What If We Were Ready for Climate Adaptation?
Institutional Prefiguration and the Mainstreaming of Climate Adaptation in Urban Built Infrastructure
M.A.E. Meijer (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
J.E. Goncalves – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Jorn de Vos – Mentor
J.A. Annema – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
This research examines how institutional prefiguration can contribute to mainstreaming climate adaptation in urban built infrastructure in the Netherlands. Although technical capability and societal urgency have increased over the last decade, a persistent implementation gap remains: climate adaptation is recognised as necessary, but is not yet consistently embedded in infrastructure governance and delivery. This thesis asks how anticipatory, forward-looking forms of institutional action can help close this gap.
Using a multi-method approach centred on the renewal of Amsterdam’s quay walls and bridges, and complemented by the Hofplein redevelopment in Rotterdam, the research unfolds in three phases. First, it identifies the factors that have shaped adaptation mainstreaming through interviews with public and private actors. Second, it examines how prefigurative practice unfolds in present-day projects and how this affects implementation. Third, it operationalises institutional prefiguration in an agent-based model to explore its contribution to institutional change.
The findings show, first, that fragmented responsibilities, limited ownership, and an ambiguous problem definition recur across public and private actors. Second, institutional prefiguration unfolds most consequentially above the individual project level, where anticipation of future requirements is supported programmatically and carried into implementation by boundary spanners operating across project phases and institutional boundaries. Third, the modelled what-if scenarios suggest that institutional prefiguration contributes not through coercion, but by changing the rule actors default to: it enacts a future institutional reality before it is formally mandated.
The thesis concludes that institutional prefiguration cannot by itself force a full regime shift, but it can prepare and partially enact one. In this sense, becoming ready for adaptation does not mean waiting for future regulation to arrive; it means governing, procuring, and building as if that future had already become the rule.