| dc.description.abstract | Contemporary cities face common trends that are bringing new challenges and opportunities. Water-related climate change hazards, like pluvial flooding and drought, alongside demographic change and urbanization, require adaptation to create healthy, sustainable cities. Planning for adaptation is widespread but there remains inertia in implementation of climate change adaptation measures. As cities look increasingly towards collaborative learning and municipal networking, frontrunners for adaptation may provide insights on how to accelerate adaptation and generate successful, multi-functional interventions to mitigate risk and build resilience to climate change. The objective of this research is therefore, to compare and identify critical factors for accelerating adaptation success in frontrunner cities and to facilitate the translation and actionability of best practices into a variety of urban contexts. Using the concept of adaptive capacity as an analytical frame, a qualitative assessment of adaptation implementation in London, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Berlin and Warsaw was undertaken. An analytical framework was developed to analyse adaptive capacity, consisting of six sub-capacities: legal, institutional, resource, social, learning and transformative. Via semi-structured interviews and content analysis of key municipal policy and strategy literature, city-specific characteristics, alongside inter-city similarities and differences, could be identified.
Comparative analysis showed that inspirational leadership, horizontal coordination, financial availability, adaptation expertise and community initiatives were strong enabling and critical factors for adaptation success. In addition to these, the pursuit of ambitious, holistic adaptation targets, and innovation and experimentation processes are also highly important. Success may be constrained by insufficient policy instruments for adaptation, a lack of financial continuity, and inadequate learning practices, via community marginalization or non-existent monitoring and evaluation. Critical adaptive capacity interconnections emerge between adaptive expertise and innovation and experimentation; socio-environmental equity redistribution and multi-benefit solutions; and adaptation policy cohesion and the embeddedness of adaptation across multiple sectors and stakeholders. Actionability assessment identified factors viable for rapid improvement, namely community initiatives, monitoring and evaluation, and statutory compliance. Translating weaker adaptive capacities into actions for implementation can prove a valuable guide for generating momentum in broader transformation of cities towards sustainability. It is concluded that critical adaptive capacity factors facilitate adaptation success in frontrunner cities. Strategic development and improvement of adaptive capacities should carefully consider the role of factor interconnections and identify actionable factors in order to optimize the acceleration of urban climate change adaptation practices. | |
