New briefing “Just Climate Adaptation In Cities”

Congratulations to CESET PI Professor Vanesa Castán Broto on the recent publication for The British Academy – “Just Climate Adaptation In Cities: Reflections For An Interdisciplinary Research Agenda".

The briefing focuses on three critical points for understanding what just adaptation means for cities:

1. The reconfiguration of the physical environment in urban areas to respond to new adaptation demands;
2. Demands for inclusive adaptation that challenge the systems that create inequality and discrimination;
3. The dynamics of power and action, reflecting upon who can deliver just urban adaptation in contemporary cities.

Just urban adaptation requires recognising the multiple ways in which climate change shapes cities, through its impacts but also through human responses to it. Just urban adaptation action must also consider existing housing and infrastructure legacies, often shaped by colonial histories and existing practices that enable habitation. Ideas of just adaptation are also closely tied to the production of urban adaptation knowledge, especially whose knowledge counts and whose doesn’t count when it comes to decision-making. The humanities and social sciences drive a research agenda that puts just urban adaptation at the centre of collective responses to climate change.