Urban Climate Shelters: A Nature-Based Solution for Urban Resilience

In recent years, European cities have been experimenting with planning and designing solutions to operationalise the Paris Agreement, improving the mitigation of the impacts of Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and supporting adaptation to multiply effect on urban challenges, direct threat slow/rapid on-setting risk. A growing number of local governments have started to contrast the impacts of climate-induced extreme events, including the challenges posed by rising temperatures, thanks to ecosystem-based approaches and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to make cities more resilient. Among many, Urban Climate Shelter (UCS) is based on transforming critical urban spaces into climate refuges to foster security from heat, flood, and drought events through a multi-hazard approach by using NbS and activating a process of co-production with the wider local community. Recently, this kind of solution has been applied to schools, transforming schoolyards into shelters for the population during extreme temperatures and functioning as a cooling project. The chapter explores the potential of UCS in schoolyards as NbS for urban resilience since they can contribute significantly to integrating climate mitigation and adaptation actions locally. Reviewing case studies in European cities that have successfully carried out climate shelters in schools in the past decade, including Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and the Hague, the chapter argues that incorporating NbS in school settings seems to be a promising path to creating co-benefits for urban resilience. In the end, the chapter focused on the lessons learned from implementing NbS in schoolyards, including the societal challenges within the co-benefits of NbS to urban resilience and suggesting that UCS in schoolyards can be a codified solution for sustainable urbanisation.