Resilience by Renovation

Abstract

Quay walls are waterfront structures that have a simple, yet important function: separating land from water and in doing so support functions on both land and water. These functions include providing stable land for the construction of buildings, roads, and the safe movement of people on land. On the waterside, quay walls are needed for containing surface water networks, flood management, and transportation functions. Quay walls are therefore an essential infrastructure in waterfront cities with river and canal networks such as Amsterdam, capital city of the Netherlands. The ongoing renovation of 200 kilometres of Amsterdam’s quay walls is an example of how age and other urban processes combine, creating a resource intensive challenge for cities to address.
The renovation of Amsterdam’s quay walls will change the waterfront spaces that are so ubiquitous in the city and as the renovation continues, it is clear that there is an opportunity to also integrate new functions into the city’s waterfront spaces. This thesis proposes that the renovation of quay wall structures in Amsterdam can benefit from being combined with efforts to make urban waterfront spaces more adaptive to climate change. The processes underlying quay wall renovation and climate change are analysed using three spatial scales: the city, the neighbourhood, and the waterfront. These three scales reveal how the city’s waterfront spaces contain processes that take place in urban ecosystems and how “Nature-based Solutions” concepts of “Green Infrastructure” and “Ecosystem-based Adaptation” can be used to propose a solutions at the city and waterfront scale.
The results of this are combined into a list of functional requirements that are used to propose ways to improve resilience in Amsterdam’s waterfront spaces. With over 90% of Amsterdam’s neighbourhoods containing quay wall waterfront spaces, implementing measures to increase climate resilience alongside the walls due for renovation has the potential to reach 448 neighbourhoods and is therefore a promising way to support existing climate adaptation programmes in the city.
To demonstrate this, seven sites in the city are used to visualise how climate adaptation measures can be applied alongside the renovation of Amsterdam’s quay walls to increase climate resilience. These scenarios show how measures are adapted to all stages of the quay wall renovation process and can used in a range of urban waterfront spaces in the city. Furthermore, the results show that within the different renovation types, the basic functions of waterfront spaces can be retained while increasing the provision of ecosystem services.
The strategy proposed in this thesis shows that at a minimum there is an opportunity to add 300 square kilometres of climate resilient spaces along the waterfronts of Amsterdam and in doing so increase and improve the social and ecological functions of the city now and in future. The results of this thesis show that the renovation of Amsterdam’s quay wall waterfront spaces can be a vehicle for implementing a city-wide climate adaptation programme that serves two long term objectives: making the city more resilient to climate change, and extending the service lifetime of walls already built in the city.