Abstract
This article posits that design of climate adaptation interventions is co-aligned in process with the social diffusion of innovation. As such, innovation is fundamentally a differentiation to the status quo through trial-and-error that is designed to fail and circumvent, as much as it is designed to insulate and transform. Through cycles of creation and failure, social, financial and ecological capital are reorganized within an adaptive cycle—as process that simultaneously offers the promise of both a subjectively more equitable and more exploitive set of potential outcomes. Adaptation has long been regarded as neither good nor bad—it is merely a social process of learning and trade-offs from which some may benefit and others may bear the burden This article challenges the rhetoric that resilience and adaptation activities universally yield positive outcomes for society and ecology. To that contrary, only in an optimal scenario would such activities yield a net positive result of a more equitable and just future. In some cases, designed adaptations may be failures for some and successes for others.
Highlights
This article posits that design of climate adaptation interventions is co-aligned in process with the social diffusion of innovation
Through cycles of creation and failure, social, financial and ecological capital are reorganized within an adaptive cycle—a process that simultaneously offers the promise of both a subjectively more equitable and more exploitive set of potential outcomes
Given the chaotic complexity of urban ecology and the stochastic performance of engineered systems, how can cities ever be ‘designed’ to adapt to climate change? Adaptation interventions are not neutral and objective activities defined by science, rather they are patent and latent conduits of social values
Summary
This article posits that design of climate adaptation interventions is co-aligned in process with the social diffusion of innovation. In some cases, designed adaptations may be failures (i.e., maladaptations) for some and successes for others This potential phenomena is a fundamental axiom of climate justice in that maladaptive outcomes often disproportionately impact historically marginalized communities.[3] Understanding the positive, negative and neutral potential outcomes of adaptation and resilience interventions are central to a critical analysis of everything from the redesign of buildings and cities to the legislation of rules and institutions that seek to address environmental change and degradation. This article aims to open a dialogue on the nature of innovation and its positive, negative and neutral implications in the adaptation of the built environment Through this analytical lens, such interventions can be critically evaluated in terms of their impact on socio-ecological agents and processes
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