Governing Resilience Planning: Organizational Structures, Institutional Rules, and Fiscal Incentives in Guangzhou

Researchers and policymakers have long called for a collaborative governance process for climate adaptation and flood resilience. However, this is usually challenging when urban planning is supposed to be integrated with water management. Using the Chinese city of Guangzhou as a case study, this study explores the long-term disadvantaged...

Key lessons from the WaVE project and a manifesto for the future of water-linked heritage

Water and its related heritage play a very special role in cities and regions in Europe. Historic water infrastructures such as bridges, quays and riverfronts, port facilities, sluices, dams, or water mills, specific water-based urban and rural landscapes, but also intangible aspects of water-linked heritage, such as water management knowledge,...

Four Clusters o fThought on Flood Resilience and Climate Adaptation: The state of the art and new directions for spatial planning

The need to respond to increasing flood risk, climate change, and rapid urban development has shaped innovative policies and practices of spatial planning in many countries over recent decades. As an instrumental–technical intervention, planning is mainly used to improve the physical environment (through concepts such as regulating waterproof...

Spatial planning in the face of flood risk: Between inertia and transition

Given the greater risk of flooding in cities due to climate change, spatial planning systems are increasingly expected to contribute to flood resilience. However, incorporating expanded adaption measures in conventional planning practices remains a major challenge due to institutional barriers. Based on the theories of historical...

Enabling Socio-Ecological Resilience in the Global South: Insights from Chennai, India

Addressing climate change adaptation in the cities of the Global South is crucial as they are the most at risk and, arguably, the least capable of coping with it due to their rapid expansion, informal development, and limited institutional capacity. This paper explores this challenge in the case of Chennai, India, a city which, in recent years,...

Boundary spanning and adaptive capacity in Pearl River Delta megacities

The cities of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) have been experiencing an unprecedented urban expansion for the past four decades, leading to emergence of one of the most populous and dynamic urban regions. However, these rapidly expanding cities located in a low-lying delta area also face increasing flood risk due to a combination of anthropogenic...

Adaptive capacity of the Pearl River Delta cities in the face of the growing flood risk: Institutions, ideas and interests

Although the cities in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in China are amongst the world’s cities most exposed to flooding due to climate change, surprisingly little is done to address this problem. This article explores the barriers to the emergence of policies adapting to the growing flood risk in two PRD cities, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, underlining...

Integrated, adaptive and participatory spatial planning: trends across Europe

Whether spatial planning systems are equipped to cope with contemporary regional and urban challenges is strongly dependent on their capacity to promote integration between policy sectors, to respond adaptively to changing societal and political conditions, and to involve and engage citizens in decision-making processes. This paper examines...

Spatial Planning for Climate Adaptation and Flood Risk: Development of the Sponge City Program in Guangzhou

Many Chinese cities are increasingly exposed to the impacts of climate change, particularly to flooding. The National Sponge City Program was set up to address this challenge. This chapter examines how municipal interventions in spatial planning have been formulated in response to this national program. The case of Guangzhou is examined, a mega...

Boundary spanning for governance of climate change adaptation in cities: Insights from a Dutch urban region

Adapting to climate change in the urban setting requires cooperation across scales, levels of government, organisational boundaries and policy sectors. The study presented in the paper explores governance of urban adaptation policies through the conceptual lens of multi-level governance and boundary spanning. It focuses on the South Wing of the...

The governance of flood risk planning in Guangzhou, China: using the past to study the present

Based on the framework of governance adapted from the work of Patsy Healey and drawing on the case of Guangzhou, which is regarded as the most vulnerable city in China to flooding and waterlogging, this paper adds to the literature on urban climate change adaptation. It does so by shedding light on the history of the city’s struggle against the...