Spatial Planning and Climate Change

Spatial planning has a vital role to play in the move to a low carbon energy future and in adapting to climate change. To do this, spatial planning must develop and implement new approaches.

Elizabeth Wilson and Jake Piper explore a wide range of issues in this comprehensive book on the relationship between our changing climate and spatial planning, and suggest ways of addressing the challenges by taking a longer-sighted approach to our preparation for the future. This text includes:

• an overview of what we know already about future climate change and its impacts, as we attempt both to adapt to these changes and to reduce the emissions which cause them
• the role of spatial planning in relation to climate change, offering some theoretical and political explanations for the challenges that planning faces in the coming decades
• a review of policy and legislation at international, EU and UK levels in regard to climate change, and the support this gives to the planning system
• case studies detailing what responses the UK and the Netherlands have made so far in light of the evidence
• ways to help new and existing urban developments to reduce energy use and to adapt to climate change, through strengthening the relationships between urban and rural areas to avoid water shortage, floods or loss of biodiversity.

The authors take an evidence-based look at this hugely important topic, providing a well-illustrated text for spatial planning professionals, politicians and the interested public, as well as a useful reference for postgraduate planning, geography, urban studies, urban design and environmental studies students.

Elizabeth Wilson is Reader in Environmental Planning in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University. She lectures and researches in the responses of spatial planning, environmental assessment and sustainability policy to climate change. She has recently worked on research studies on adaptation strategies in urban areas, and on the response of European biodiversity policy to climate change.

Jake Piper is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University. She has research and consultancy experience in economic and environmental assessment across sectors including transport, forestry and water. Recently she has worked on studies of policy development and spatial planning as related to climate change and biodiversity (for the EU), as well as rural development.