How is climatic adaptation taken into account by legal tools? Introduction of water and vegetation by French town planning documents

Abstract

The issue of urban heat islands, UHIs, is rarely tackled in French environmental legislation and hardly ever touched in existing town planning documents. Reflection on the introduction of vegetation and water into cities is notably lacking in regularity and uniformity and local authorities may have to resort to tools from a variety of sources when working on adapting to climate change. Choices are strongly influenced by the structure of the area concerned and the characteristics of local governance. To encourage authorities and developers to take UHIs into account and integrate the creation of oases of freshness into urban planning, we try to identify the most appropriate level of operational scale, and put forward some propositions to structure the interactions between incitative documents that stimulates awareness and encourage reflection, and statutory tools that can express what is at stake in terms of actual obligations. This multidisciplinary work combines competence in urban climatology and in environment and town planning law. It takes stock of current knowledge on the subject of heat islands in French cities, analyses existing tools and suggest new paths of action to integrate the issues of adapting towns and climate in French town planning. Intentionally limited to the example of France and the technique of introducing oases of freshness (vegetation and water), the article considers several aspects of urban management. The examples given here are based on the tools set up in France but the thinking may be transposable to other legal systems.