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This competition aims for ideas for Delta cities to cope with current and future climate threats

Many cities around the world are facing the challenges of sustainable living and development and are exploring ways to enhance their ability to manage an uncertain future. In the developing world these challenges are often due to increasing concentrations of vulnerable people in vulnerable locations adjacent to rivers, coasts and in low-lying zones that are more floodprone.

Drivers and pressures include relative wealth; population growth; the provision of food; lifestyle expectations; energy and resource use and climate change. These pose new challenges for the way we design our cities of the future.

Cities everywhere are changing faster than we can assess and understand the diverse forces that cause those changes – these forces themselves are dynamic and fluid. Urban planning on the other hand is relatively static. It is the code by which development decisions are made and is therefore by definition an exercise in deciding a city’s future form. In so doing it gives certainty to the ”actors” in that future. Urban planning occurs within a political ideology that informs the decision-making process at a given time. Thus to a large extent, we live in “yesterday’s cities”: many of the urban patterns we see today – roads, buildings, land ownership, etc. – reflect decision-making periods of the past. As the prevailing ideology changes, so does the planning of our cities.

Since most of large cities are located in deltaic regions and other low -lying areas, an unintended side effect of their growth and the ensuing concentration of population is the increased exposure to floods. Worldwide the number of inhabitants threatened by flooding has increased dramatically. Moreover, floods have become much more frequent and have had more devastating effects than in former times. Indeed, these trends suggest that urban communities are becoming more vulnerable to floods. Climate change is exacerbating these trends and poses new challenges.

This competition aims for ideas for Delta cities to cope with current and future climate threats. Although participants are free to propose ideas in any domain, the outcomes must be provided through some spatial representation.

Your ideas must act upon or relate to one of the following topics:

  • Waterfronts
  • Infrastructure
  • Public space
  • Cultural heritage

Apart from space, time in an issue: coping with climate change requires a long term perspective. It is therefore important to focus also on process: how will your idea be implemented and how can it help your location to adapt to changing future conditions.

You can choose any location you like, as long as the location is within an actual delta city. The location should be explicitly mentioned in your submission.

The schedule for the competition is as follows:

April 1st 2010: Start Registration

June 1st 2010: End Registration

July 1st 2010: Submission deadline

September 1st 2010: Publication of the 7 selected teams

September 28th 2010: Climate Pressure Cooker Session for 7 selected teams

September 29th 2010: Announcement of winner

Competition Delta City of the Future: Changing Perspectives

inscription dates
from 01/04/2010
to 01/06/2010

more
competition web

source
Unesco / Institute for Water Education
Delft, The Netherlands

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