The Social, Political, and Environmental Dimensions in Designing Urban Public Space from a Water Management Perspective: Testing European Experiences

Abstract

Urban areas are increasingly experiencing extreme weather events, especially related to water (e.g., droughts, heatwaves, floods), which are devastatingly impacting infrastructure and human lives. Compact cities, conceived to create more robust, effective, and sustainable environments, are under pressure to increase their resilience by co-producing adaptive strategies mainly focused on the urban public space. However, public space design tends to face environmental challenges without sufficiently exploring their intersection with social issues (citizens living conditions and vulnerability) and political structures (governance). This contribution delves into how urban public space interventions are (not) moving towards achieving urban resilience in an integrated way instead of sectoral. A triple-loop approach has been developed and tested in ten urban public spaces in European compact cities in the last 25 years. The results report how most projects reinforce the social dimension by promoting citizen well-being through new quality standards in public spaces, excluding some citizenry’s vulnerable segments (immigrants, women, and disabled). The political dimension reinforces hard adaptation measures to manage water resources, although increasing attention is put on nature-based solutions, and most projects ensure participation processes. Finally, the environmental dimension is the most transversal by increasing land conversion, ensuring flooding mitigation, and enhancing adaptive capacity.