How can we create a more pluralistic, inclusive approach to urban climate adaptation? How can ill-suited approaches be disrupted?
Current imaginaries (ways to understand and envisage how adaptation should take place) and practices need to be revised to provide social justice and reflect local needs. This special issue focuses on how inappropriate / inadequate urban adaptation imaginaries and practices can be identified and disrupted to provide more inclusive, socially just approaches to urban adaptation. Actions for urban climate adaptation (in physical, social, political, legal dimensions) are needed to break with the status quo, reduce systemic vulnerabilities and increase coping capacities (resilience) to face climate change impacts at scale.
Guest editors: Vanesa Castán Broto, Marta Olazabal & Gina Ziervogel
Urban adaptation relates to how people imagine plausible and desirable urban futures. Adaptation imaginaries refer to collective representations of how society should act and towards which goal in the context of unprecedented climate change impacts. However, the existing narratives of adaptation action tend to entrench actions that may not be beneficial in the long term and may lead to maladaptation and inequities. This is the case, for example, of flood protection barriers that displace natural barriers, such as mangroves, or water distribution networks that supply water by depleting reserves elsewhere. New adaptation imaginaries will facilitate just adaptation and enable radical changes in the relationship between humans and their environment. One step to do so is to disrupt the dominant understandings of adaptation.
This special issue demonstrates the multiple ways in which such disruption can happen. Three areas where disruption can happen are:
This special issue argues that the first step in delivering climate change adaptation is to foster new ways of imagining what adaptation is needed and how it should be delivered. This includes a process of:
Disrupting the imaginaries of urban action to deliver just adaptation [editorial]
V. Castán-Broto, M. Olazabal & G. Ziervogel
Suburban climate adaptation governance: assumptions and imaginaries affecting peripheral municipalities
L. Cerrada Morato
Normative future visioning: a critical pedagogy for transformative adaptation
T. Comelli, M. Pelling, M. Hope, J.
Ensor, M.E. Filippi, E.Y. Menteşe & J. McCloskey
How hegemonic discourses of sustainability influence urban climate action
V. Castán Broto, L. Westman &
P. Huang
Nature for resilience reconfigured: global-to-local translation of frames in Africa
K. Rochell, H. Bulkeley & H.
Runhaar
Maintaining a city against nature: climate adaptation in Beira [Mozambique]
J. Schubert
Urban shrinkage as a catalyst for transformative adaptation
L. Mabon, M. Sato & N. Mabon
Equity and justice in urban coastal adaptation planning: new evaluation framework
T. Okamoto & A. Doyon
Disrupt and unlock? The role of actors in urban adaptation path-breaking
J. Teebken
The jobs of climate adaptation
T. Denham, L. Rickards & O. Ajulo
Measuring health inequities due to housing characteristics
K Govertsen & M Kane
Provide or prevent? Exploring sufficiency imaginaries within Danish systems of provision
L K Aagaard & T H Christensen
Imagining sufficiency through collective changes as satisfiers
O Moynat & M Sahakian
US urban land-use reform: a strategy for energy sufficiency
Z M Subin, J Lombardi, R Muralidharan, J Korn, J Malik, T Pullen, M Wei & T Hong
Mapping supply chains for energy retrofit
F Wade & Y Han
Operationalising building-related energy sufficiency measures in SMEs
I Fouiteh, J D Cabrera Santelices, A Susini & M K Patel
Promoting neighbourhood sharing: infrastructures of convenience and community
A Huber, H Heinrichs & M Jaeger-Erben
New insights into thermal comfort sufficiency in dwellings
G van Moeseke, D de Grave, A Anciaux, J Sobczak & G Wallenborn
‘Rightsize’: a housing design game for spatial and energy sufficiency
P Graham, P Nourian, E Warwick & M Gath-Morad
Implementing housing policies for a sufficient lifestyle
M Bagheri, L Roth, L Siebke, C Rohde & H-J Linke
The jobs of climate adaptation
T Denham, L Rickards & O Ajulo
Structural barriers to sufficiency: the contribution of research on elites
M Koch, K Emilsson, J Lee & H Johansson
Life-cycle GHG emissions of standard houses in Thailand
B Viriyaroj, M Kuittinen & S H Gheewala
IAQ and environmental health literacy: lived experiences of vulnerable people
C Smith, A Drinkwater, M Modlich, D van der Horst & R Doherty
Living smaller: acceptance, effects and structural factors in the EU
M Lehner, J L Richter, H Kreinin, P Mamut, E Vadovics, J Henman, O Mont & D Fuchs
Disrupting the imaginaries of urban action to deliver just adaptation [editorial]
V Castán-Broto, M Olazabal & G Ziervogel
Building energy use in COVID-19 lockdowns: did much change?
F Hollick, D Humphrey, T Oreszczyn, C Elwell & G Huebner
Disrupt and unlock? The role of actors in urban adaptation path-breaking
J Teebken
Evaluating past and future building operational emissions: improved method
S Huuhka, M Moisio & M Arnould
Assessing retrofit policies for fuel-poor homes in London
M C Georgiadou, D Greenwood, R Schiano-Phan & F Russo
Evaluating mitigation strategies for building stocks against absolute climate targets
L Hvid Horup, P K Ohms, M Hauschild, S R B Gummidi, A Q Secher, C Thuesen & M Ryberg
Equity and justice in urban coastal adaptation planning: new evaluation framework
T Okamoto & A Doyon
Normative future visioning: a critical pedagogy for transformative adaptation
T Comelli, M Pelling, M Hope, J Ensor, M E Filippi, E Y Menteşe & J McCloskey
Nature for resilience reconfigured: global- to-local translation of frames in Africa
K Rochell, H Bulkeley & H Runhaar
How hegemonic discourses of sustainability influence urban climate action
V Castán Broto, L Westman & P Huang
Fabric first: is it still the right approach?
N Eyre, T Fawcett, M Topouzi, G Killip, T Oreszczyn, K Jenkinson & J Rosenow
Gender and the heat pump transition
J Crawley, F Wade & M de Wilde
Social value of the built environment [editorial]
F Samuel & K Watson
Understanding demolition [editorial]
S Huuhka
Data politics in the built environment [editorial]
A Karvonen & T Hargreaves
Latest Commentaries
Populist Dissent and Digital Urbanism
Robert Cowley (King’s College London) reflects the Buildings & Cities special issue Data Politics in the Built Environment and considers a contemporary form of resistance to datafication: the (right-wing) populist, and often conspiratorial, rejection of digital technologies as instruments of oppression. Populism has a potential to distort public discourse and undermine the hopes for progressive alternative approaches. How might built environment academics shape more informed and balanced debates? Social justice will be better served if critical perspectives are supplemented by work that counters the misplaced fears about emerging digital urban technologies.
Why Convergence Research is Needed
Several systemic failures have occurred across multiple aspects of the built environment in many parts of the world. Brian Meacham (Crux Consulting) explores what can be done to improve this situation. A need to reframe buildings and the built environment as a socio-ecological-technical system means applying systemic thinking and integration across disciplinary boundaries in research, design, construction and regulation.