Essays Climate Change Adaptation, Urban Flooding and Water: Old Problems, New Challenges for Planners and Architects

The effects of global warming on sea level rise is one of the most challenging immediate futures faced by planning and the design disciplines. These effects can lead to grave conseTuences in coastal cities and is a growing field for policy and plan making in the 8nited 6tates and across the globe.-oao Pedro Costa brings us this debate from an (uropean perspective, discussing the challenges and new creative solutions. The occurrence of flooding in cities has been a part of the urban design and architecture agendas for a long period of time. In the 20th century, defensive approaches to such phenomenon increased alongside society’s growing confidence with infrastructural capacities. More specifically, urban flooding was mainly an infrastructural issue, and hence had the responsibility to deal with such respective hazards. Cities, buildings, and public spaces were, moreover, directed at addressing a major concern: the control of water and circumventing its dynamic threats within the city. Amongst other typologies of water defensive infrastructures, dikes, pumping stations, flexible water barriers, and unde