studies examining issues such as governance, institutional structures, levels of engagement, successes and failures.
• What a whole-of-climate approach to a region might look like and how it might be applied.
• Assessments of stakeholder-driven initiatives, how they engaged with research, and how processes influenced outcomes.

In general, we welcome any contributions along these lines as long as they involve a system (or a large part of one), values, methods of application and ways to assess outcomes with the goal of maintaining or improving sustainability.

I/We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Roger Jones
Dr. Celeste Young
Guest Editors

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• systemic risk
• strategic planning
• climate change
• climate adaptation
• decision-making
• planetary health
• value-led risk management
• outcome-focused research