We face an unprecedented water crisis. A widespread imbalance in the global system causes progressively extreme situations, on one hand increased unmanageable water volumes through flooding, rising sea levels and storm events and, on the other hand, a lack of water during prolonged periods of drought and wildfires. This imbalance threatens the urban environment, rendering already vulnerable populations under further duress. Because all systems are connected, all aspects of urban life become more and more fragile. Communities are trapped within cycles of short-term disaster management, rather than building long-term adaptation strategies. Therefore, instead of regarding resilience as the capacity to recover quickly, we focus on using its potential to accelerate change. “Beauty and wonder” might seem superficial, but their potency lies in their provocative quality. When we think of resilience, we think of pragmatism, and restraint. However, we believe that “beauty and wonder” are crucial ingredients of every successful urban adaptation strategy. They spark and prolong the will to change. MVRDV is an architecture and urbanism practice that lives this ethos, driven by the ambition to enable communities and cities to transition towards a better future. The “wow factor” in our projects communicates this power, it challenges people look at the future through a different, positive, lens. We can inspire and help communities, investors and developers harness this to create solutions that facilitate long-term commitment, preparedness and flexibility, attracting innumerable benefits. The backbone of MVRDV’s resilience strategy is the connection and transformation of vulnerabilities into drivers for optimistic, robust and daring designs, challenging stakeholders to co-create an adaptive urban future that works in concert with nature with these six principles: 1-Enabling urban life that works in symbiosis with vulnerabilities & natural systems 2-Concisely analyzing & interpreting complex systems 3-Stimulating social & fun engagement processes 4-Adding daring emptiness 5-Making adaptation desirable 6-Seeking win-wins on all levels & scales. MVRDV uses design projects to advance this multifaceted methodology in practice, approaching real-life challenges by collaborating with multiple stakeholders, and continually evolving digital and analogue design tools. We bring them together to discern true needs, and ultimately manifest collective desires in built solutions, combining pragmatism with provocation. This leads to projects that explore e.g. new forms of governance, innovative building systems, urban greening and living with water. Exemplary urban and architectural resilience projects demonstrate the outcomes, including: Resilient by Design, Too Little+Too Much, Eindhoven Supervision, Tainan Spring, Silodam, Wego, Future Towers, Oosterwold, Bastide Niel, Overschild, Barapullah Drain and Future Mobility studies. We can derive several lessons from these projects. They include the need for: - Inclusion of climate, disaster management and social adaptation strategies from the start; - Intense collaboration between scales, socio-economic backgrounds, and expertise; - Independent resilience facilitators; - System monitoring through historic and real time data to support decision making; - Digital tools to enrich co-creation processes, while human interaction remains vital; - Clear principles and intriguing proposals that ease consensus and mobilization on all scales; - Advancements in flexibility of building structures; - Incentives for and impact analysis of resilience efforts; - Active evaluation of the 6 principle’s application to drive further enhancement. Fundamental to all of this, is the belief that design encourages people to look at the world in a different way. It challenges them to see value where they did not before. We believe our approach to resilience is broadly applicable to urban development processes. It allows MVRDV to create scalable solutions for resilient environments that foster consensus through surprising and intriguing solutions. In a world faced with mounting challenges, “wonder” brings hope to motivate adaptation, towards a sustainable future.

In recent times, after the defeat of the ‘sceptical approach’ on the strong correlation between global warming and mankind activities, the scientific debate about ‘anthropogenic Climate Change’ and its effects on human settlements has shifted. Nowadays, it is mostly focused on the capabilities of public policies and integrated partnerships to rethink visions and implement virtuous strategies in order to face the increasing threats and manage the vulnerability of urban realm. The substantial failure of ‘Kyoto Protocol’ (1997) and ‘Paris Climate Agreement’ (2015) makes us figure out that Climate Change impacts on cities and their inhabitants will keep on blowing up in the incoming years (IPCC 2014): waterfront cities and their hydrographic systems will be more and more vulnerable to extreme events such as heavy precipitations leading to devastating floods and alarming sea level rise (EEA 2012). Therefore, the emerging imperative for contemporary metropolitan and urban communities lies in the ability to develop policies, strategies and project solutions tackling the perverse effects of ‘Climate Change’ on the water sector. Within the EU H2020 research project SOS Climate Waterfront, the main goal is to investigate and highlight innovative approaches in Climate Change driven policies, aimed at overcoming the waterfront cities’ critical aspects. Looking at the most advanced economies across the world it is possible to focus different cultural models through the comparative analysis of specific case-studies. Findings and lessons are expected to be useful in order to extract relevant suggestions for the innovation of environmental integrated strategies and specific projects to be applied in Italy. In particular, virtuous rebounds are expected for the city of Rome. Its rather recent planning path – ‘River contracts’ – are contrasting the increasing vulnerability of its territory and looking for a sensible attitude towards the integration of water systems, green corridors and open spaces to be planned and shared through participatory democracy’s steps. The research follows the inductive method and the classic case-study interpretation keys (Yin 1984) developed with a qualitative approach and supported by direct sources and interviews. The case studies choice is referred to the main methodological approaches active globally on what can improve the response to hydrological stress, mitigate the impacts and, effectively, optimize the management of resources towards sustainability. In the international scenarios, scholars and experts specify diverse cultural trends, distinguished by their main focus: strategic policies, technical solutions or their integration. Furthermore, the scientific literature has recognized two opposite great categories of responses to extreme events: reactive or anticipatory (Repetto 2008). Reactive adaptations occur after a disaster has already taken place. They try to overcome inattention beforehand while reducing damages from future, similar events. Often, they are just an over-response in an emergency situation without durable impacts nor a positive balance between efforts and outcomes. Anticipatory adaptation, instead, looks ahead to the project scenario trying to implement policies and strategies before an extreme event or any other risky impact could occur. Virtuous planning can ensure that damages and costs are minimized by incorporating adaptation strategies into planned actions. As some schools of thought have highlighted (Shaw 2007), creative design and conscious management of urban environment embracing different spatial scales (from single blocks to neighbourhoods, from cities to metropolitan areas and their regional context) plays a crucial role in enhancing the anticipatory adaptation and resilience of the entire urban ecosystem. The variety of trends, contexts and spatial scales representing diversity, reach unity’s strength through an integrated-anticipatory planning. This shows that it is definitively time for the ‘adaptation approach’, supported by mitigation strategies, with a clear twofold aim: risks to be minimised and potential opportunities to be caught.

Background and Status Quo – the “Problem” Over the course of the last five years, most large cities have been experiencing dramatic effects of the climate crisis. In August 2018, the New York Times published “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,” an explicit chronicle of all the ignored warnings based on scientific evidence and the missed opportunities to counteract global heating when it was still comparably easy to do so. Research and Action Plan This paper focuses on illustrating different scenarios for cities on a 1.5-degree pathway, meaning a 50-55% net emissions reduction by 2030 versus 2010 levels. Five major shifts would underlie a transition to this pathway: 1. Industry 2. Transport 3. Power 4. Buildings 5. Avoided Deforestation & Agriculture Depending on the different functions of the global cities, various conditions arise as starting points for potential interventions. The two selected cities, Milan and Vienna have a lot in common, as they are comparable in size, population, social set-up and geographic position, and experience e.g. the increase of heat in the city. Both cities have already invested to become carbon neutral. Current strategies in both cities will serve as groundwork regarding their applicability elsewhere. Urban and architectural interventions will be evaluated and exchanged to share knowledge. The goal is a flexibly applicable and further developable parts kit. Vienna suffers from a lack of green spaces in the inner districts. High pollution levels in Milan negatively affect the population but politicians rated businesses interests higher. The COVID-19 outbreak in Vienna and Milan acted as a game-changer. Streets were closed and driving lanes reduced to facilitate pedestrian and cycle movement at safe distances. Will any of these interventions remain? There are good reasons for hope. Environmental agendas have gained significant support. The public had to quickly understand complicated math curves. New behavioral patterns were adopted rapidly. Lockdowns have no immediate impact on reducing CO2 from the atmosphere. There is growing scientific evidence of a connection between environmental pollution and COVID-19-related mortality rates. Environmental factors like the pre-outbreak level of air pollution— especially nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – play a role. Geography is another factor: Teheran, Northern Italy and Madrid are surrounded by mountains that keep cold air and pollutants close to the ground. Although the negative health consequences of constant exposure to air pollution were known before, addressing them has now gained additional weight. Concluding, governments are well-advised to use the strategies developed for fighting COVID-19 to make serious efforts to fight climate change Call for Action in the Cities Cities are key contributors to climate change and at the same time their residents experience the consequences most directly through the negative impact on urban life. As a result, not only many European mayors, but also their North American and Asian counterparts have started to counteract. On one hand, the documentation of best practice examples in different cities is still valid, but cities have to simultaneously start implementing unpopular and quite radical measures if they want to achieve visible results. They have to transform the sources of energy provision, apply innovative planning solutions that avoid further sprawl leading to densification, promote a sustainable way of building and renovating the existing building stock, secure the provision of CO2-neutral public transportation and achieve the change of mobility behavioral patterns. These enormous challenges are difficult to meet alone. Act Together Cities with similar challenges and comparable resources can therefore support each other and act together. Milan and Vienna have a lot in common and experience dramatically increasing heat in the city.

With the intensification of global climate change, many countries and regions in the world are facing problems such as water resources shortage, water pollution and frequent flooding disasters. Discussing water issues only from the perspective of the water profession has been unable to solve the current more and more complex water problems. The interaction between urban and rural spatial development and water system changes has received more attention. The time and space fluctuation risks of water resources pose more challenges to the city's traditional spatial development model. Strengthening the research and application of water resources overall planning at the spatial planning level, and coordinating the protection, development, and utilization of water resources are important elements for ensuring the sustainability of water resources and social and economic development. This study takes a small city with coexisting water shortage and flooding in East China as an example, relying on 3S（Remote sensing、Geography information systems、Global positioning systems） technology, focusing on two aspects: urban and rural water supply guarantee and mitigation of urban flood disasters. Combining the climatic and hydrological characteristic model of the river basin and the distribution of urban and rural spatial elements, through spatial data mining and visual expression, we can find the key contradictions of water space and landuse. Such as environmental damage of water source area, insufficient water source reserve, low economic efficiency of water, unbalanced water-use structure, lack of water storage space, narrow flood channel and so on. In terms of water supply guarantee, through the guidance of population development scale, optimization of industrial distribution and types, protection of urban water source areas, comprehensive watershed water resources scheduling scheme, ecological compensation, etc., the corresponding spatial planning strategies are proposed. In terms of urban flood control, construct an evaluation model of flood-prone disasters, identify flood risk areas, and improve the city ’s security defense capabilities and disaster resilience based on the city ’s ability and characteristics to respond to floods, with the goal of “safely resisting floods and safety in floods”. Put forward measures that should be implemented for flood control and disaster mitigation, including improving the urban flood control system, constructing engineering facilities, building resilient flood control facilities, and establishing a coordinated management mechanism for river basin flood control. The field of spatial planning has long focused on land in the land, lacking a complete understanding of the scientific operation rules of the water system, and it is easy to ignore the basic role of the water system as the bottom of the space, causing urban and rural construction to continuously squeeze the water-carrying space, and industrial development continues to damage the water-carrying capacity. From the perspective of the integration of water resources planning and spatial planning, this study attempts to analyze and solve the problem of the spatial placement of the sustainable development of the water system, facing a more complex and changeable future human living environment.

Stakeholder participation is a certain element for safeguarding resilience, especially in the interaction between actors in governing water-related to changing climate. Water governance takes place on various scales and intersects boundaries, from local to the global level. Solving problems related to water at the local level is not as easy because the drivers might not be local and need to have a broader perspective. On the global level, indeed, the challenge is a lower possibility of engaging all relevant stakeholders. However, the global level should have the basic policy and guidelines to emphasize stakeholder's participation, specifically in water governance. Also, given that the decision taken in one level of governance can affect the decision on another level, stakeholder participation can advantage reconcile decisions across scale/level. This article assesses the importance given to stakeholder participation in global water policy/law documents and analyses specifically the World Bank's basic policies, policies related to water, and how it addresses stakeholder participation. The importance of stakeholder participation in all levels of water governance should be supported by financing the engagement process. How the participation cost considered on water-related World Bank projects are also examined. The qualitative content analysis employed in this research, with deductive codes from stakeholder participation cost literature, and potential additional inductive codes were simultaneously considered from the relevant policies and interviews. The analysis concludes that global water policies and World Bank policies emphasize participation, first, the Bank's operational manuals mention the importance of community engagement (e.g., OP 4.02; 4.10; 4.12 and 14.70). Second, an examination of how water-related projects operationalize participation and participation costs shows that the projects "belong" to the borrower, which means that the participation (consultation process) of stakeholders, including relevant community members, is the responsibility of the country/party borrowing the money. Third, the cost of participation depends on the type of project. In the pure CDD (Community-Driven Development) projects, the cost of the involvement for water-related projects is higher than in non-CDD projects, and the cost for participation is usually budgeted in the project component by the borrower. Fourth, stakeholder participation appears to be seen as a capacity-building, which is very different from actual stakeholder participation; it appears that stakeholder participation cannot be effective without a capacity-building component. Finally, the lack of transparency on stakeholder budgeting makes it challenging to assess the tangible and intangible costs, whether this is tailor-made to the culture of the country and the structure of the problem.

Simply understood as ‘seeking opportunities out of crises’, resilience seems to be a universal approach to cope with contemporary global challenges, such as changing climate, rapid urbanisation, loss of biodiversity, migrations, etc. As a majority of the current problems are of urban origin – i.e. they emerge in cities, where they also cause significant consequences on people, ecosystems and infrastructures, it is a city and its territorial sub-elements (district, neighbourhood, site, building) that provide a prolific field for exploring the mechanisms towards resilient governance, planning and design. Under such an overarching agenda of urban resilience, in this paper we focus on exploring the components of architectural and urban design as a tool for mitigating climate change. More precisely, as carbon dioxide emitted from the built environment is released into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, we want to explore the design patterns that help reduce CO2 emissions to finally lessen the vulnerability index of urban systems. Scrutinising the relationship between the climate change and construction industry elucidates the concepts like sustainable construction, green buildings, and design for climate, among others. We conclude with the systematic overview of objectives, strategies, and principles of sustainable architectural and urban design aimed at curbing the effects of climate change to finally help increase urban resilience.

Background: The coastal landscapes of Europe are some of the most important and yet vulnerable areas of human settlement. Characterized by overlapping and competing land uses, coastal landscapes are focus areas for urban growth and infrastructure, road and rail networks, industrial and commercial development. Seasides are significant vacation destinations with tourism along coastlines a considerable driving force with particular development dynamics and spatial patterns. The urban-water interface is also an essential zone for unique and diverse flora and fauna habitat. Coastal landscapes have attracted human settlement since early times and are often extremely rich in cultural heritage. All of these economic, social and environmental potentials have attracted people to settle on the coast. This ongoing urbanization process has led to unsustainable development patterns such as urban sprawl and the irreversible consumption of soil and natural resources. Urban growth in coastal areas brings demands on ecosystems and places them at risk from damage and degradation, the impacts of which are often trans-boundary. The effects of climate change increase the vulnerability of coastal landscapes. The sustainable and integrated planning, design and management of coastal areas is crucial for the mental, social, physical and economic well-being of European citizens. Methodology: Nine partner institutions* participating in CO-LAND have developed a blended learning environment in which international students from various planning disciplines address the specific challenges of coastal landscapes in Europe. The learning environment combines an open online platform training course with four intensive study programmes (IPs) in partnership with coastal communities in Romania, Estonia, Italy and Belgium. Students are equipped with relevant knowledge, methods and tools, and encouraged in building visionary and democratic mindsets. The emphasis is to derive planning and design decisions from a grounded understanding of local needs, values and goals. In addition to envisioning alternative futures, emerging professionals are encouraged to empower community members to take an active role. The course utilizes a shared online platform during which learners collaborate in interactive virtual teams on local case studies accompanied by online lectures and open educational resources. The IPs involve the student teams, tutors and reviewers meeting for ten days at the coastal sites for the experience of hands-on investigation and planning in an intensive workshop laboratory setting. The goal of the on-site program is for the student teams to apply a holistic landscape assessment framework, identifying key issues and potential solutions. Site visits, lectures from local experts, interviews with local citizens and stakeholders augment the program culminating with the final workshop results presented to the local community. The results of the CO-LAND program (implemented 2017 – 2020) and case studies will be documented in reports and a guidance document disseminated to the European academic community and coastal municipalities. Take-away: This presentation case-study will share the CO-LAND program background, methodology, resources and relevance to today’s urban and regional planners. The topic of the sustainable development of coastal landscapes is of universal interest beyond Europe. The implementation of an online shared learning platform complemented by on-site workshops and interaction with the local community is of increasing importance in a Post-Covid-19 planning world. *CO-LAND Partners: • Universitatea de Arhitectură și Urbanism ”Ion Mincu” (UAUIM) • Ovidius University of Constanța • Estonian University of Life Sciences (EMU) • Hochschule Fuer Wirtschaft und Umwelt Nuertingen-Geislingen (HFWU) • Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf (HSWT) • Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) • Universita degli studi di Napoli Federico II • LE:NOTRE Institute • International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP) Note: Presentation may also fit a Special Session on Planning or Planning Research