Shifting from a Risk Mitigation Project to an Adaptation Project: The case of Curitiba’s Lagoon Parks

Drawing upon the sustainability transitions theory, the paper aims to explore how the risk mitigation project of Curitiba’s lagoon parks shifted to adaptation urban projects in the context of tackling climate change. “Urban acupuncture” was the pioneering strategy adopted by Curitiba’s Municipality through the introduction, more than 40 years ago, of a limited number of low cost projects in some natural lagoons as innovative experiments that operate as a niche in a multi-level perspective. The projects acted as a way of resisting the pressure of urban intervention trends focused on transforming natural landscapes into new built-up urban areas, or intervention in natural ecosystems with water drainage and engineering solutions. These experiments and their synergy now constitute urban parks with a leverage impact on the capacity the city has to adapt to climate change, creating tension on the institutionalized regime. Through this case study, we examine the importance of governance, leadership and urban networks professionals in addition to technical features of the projects. The findings suggest that a top-down strategy, long time frame, and the exclusion of community participation have a limited likelihood of replicability and are discouraged nowadays in public urban policies. The paper contributes to highlighting the link between experimental urban acupuncture and sustainability transitions through incremental projects in natural areas for climate change adaptation. It contributes to the understanding of transitions in the southern hemisphere where institutions struggle with tight budgets, incremental interventions and specific nondemocratic contexts, and raises concerns about the critical role of governance.