Resilience Thinking as Leitmotif in Urban and Regional Planning Dealing with Climate Change Impacts.

Abstract

Resilience thinking is related to spatial planning within the context of strategies to deal with climate change impacts in coastal urban regions and the consequent challenges posed to planning. The notion of resilience thinking is based on an emphasis on complexity and learning to live with change, adopting a perspective of social and ecological interdependencies and questioning paths already taken and taking into account potential transformations. This widened understanding is considered useful for tackling the challenges future climate change impacts pose on current decisions on land use. Potential gains as well as trade-offs that could occur by applying this perspective as a leitmotif within spatial planning are discussed and related to the challenges climate change places on to planning. The conceptual reflections are illustrated with empirical examples in Europe and the United States.