Abstract
Global climate change impacts the future of urbanism. The future is increasingly uncertain, and current responses in urban planning practice are often human-centered. In general, this is a way to respond to change that is oriented towards improving the life of people in the short term, often extracting resources from the environment at dangerous levels. This impacts the entire ecological system, and turns out to be negative for biodiversity, resilience, and, ultimately, human life as well. Adaptation to climatic impacts requires a long-term perspective based in the understanding of nature. The objective of the presented research is to find explorative ways to respond to the unknown unknowns through designing and planning holistically for the Zernike campus in Groningen, the Netherlands. The methods used in this study comprise co-creative design-led approaches which are capable of integrating sectoral problems into a visionary future plan. The research findings show how embracing a nature-driven perspective to urban design increases the adaptive capacity, the ecological diversity, and the range of healthy food grown on a university campus. This study responds to questions of food safety, and growing conditions, of which the water availability is the most pressing. Considering the spatial concept, this has led to the necessity to establish a novel water connection between the site and the sea.
Highlights
Climate change is one of humanity’s biggest problems [1], and this is largely part related to the ways in which humans live, even causing a new geological era, the anthropocene [2]
The research presented in this article illuminates tensions between three forms of future planning
Current short-term practices often plan for the known knowns, and
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Climate change is one of humanity’s biggest problems [1], and this is largely part related to the ways in which humans live, even causing a new geological era, the anthropocene [2]. The climate’s impact on land use, productivity, and food security [3], ecology [4], livability [5,6,7], and safety, which is under pressure of accelerated sea level rise [8,9], is moving beyond planetary boundaries [10]. The question of whether policy responses can deal with these uncertainties is investigated in this article. It is clear that adaptation is inescapable [11,12]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
