Integrating Climate Change Adaptation, Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Urban Planning
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2023) | Viewed by 7526
Special Issue Editor
Interests: risk and disaster management; risk governance; territorial governance; spatial planning; sustainable development; climate change mitigation and adaptation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
While Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) is considered the process of adjusting to new conditions, stresses and natural hazards resulting from CC, which aims to minimize losses and maximize benefits, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is a systematic approach to primarily reducing the risk of disasters (i.e., potential disaster losses), some of which are triggered by CC-related hazards. Hence, there is an overlap between CCA and DRR. Both CCA and DRR benefit from adaptation capacity and resilience building on the one hand and vulnerability reduction on the other (Schipper 2009), even though the notion of vulnerability has different connotations in the respective scientific fields. The two fields share a vulnerability component (with several aspects) to be reduced and a resilience/adaptation capacity component to be enhanced. Urban territories are suffering from CC hazards and the associated Disaster Risks owing to their high exposure and vulnerability levels (with socioeconomic, systemic, institutional and territorial vulnerability being the most prominent aspects). Therefore, the urban territory is a privileged field for both DRR and CCA through vulnerability mitigation and resilience enhancement. Considering that both processes have a strong spatial (development) dimension, it seems that their integration is best achieved through sustainable urban planning (under the precondition that they are adopted as first-priority objectives). After all, (spatial) planning is a policy field pursuing the integration of sectoral policies. This option of (Sustainable) Urban Planning as a DRR and CCA integration policy platform is acknowledged by both the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Goal 11) and the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030.
While the above integration sounds easy and promising, there are still several obstacles to realization: CC and DR perceptions and social awareness are generally very low; (spatial) development objectives predominate, and restrictions to development are not welcome by communities; “vulnerability”, “resilience” and “adaptation capacity” are unknown terms to most planners, and the risks of disaster are out of their field of consideration; vulnerability reduction only rarely appears as a social claim, although hazards and risks of CC always intensify; prioritizing vulnerability reduction means stakeholders (including political institutions) have to lower their land revenue and profit expectations; collective urban resilience may conflict with personal resilience owing to tough competition for resilience resource engagement (e.g., land ownership/development rights), etc.
The Special Issue invites contributions presenting (a) Urban (Spatial) Planning cases aiming at DRR and CCA and deploying appropriate tools and processes for their integration; (b) DRR and CCA policies and measures successfully embedded in existing Urban Plans based on the sustainability principles; (c) catalysts and/or obstacles to the integration of the principles of sustainability with CCA and DRR in the context of urban (spatial) planning procedures.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Approaches and methods for urban resilience and adaptive capacity assessments;
- Resilient, adaptive and transformative urban planning to accommodate the uncertainties of CC and DR;
- Urban planning objectives, tools, processes, agencies and principles reducing vulnerability to CC hazards;
- Public communication/consultation and urban governance processes raising urban communities’ awareness of CC hazards and associated disaster risks;
- Institutional initiatives toward CCA and DRR embedded in urban plans (at the neighbourhood, district, municipal, metropolitan level);
- Urban resilience resources and their allocation;
- Mapping urban resilience resources and adaptive capacities;
- Conflicts between community and personal resilience in the cities;
- Incompatibilities between DRR and CCA;
- Informal urban settlements, DRR and CCA;
- Urban morphology and structure accommodating DRR and CCA;
- Sustainability of urban cultural heritage, DRR and CCA;
- DRR and CCA in historical urban districts;
- Contingency plans versus natural hazards embedded in urban spatial plans;
- Building resilient urban transportation networks;
- New technologies serving the resilience and adaptation capacity of cities.
I look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Dr. Kalliopi Sapountzaki
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- urban planning
- disaster risk mitigation
- urban vulnerability
- urban resilience
- adaptation to CC
- urban sustainability
- risk-informed planning
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