Migration and climate change studies often focus on the movement of people due to environmental stressors but rarely examine immigrants and their residential locations post-migration. Immigrants' housing preferences vary based on factors like cultural background, proximity to work, and rental costs. Low-income immigrants' housing options may be limited to areas with low rental and property values but may also be locations vulnerable to climate-related hazards putting low-income immigrants at even greater precarity. As cities develop climate adaptation strategies, increased property values and displacement may emerge. The Rotterdam Act, a national policy in the Netherlands, restricts low-income and jobless newcomers from moving into disadvantaged areas and has been in effect in five neighbourhoods in Rotterdam South since 2006, where there is a high concentration of immigrants and residents with low socioeconomic levels. This policy framework provides a crucial backdrop for understanding how urban policies shape residential patterns while also intersecting with broader issues of social injustice and environmental challenges. In this paper, I offer a critical examination of inequality, climate change, and social justice as they relate to climate adaptation strategies and urban policies through an assessment of the history, demographic characteristics, climate challenges, and policies to demonstrate how these elements lead to increased insecurity for residents. ... Read more

It was the middle of March when our research team was requested to host a session in two weeks for a conference to be attended by people in the government and private sector. This request came at a busy time, when we were also co-organizing a workshop with the Municipality of Rotterdam. We thought maybe we could propose the “pre-packaged” workshop from the small project I am running. Excited for the prospect of conducting a workshop that uses reflective methods for this type of audience I began writing the session proposal. A week before the conference I received an email saying that it was not the kind of workshop they wanted. A phone call ensued in which I was told that the attendees were paying participants and were of a “high level”. I responded by saying I had done this workshop for the Dutch Enterprise Agency, which was attended by the Dutch Water Envoy, who appreciated this method. To cut the story short, I gave up. I was frustrated and it was exactly that frustration that led me to write a 500-word abstract in one sitting and send it to ISRF to apply to be part of the “Migration and Climate Change” conference long before the call-for-papers deadline. [...] ... Read more

In recent years, municipalities have been recognised for their crucial role in protecting cities from climate change impacts by adopting mitigative and adaptive strategies to enhance climate resilience. However, anchoring these strategies demands multiple interventions, which are often hindered by the current siloed organization of departments and disciplines. An integrated infrastructure design approach (IIDA) can co-create a process that converges sectors, disciplines, and actors’ interests to tackle this challenge. To this end, this research explores how municipalities can effectively implement IIDA to enhance climate-resilient infrastructures. The city of Rotterdam served as a case study involving a thematic analysis of 21 interviews with internal actors of the municipality. This study identified 19 key factors influencing a municipality’s effectiveness in using an integrated design approach to enhance climate resilience. These influential factors belong to six different dimensions: Human Capacity, Organisational Culture, Governance, Communication, Project Development Process and Finance. The findings suggest that it is essential that actors within municipalities have soft skills such as proactivity and open-mindedness for collaboration. Furthermore, it is necessary to foster an innovative and collaborative culture to enable the development of pilot projects. This, in turn, helps update standards and scale up implementation by aligning integration at the three management levels: strategic, program, and project. Based on the findings, we recommend establishing a multi-dimensional baseline, setting up a communication strategy and tools, build human and institutional capacity through pilots and living labs. This can help municipalities implement an integrated infrastructure design in their organisation, offering a promising future in designing climate-resilient infrastructures. ... Read more

This position paper consolidates the work of researchers from various departments and areas of expertise across the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. It discusses the relevance, applications, and different methods of community engagement in the built environment. The inclusion of main take-away, recommendations for community engagement, and a range of example projects demonstrating various methods, bridge the gap from scientific knowledge to application in practice. ... Read more

Collective engagement is an essential factor in building a resilient city. According to studies, while resilience strategies can lessen cities' vulnerability to disaster, their effectiveness depends on the cities' ability to execute them. Collective engagement helps to ensure the effective implementation of these resilience strategies. In this research, I examined collective engagement as a basis for strengthening, a city's resilience. Anchoring on the collective engagement urban resilience framework, I explore the links between collective engagement and urban resilience. Using an explanatory case study approach, I looked at the vertical, horizontal, and transverse links between collective engagement and urban resilience of two Dutch cities, Rotterdam and Dordrecht, and two Philippine cities, Marikina and Malabon. This research examines adaptive cycles in cities, including triggers, policies, and stakeholder collaboration. It contributes to the debate on cross-sector collaboration among stakeholders, which is essential for resolving issues and achieving common goals. ... Read more

Governments' strategies to address climate change challenges have become increasingly dependent on technocrats and experts' abilities to quantify and codify urban problems and solutions (Savini and Raco, 2019). In the early 2000s, the Municipality of Rotterdam adopted a climate change adaptation approach in its urban development planning and policies. Policies like Water Plan 1 and 2, which emphasized the importance of addressing climate change through adaptive measures, paved the way for more targeted and strategic policies like the Rotterdam Climate Initiative, Rotterdam Program on Sustainability and Climate Change, and Rotterdam Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (Esteban, 2022). Policymakers changed their perspective on flood risk management from working against water to working with water. [...] ... Read more

Risk perception research has been used in flood risk management, environmental policies and programs, and the assessment of environmental attitudes and biases. Survey methods are frequently used in risk perception studies to assess a large population's perception of specific risks such as natural hazards. Others prefer focus group discussions and key informant interviews to target the study's specific risks. While these methods have yielded significant results in understanding a population's perception of the existence or non-existence of risks, as well as the personal effect or lack thereof on the target participants, these targeted risk perception studies have pre-determined risks outlined at their disposal that may condition the participants' thinking. In the City of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, six climate-related threats have been identified by the city that affects the current and future infrastructure and housing development in the city. This include extreme rainfall, flooding, soil subsidence, groundwater level decrease/increase, heat and drought, which affect many of the old houses built on poles because any drop in groundwater and increase in heat and drought weaken these wooden poles. In addition to these threats, the national government is under pressure to build at least 850,000 housing units by 2030 in order to meet current housing demand. Using a speculative design method that allows community participants to think of their own situations the study will explore what for them are existing and future risks, how they cope, and what they aspire to address the perceived existing and future risks. In this way, we will be able to identify interconnections or gaps in a community's risk perception in relation to government policy documents that have identified risks in the communities where participants live. In this study, I hope to find answers to the following questions: What are the current and perceived risks in communities both outside and inside the dike? What environmental and infrastructure changes are taking place in their communities? What effects do these changes have on the participants? And how do they intend to address perceived current and future risks? ... Read more

Policy-making bodies such as the UNISDR have frequently emphasized the role of community resilience in disaster risk management. However, this community-centered approach to enhancing a city's resilience may overlook other critical variables. Few studies have been conducted on the city's process of building urban resilience, as well as the factors that impede or accelerate the resilience process. This article aims to add to the body of literature on urban resilience processes by analyzing the disaster experience and urban resilience of Malabon City, a flood-prone city in Metro Manila's northwestern region. The purpose of this article is to answer the questions, “How does the process of urban resilience occur?”, “What factors impede or accelerate the process of urban resilience?” and “Why such factors impede or accelerate the process of urban resilience?” Furthermore, the article adds to the debate about how shifting the responsibility for resilience building to society and the community reduces government and political accountability to the people it is supposed to serve. The article will critically assess the policy environment surrounding the flood infrastructure development in Metro Manila and how it gravely affected Malabon City. The case analysis demonstrates that urban resilience does not follow a linear pattern or a single equilibrium, but rather multiple equilibria of resilience building. It highlights that urban resilience is complex and considers the connections between and among sectors and dimensions within the city. The article indicates resilience as a value-laden and politically charged concept. ... Read more

Homes and communities are becoming more vulnerable to climate change. Particularly now, when the pace of climatic change is increasing, safety and liveability concerns are of the utmost importance. The two coastal delta cities of Rotterdam and Dordrecht make up the Greater Rotterdam Living Lab (GRLL) for the RED&BLUE research project. Both cities have identified urban use cases based on their present priorities for various climate issues. These urban cases are dealing with combined effects of climate change, including extreme rainfall, flooding, changes in groundwater levels, subsidence, heat, and drought, in various stages of development. In some cases, existing housing areas are to be retrofitted for climate-proofing, while others are to be designed as new (additional) housing stock, low density uses developments and future evacuation areas. Different stakeholders are involved in the process of creating and planning these integrated strategies as well as their actual implementation. It is challenging to identify all stakeholders; however, to have real integrated strategies, the less visible stakeholders, including those who will be most affected, need to be acknowledged, identified, and involved in creating solutions. The current study presents an approach for integrated stakeholder mapping. Through interviewing stakeholders currently involved in the urban use cases of the GRLL we (a) identified and categorized relevant stakeholders, (b) map their interests and resources, and (c) identified thematic areas of interests where the stakeholders are involved. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate that there are more stakeholders to be considered and to visualize how different interests are aligned. This in contrast to specifying who the important stakeholders are and how much power they have. By identifying the stakeholders presently involved and in which areas, we would like to contribute to enhancing the co-creation process for climate adaptive strategies that is inherent in a living laboratory. ... Read more

Cities are spaces of struggle and contestation. Growing concerns over the climate crisis coupled with growing city populations have risen the urgency for public policies that prioritise climate risk management, adaptation, and mitigation efforts in cities. In this article, we will reflect on an experimental exercise on collective self-inquiry in discussions on climate gentrification, which we organised for the LDE-GMD Centre’s ”Rethinking urban governance for the future of diverse and mobile cities’’ conference held on 5 April 2023. Our experience suggests that exercises that evoke collective reflection can help connect often abstract discussions on climate gentrification with people’s everyday experiences in their neighbourhoods. ... Read more