Putting Resilience into Practice. The Spatial Planning Response to Urban Risks

Risks are growing dynamics of urban daily life in the twenty-first century. It mainly affects cities because their rapid and often unplanned expansion exposes a large number of people to unexpected events. For the purpose of considering urban vulnerabilites, an increasing number of cities is engaging in designing adaptation plans and strategies focused on resilience, which is acknowledged as one of the top priorities of the development agenda and a primary guiding principle of policy governance of our time. Nevertheless, there is little empirical evidence to demonstrate that adaptation planning is useful, as it is more concerned with having a broad vision rather than about specific actions. Despite this, the critical role played by spatial planning in addressing both the mitigation of climate change and adaptation to its unavoidable impacts has been theoretically acknowledged. This view stems from the admission that the spatial configuration of cities has significant effects on climate change and has become central to enacting adaptive responses within a resilient framework. Starting from these remarks, the paper reports a qualitative comparison between the local climate adaptation strategies of Bologna (Italy) and London (UK). The analysis was conducted in order to understand why cities continue to engage adaptation planning, and the response of spatial planning in vision-oriented strategies and action-based plans for adaptation towards resilience. Basically, the paper discusses the gap between theory and practice of planning in achieving a resilient approach to urban risks through adaptation.