Open AccessThe fourth generation of urban projects to tackle climate change: a typological proposal
Author(s) -
Gino Pérez-Lancellotti,
Marcela Ziede
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/1203/3/032012
Subject(s) - operationalization , climate change , typology , context (archaeology) , environmental planning , urban planning , environmental resource management , green infrastructure , adaptation (eye) , urban climate , geography , environmental science , civil engineering , engineering , ecology , philosophy , physics , archaeology , epistemology , optics , biology
Climate change is the major challenge of our humanity and the relationship between climate change and cities has received increasing scholarly attention from governance, urban planning and infrastructure perspectives. However, the scale of the urban project, understood as the operationalization of climate change actions, has been neglected. The current three generations of urban projects are revisited (modern city, morphologic articulation, large urban projects) and a fourth-generation within the context of climate change is identified as missing; it combines adaptation and mitigation strategies for urban projects. While adaptation strategies are oriented to minimizing the negative impact of climate change on rising sea-levels, floods and rivers’ changes through green and blue infrastructures, mitigation strategies are twofold: one oriented to minimizing CO2 gas emissions and the other to reducing the risks of deterioration of natural systems due to human intervention or natural causes. Integrating the four generations, a typology of a 2x2 matrix of urban projects is drawn up. The four quadrants of types of urban projects are explained and accompanied by examples. Potential and desirable shifts between the quadrants are discussed to understand how changes are needed to advance to develop this new generation of urban projects. The paper contributes to expanding our understanding of urban projects in the context of climate change with heuristics purposes for researchers, practitioners and academia, and to prepare public policy makers to encourage the debate of climate change actions of adaptation and mitigation that should be materialized on an urban project scale. Future research may empirically test the typology in different contexts of development.