Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

9 THE POLICY PRECEDENTS—ATTEMPTED Research in urban climatology was never just about ‘blue skies’ thinking. Scientists knew from the outset that they were studying an anthropogenic system with opportunities for positive feedback. In the words of M. Parry: the urban climate deserves the interest of climatologists as an element of the physical background of town life, and as an artificial climate which may be modified by suitable planning (Parry, 1956, p. 45). The duty of knowledge transfer from science to urban practice was a constant theme throughout the influential career of Helmut Landsberg: The knowledge we have acquired about urban climates should not remain an academic exercise on an interesting aspect of the atmospheric boundary layer. It should be applied to the design of new towns or the reconstruction of old ones. The purpose is, of course, to mitigate or eliminate the undesirable climate modifications brought about by urbanization (Landsberg, 1981, p. 255). The science-based call to action was given urgency by on-going trends (Douglas, 1983). The motor-car, once regarded as a clean technology, was found to be a significant chemical polluter and a forcing factor in the urban heat island, with each vehicle emitting as much heat as a domestic boiler; rates of stormwater run-off grew in direct relation to post-war highway construction and surface parking; loss of vegetation and permeable surfaces also reduced the moisture available for evaporative cooling in the urban heat island; the growing height and mass of urban buildings increased aerodynamic roughness and complex turbulence effects at ground level, while denser building materials with high thermal admittance, absorbed and retained heat; public health concerns over photochemical smog were compounded by the issues surrounding nuclear power generation. Reid Bryson and John Ross wrote: The time is at hand to begin planning and redesigning of urban areas with much more attention to climatic considerations (Bryson & Ross, 1972, p. 52). In terms of recommendations, urban climatology had begun (as in Kratzer, 1937, p. 95) with simple advice about sunshine and shadow, and the need to locate residential districts upwind of industry, in the ‘climatically beneficial direction’—klimatisch begünstigte Luvseite. In post-war years, it developed a progressively more sophisticated critique of current urbanisation practices. In November 1972, Helmut Landsberg’s plenary address to the American Meteorological Society Conference on the Urban Environment in Philadelphia set out an agenda for city-building: Widely divergent views have come from architects, engineers, economicsts, political scientists and real estate developers. To this chorus of intellectual bricklayers the meteorologist is a Johnny-come-lately … Sound meteorological principles … must begin to penetrate the planning process (Landsberg, 1973, p. 86). Attacking the fatalistic attitude of decision-makers towards weather effects of their own making, he offered a set of meteorological rules for urbanism that could be reprinted verbatim today: do not build on flood plains; mitigate heat island effects with shade trees; reduce surface parking lots; introduce vegetation into urban surfaces; capture waste heat for district heating; promote natural outdoor ventilation through urban design; promote electric transport and discourage the private automobile in cities; promote energy-efficient housing which makes use of solar power for space and water heating, with reflective external paint to reduce albedo. Since topographic and synoptic conditions vary widely, and with them temperature patterns, wind speeds and ventilation rates, Landsberg emphasised the need for local analysis: the ‘air resource’ of every city is unique. As an international science community, urban climatologists tried to reach decision-makers through global intergovernmental networks and NGOs. Urban climate was recognised as an issue quite early in the history of global environmental governance (‘world family housekeeping’ in the phrase of Max Nicholson, 1987). Under Landsberg’s leadership, the World Meteorological Organisation promoted research into cities through its Commission for Climatology, one of eight established at the first WMO Congress in 1951. An international study group on urban climates was set up as early as 1959 in partnership with the International Federation of Housing and Planning (IFHP), the International Society for Biometeorology (ISB) and the UNESCO-funded Conféderation Internationale du Bâtiment (CIB). Subsequent collaborations included the World Health Organisation, which co-sponsored a 1968 Conference on Urban Climates in Brussels and a 1984 Mexico City congress on Urban Climatology and its Applications with Special Regard to Tropical Areas; and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) co-sponsor of a 1992 meeting on Tropical Urban Climates in Dhaka. Helmut Landsberg summarised the anthropogenic effects of urbanisation on climate for the World Meteorological Orgaisation in a Special Environmental Report of 1976. Interestingly, he noted in the same report that WMO was also beginning to study anthropogenic alteration of the global climate of the earth, adding prophetically: “it is to be hoped that this surveillance will give an early warning of untoward happenings” (Landsberg, 1976, p. 26). At the urban scale, of course, evidence of the untoward was already abundant. All these meetings featured appeals to decision-makers to become aware of anthropogenic climate effects. “The acquisition of more knowledge about the climate of cities”, wrote William Lowry in a consciousness-raising feature for Scientific American, “may in the long run be one of the key’s to man’s survival” (Lowry, 1967, p. 24). The international climatological community made repeated efforts