23 June 2016

Turning up the heat on climate change strategies

Lincoln University is bringing a New Zealand perspective to an international study on how urban planners and designers are dealing with the threat of climate change.

The study, led by researchers in the Netherlands and Canada, involves assessing various nations’ strategies for adjusting their urban areas to help mitigate environmental degradation and manage climate change effects.

Lincoln’s School of Landscape Architecture (SoLA) is enlisting a Master’s student to find out how New Zealand is implementing such strategies. The results will then be compared with findings from other countries participating in the study.

“As urban populations increase, cities need to adopt strategies for minimising greenhouse gas impacts and adapting to climate change,” says SoLA Assistant Lecturer Dr Silvia Tavares.

“Some of the issues that must be planned for include sea level rise and increasing floods around rivers and other water streams, which may lead to communities being displaced and cultural values and practices being lost.”

Dr Tavares says a problematic issue in New Zealand is that Australasia’s most common urban planning strategy still strongly encourages urban sprawl, which conflicts with key strategies for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

“We need to focus on walkability to reduce dependence on cars and green infrastructure has to be carefully planned to provide important services and to enhance the quality of public open spaces.

“However, strong urban green infrastructure does not necessarily demand sprawl, and awareness of possible planning and design solutions is needed to promote high-quality urban spaces, while encouraging people to walk and cycle.”

She also says a Canterbury perspective will be particularly valuable to the study, due to the experiences triggered by the 2010-2011 earthquakes.

“A rapid response was needed to deal with the consequences of the earthquakes, and other cities worldwide will experience similar issues over a longer period of time as a result of climate change. Canterbury provides an important example of planning responses and their possible effects.”

The investigation will be based on in-depth interviews with urban climate scientists and professionals from urban planning and design offices, municipalities, and urban climate consultancies.

“A Master’s student will carry out the interviews, and data analysis, then produce a report of the findings,” says Dr Tavares.

“The interview questions focus on evaluating the sense of urgency associated with developing strategies, figuring out how we can increase awareness about the importance of adapting the urban environment to climate change, and determining which strategies are being used in the planning and design process at the moment.

“We will also investigate how aware urban planners and designers are of urban climate phenomena, and how this has been taken into account in our country’s planning and design practices.”

Other studies are being carried out in the Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, and South Korea, while researchers in Hong Kong, Kenya, and the UK will also soon be involved.

The project leaders are Dr Sanda Lenzholzer from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and Professor Robert Brown from Guelph University in Canada.

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