Water landscapes: from risk management to a urban regeneration strategy

This contribution is inserted in the discourse related to the climate change issues, which implies the need of identifying new and environmentally sustainable urban shapes through actions of reconnection and reconfiguration of the morphological and environmental components, within the broader strategies of urban regeneration and resilience. In particular, the main topic of this contribution, is related to the urban contexts, which are currently affected by flooding phenomena in their coastal areas due to the progressive sea level rise, for which the recovery of safety condition is linked to the environmental dimension of the matter. This state of affairs, questions some structural limitations of the existent urban shapes, and it suggests a change of perspective, where cities and territories must be rethought, assuming water as an element generating the identity of a new urban shape. In this scenario, the experience coming from the Danish cities of Vejle and Aalborg is hereby presented, because of their capacity to have transformed the “calamitous” event of flooding in a proper strategy of urban regeneration which finds its strength in the exploitation of the identity potentials of the maritime landscape