Chiara Farné Fratini

Three Points Approach (3PA) for urban flood risk management: a tool to support climate change adaptation through transdisciplinarity and multifunctionality.

Urban flood risk is increasing as a consequence of climate change and growing impervious surfaces. Increasing complexity of the urban context, gradual loss of tacit knowledge and decreasing social awareness are at the same time leading to inadequate choices with respect to urban flood risk management (UFRM). The European Flood Risk Directive emphasises the need for non-structural measures aimed at urban resilience and social preparedness. The Three Points Approach (3PA) provides a structure facilitating the decision making processes dealing with UFRM. It helps to accept the complexity of the urban context and promotes transdisciplinarity and multifunctionality. The 3PA introduces three domains wherein water professionals may act and where aspects valued by different stakeholders come into play: (1) technical optimisation, dealing with standards and guidelines for urban drainage systems; (2) spatial planning, making the urban area more resilient to future changing conditions; and (3) day-to-day values, enhancing awareness, acceptance and participation among stakeholders. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in The Netherlands and Denmark, we describe the complexity of decision making in practical UFRM and explain how the 3PA can be used when organising participatory processes. We introduce a theoretical framework characterising the large range of aspects involved in decision making related to UFRM and evaluate the usefulness of the 3PA in dealing with it. We conclude that the 3PA offers water managers and operators an efficient communication tool and thinking system, which helps to reduce complexity to a level suitable when organising strategy plans for UFRM and urban adaptation to climate change.

A conceptual framework for addressing complexity and unfolding transition dynamics when developing sustainable adaptation strategies in urban water management.

To achieve a successful and sustainable adaptation to climate change we need to transform the way we think about change. Much water management research has focused on technical innovation with a range of new solutions developed to achieve a more sustainable and integrated urban water management cycle. But Danish municipalities and utility companies are struggling to bring such solutions into practice. Green infrastructure, for example, requires the consideration of a larger range of aspects related to the urban context than the traditional urban water system optimization. There is the need for standardized methods and guidelines to organize transdisciplinary processes where different types of knowledge and perspectives are taken into account. On the basis of the macro-meso-micro pattern inspired by complexity science and transition theory, we developed a conceptual framework to organize processes addressing the complexity characterizing urban water management in the context of climate change. In this paper the framework is used to organize a research process aiming at understanding and unfolding urban dynamics for sustainable transition. The final goal is to enable local authorities and utilities to create the basis for managing and catalysing the technical and organizational innovation necessary for a sustainable transition towards climate change adaptation in urban areas.

Water sensitive urban design retrofits in Copenhagen – 40% to the sewer, 60% to the city

Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is emerging in Denmark. This interdisciplinary desk study investigated the options for WSUD retrofitting in a 15 km(2) combined sewer catchment area in Copenhagen. The study was developed in collaboration with the City of Copenhagen and its water utility, and involved researchers representing hydrogeology, sewer hydraulics, environmental chemistry/economics/engineering, landscape architecture and urban planning. The resulting catchment strategy suggests the implementation of five sub-strategies. First, disconnection is focused within sites that are relatively easy to disconnect, due to stormwater quality, soil conditions, stakeholder issues, and the provision of unbuilt sites. Second, stormwater runoff is infiltrated in areas with relatively deep groundwater levels at a ratio that doesnt create a critical rise in the groundwater table to the surface. Third, neighbourhoods located near low-lying streams and public parks are disconnected from the sewer system and the sloping terrain is utilised to convey runoff. Fourth, the promotion of coherent blue and green wedges in the city is linked with WSUD retrofits and urban climate-proofing. Fifth, WSUD is implemented with delayed and regulated overflows to the sewer system. The results are partially adopted by the City of Copenhagen and currently under pilot testing.

Socio-technical Systems as Place-specific Matters of Concern: The Role of Urban Governance in the Transition of the Wastewater System in Denmark

Abstractn In recent years, cities have been portrayed as important loci for transformations of large-scale systems. This paper contributes to scholarship on urban transitions by exploring why the boundaries, functions and challenges of large-scale systems typically are framed differently at the urban level of governance than at more aggregated levels of governance. Empirically, we examine the wastewater system in Denmark by contrasting framings at the urban and national levels over the last 20 years and the transition dynamics that emerged as a consequence of their juxtaposition. The findings illustrate that urban governance of the wastewater system was influenced by a particular concern with developing attractive and competitive urban spaces. The wastewater system emerged as a ‘place-bound’ and even ‘place-making’ governance concern; as such, the boundaries and functions of the system were subject to continuous redefinition at the city level. This urban framing conflicted with the national-level, efficiency-oriented framing of the wastewater system as homogenous, without regard to place-specific differences. The research findings suggest that a distinct characteristic of urban-level governance is concern for place-specific development; this concern can be transformative because it leads to ongoing reinterpretation of traditional boundaries and dependencies between large-scale systems and local contexts.

Harbour Bathing and the Urban Transition of Water in Copenhagen: Junctions, Mediators, and Urban Navigations

In 2002 the first public harbour swimming bath in the inner harbour of Copenhagen opened. By translating the old industrial harbour into a site of urban living and recreation, the practice of swimming in the harbour has been instrumental in aligning and catalysing a series of broader urban transformations pertaining to the wastewater infrastructure, industrial activities, urban development, and international marketing of the city. Through a study of the processes by which swimming in the harbour came into being as a transformative urban practice, we develop a navigational conceptualisation of urban transition processes. Our study suggests that the creation of the first harbour bath was not the end result of an overall master plan. Rather, we demonstrate that the harbour baths were the outcome of a contingent interplay among embedded actors myopic and navigational actions over a period of twenty years. In order to conceptualise what provoked these navigational actions and how they translated into transformative urban change, we develop the notions of junctions and transition mediators. We introduce the notion of junctions to understand how navigations are provoked. Junctions are signified by particular sites with identities that have been rendered unstable due to tensions and ambiguities among the established sociomaterial assemblages by which they are configured. We argue that navigations signify sociomaterial repair work aimed at addressing such junctions. To conceptualise how such navigations might translate into coordinated urban transformations, we introduce the notion of transition mediators. A transition mediator is an artefact—such as the harbour baths—that succeeds in generating transformative change by displacing the boundaries and interdependencies within and among the established sociomaterial assemblages of the urban fabric.