Raise the dikes and re-use the past? Climate adaptation planning as heritage practice

Linde Egberts,Svava Riesto

doi:10.1007/s40152-021-00226-1

Linde Egberts, Svava Riesto

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-021-00226-1

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Abstract

Across Europe, coasts are drastically being changed to adapt to relative sea level rise, which will influence coastal landscapes and heritage in many ways. In this paper, we introduce a methodological starting point for analysing the ways in which landscape architects and spatial planners engage with coastal landscapes and coastal heritage in the context of current climate adaptation projects. We test these methodologies by applying them to the Marconi dike strengthening project in Delfzijl, the Netherlands. This city’s dike fortification is an interesting case, as it offers many opportunities for re-designing heritage. The city borders the Wadden Sea area, a tidal mudflat area protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its natural and geological heritage values. The area also consists of a rich cultural landscape, which is overlooked in the public image and in local policy. We conclude that landscape architects and planners should strengthen not only the dike, but also the interpretation of the past that dominates policy and political debates in the area. We also find that the existing heritage production model of Ashworth and Tunbridge can provide some useful structure for understanding and contextualizing spatial planning for climate change as a way of doing heritage.

Highlights

Over the past decades, designing landscapes with heritage has become an increasingly popular strategy among architects
We focus on how planners and landscape architects deal with the past when they design climate adaptation measures, approaching landscape planning processes as heritage practices
We do so from a critical heritage perspective, meaning that we aim to make explicit which traces of the past are regarded as heritage and, which are not. How are these traces appropriated in new design contexts? By doing this, we aim to develop methodological starting points for analysing landscape architecture and spatial planning processes and to relate climate adaptation to a much-needed discussion about values and priorities in heritage making

Summary

Introduction

Over the past decades, designing landscapes with heritage has become an increasingly popular strategy among architects. Fueled by the inspirational experiences from the Ruhr area— the Internationale Bauaustellung Emscherpark (1989–1999)—landscape architects are engaging more and more with heritage objects, structures, and values (Riesto and Tietjen 2018) This comes as no surprise, as cultural heritage has shifted from being a separate sector in society, run by experts and focused on the conservation of individual buildings, to a vector in which many stakeholders re-use and transform spatial heritage to make and shape the living environments of the future (Janssen et al 2017). Designing adaptation interventions that make landscapes more resilient to effects of climatic change such as drought, heavy precipitation, and flooding is currently a daily activity for many landscape architects, urbanists, and planners.1 Oftentimes, these measures have high political urgency and require drastic, large-scale interventions. This raises the question as to how these climate-related

Objectives

Conclusion