Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

13 centre of VDI 3787-1 methodology cannot be derived from coarse-gridded models derived from IPCC forecasts of annual average temperature, precipitation and sea level rise. Ren et al. (2011) show how a city’s geographical information system (GIS) base can support the integration of three broad categories of data: analytical maps of climatic elements such as air temperature, atmospheric humidity, wind velocity and direction, precipitation, fog and mist, and air pollution; geographical terrain information derived from topographic, slope/valley and soil type maps; and a third layer of data on land use, landscape and buildings, with associated planning parameters. The climatic analysis map translates into site-specific recommendations—proactive, to improve and maintain desired micro-climates, and reactive, to deal with undesirable consequences of development. The methodology reveals potentials that may be missed by a risk- resilience approach: potential to reduce urban thermal loads; to optimise existing urban ventilation paths and chart new air paths where needed; to protect cold air production and drainage areas in the peri-urban landscape; to harness topography, land–sea breezes and the internal thermal circulation of the urban heat island. Again, Stuttgart’s climate change adaptation strategy offers a nice example of the global–local coupling in practice (City of Stuttgart, 2010). Fourthly, urban climatology offers a different perspective on mitigation and adaptation. UN-HABITAT has argued that the surest way to mitigate carbon emissions is by planning for compact, mixed-use urbanism, “delinking high living standards and high quality of life from high consumption and high greenhouse gas emissions” (UN-HABITAT, 2011, p. 61). Yet the same report fails to explain how urbanists are to become climatically informed, except by compiling lists of previous extreme weather events and small disasters (UN-HABITAT, 2011, p. 147). We argue the equal importance of understanding everyday weather. Approximately half the urban heat island is caused by human energy use, and half is solar energy trapped in the urban form. Both aspects can be affected, for better or worse, by physical planning and landscape. This spatial, diagnostic approach is most urgently required in tropical cities where present planning and design practices still aggravate instead of mitigate (Emmanuel, 2005). And finally, the story of urban climatology has an institutional dimension. It is true that the urban climate awareness campaignsmounted over four decades by the World Meteorological Organisation, UNEP, the World Health Organisation and the International Federation for Housing and Planning had disappointingly little impact: but perhaps they should be remembered precisely because they demonstrate the limits of declaratory international action. For successful examples of applied climate science, look to City Hall.Mayor Bloomberg’s strategic vision for New York City, PlaNYC, makes the point: released in 2007, updated in 2011 and put to the test in dramatic fashion by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 (PlaNYC, 2012). Urban climate management is a classic instance of municipalism in action: it depends upon local capacity, competences and political autonomy—on a pipe-smoking mayor poring over the detailed city map with local expert staff. Cities which understand and manage their local climate have a head start in responding to global climate change. We can almost invert the famous mediaeval German proverb ‘city air makes free’ to say that a free city can make its air. Which cities can realistically hold out that hope is a topic for another day.