Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities : Emerging Approaches and Tools for a Climate-Sensitive Urban Development

Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities: Emerging Approaches and Tools for Climate-Sensitive Urban Development starts with a presentation of three widespread Urban Metaphors, which are gaining increasing attention from urban planners and decision-makers: Smart City, Resilient City and Transition Towns, being all of them focused on the need for enhancing cities’ capacities to cope with the multiple and heterogeneous challenges threatening contemporary cities and their future development and, above all, with climate issues. Then, the Authors provide an overview of current large-scale and urban strategies to counterbalance climate change so far undertaken in different geographical contexts (Europe, United States, China, Africa and Australia), shedding light on the different approaches, on the different weights assigned to mitigation and adaptation issues as well as on the main barriers hindering their effectiveness and translation into measurable outcomes. Opportunities and criticalities arising from the rich, ‘sprawled’ and ‘blurred’ landscape of current strategies and initiatives in the face of climate change pave the way to a discussion on the lessons learnt from current initiatives and provide new hints for developing integrated climate strategies, capable to guide planners and decision makers towards a climate sensitive urban development

Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities: Emerging Approaches and Tools for Climate-Sensitive Urban Development merges a scientific approach with a pragmatic one. Through a case study approach, the Authors explore strengths and weaknesses of institutional and informal practices to foreshadow innovative paths for an adaptive process of urban governance in the face of climate change. The book guides the reader along new governance paths, characterized by continuous learning and close cooperation and communication among different actors and stakeholders and, in so doing, helps them to overcome current ‘siloed’ approaches to climate issues.

• Links resilience, smart growth, low-carbon urbanism, climate-friendly cities, sustainable development and transition cities, being all these concepts crucial to improve effective climate policies
• Includes a number of case studies showing how cities, different in size, geographical, cultural and economic contexts are currently dealing with climate issues, grasping synergies and commonalities arising from current institutional practices and transition initiatives
• Provides strategic and operative guidelines to overcome barriers and critical issues emerging from current practices, promoting cross-sectoral approaches to counterbalance climate change

Adriana Galderisis is Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, teaching Urban Planning and Urban Design in graduate courses in Architecture. Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Naples Federico II. She is also a member of the Coordinating Board of the Thematic Group Resilience and Risk Mitigation Strategies of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP).
Research experience comes from a number of EU funded projects: “ENSURE Project - Enhancing resilience of communities and territories facing natural and na-tech hazards” (VII Framework Program); SCENARIO Project - Support on Common European Strategy for sustainable natural and induced technological hazards mitigation; ARMONIA Project - Applied Multi Risk Mapping of Natural Hazards for Impact Assessment” (VI Framework Program). Adriana has also authored several papers presented at national and international conferences and 90 publications (monographs, chapters in books and scientific articles).

Professor Colucci is an architect and PhD in Planning (Politecnico of Milan). She held research grants at Polytechnic of Milan for several years on environmental planning polices and landscaping. She is Adjunct Professor at Politecnico of Milan of courses of Urbanism; Urban Design. As senior partner and CBO of Co.O.Pe.Ra.Te. ldt, she developed activities as independent researcher, consultant and practitioner in the field of environmental and landscape planning and assessment, urban design, urban and territorial resilience and food polices. She is the author of several books and papers on environmental and landscape planning, urban-rural partnerships and food planning, on territory systems resilience. She is the coordinator of the Resilience Practices Observatory (DAStU of Politecnico of Milano and Fondazione CARIPLO). She is a member of the RRMS thematic group of AESOP and president of REsilienceLAB (www.resiliencelab.eu).