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Urbanisation, climate change and natural hazards present serious challenges for the Caribbean which Habitat III brought into focus. This paper critically examines problems associated with these complex challenges, to propose a relevant Caribbean specific New Urban Agenda and suggest implementation mechanisms which are essential to forge ahead. It reviews urban issues for fifteen countries that constitute the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). These problems are investigated from the perspective of four pillars of economic, social and environmental sustainability, and governance. The paper reveals that with the application of these main components and related thematic elements, many countries in this grouping are underperforming in achieving the sustainable development goal of safe, resilient and sustainable urban settlements. The main conclusion drawn is that countries of the CARICOM Caribbean should not adopt an imported blueprint to resolve critical urban issues. This is an opportune time for crafting a relevant indigenous New Urban Agenda for CARICOM Caribbean countries and finding the right implementation mechanisms to be at the frontline of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A paradigm shift in water management is recognized as a necessary and fundamental step for adaptation to climate change and crucial for furthering sustainability. In contexts of rapid urbanization, this paradigm shift is particularly challenged since social and environmental needs often come into conflict. In Bogotá, as other Latin-American cities, demands for new housing are increasing daily, while the overall housing deficit remains an unresolved problem. Currently, the city faces the challenges to deal with the pressure to continue to urbanize flood prone areas with low-cost housing projects and simultaneously protect these areas in view of flooding, which promise to increase with the predictions of climate change. In order to contribute to context-responsive solutions to the water and housing issues, this paper investigates the shifting relations between settlement patterns, water infrastructure and landscape in Bogotá's El Tintal watershed. This sub-watershed of the Bogotá River has a rich history of formal and informal low-cost housing. The critical reading of the landscape transformation of the El Tintal has shown how the water system interventions were and can be instrumental in different stages of development. This reading was the base to elaborate design investigations that could translate to spatial adaptation measures. This paper argues that “soft” water management tools can be part of a twofold strategy to create spatial quality and provide resilience for more qualitative future urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of climate change and decreasing local resources are increasingly threatening the resilience and sustainable management of urban areas and infrastructures worldwide. To cope with such threads and vulnerabilities, urban sustainability and resilience oriented plans have been developed. Accordingly, policy makers need to learn how to properly integrate urban sustainability with urban resilience principles and practices in the re-shaping of urban agendas. In order to highlight the future potential of integrating transformative resilience principles into the general sustainability approach, this paper provides a critical review of a recent and successful urban regeneration and development plan, the “Mexico City Green Plan”. This paper also discusses a feasibility study for urban redevelopment and transition towards resilience in Mexico City, in order to illustrate the necessity and potential of urban resilience for the improvement of the life prospects of disadvantaged inhabitant groups. The Valle del Chalco neighborhood in Mexico City is presented as an example, whereby resilient and sustainable urban transformation was achieved through an integrated and sustainable decentralized water management and infrastructure plan. In practice, the terms ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Resilience’ can be exploited to justify conventional, non-sustainable urban development practices. The results discussed in this paper demonstrate the necessity of the integration of transformative resilience principles within sustainable urban redevelopment and regeneration. The main findings are i) Policy makers underestimate the potential of urban resilience in shaping more sustainable urban futures, since they only understand resilience as the flipside of specific vulnerabilities, ii) The building of urban resilience within sustainable urban transitions and redevelopment can effectively foster people empowerment, particularly in combination with the decentralization of resources management systems, and iii) The main challenge for the implementation and execution of transitions processes towards urban resilience and sustainability is the elimination of political barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Building adaptive reuse plays a critical role in emissions reduction and supports global climate protection. Thus, the designing of future buildings with embedded adaptive reuse potential is a useful criterion for sustainability. This paper describes the development of a new rating tool known as adaptSTAR, which offers holistic and unified design criteria suitable for assessing the adaptive reuse potential of future buildings. The findings show that criteria can be identified and weighted according to physical, economic, functional, technological, social, legal and political categories to calculate an adaptive reuse star rating. In addition, this paper reports on the first stage of the research methodology used in the initial development of the rating tool and concludes with some preliminary observations from 12 selected successful case studies in New South Wales (NSW) and Melbourne, Australia. The use of adaptSTAR in designing future buildings will lead and help promote low carbon built environments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Lima's environmental sustainability is threatened by increasing water scarcity, heavy rain events and limited attention for water vulnerability and climate change scenarios. In this paper we examine how knowledge construction and risk perception on water-related disaster risks and vulnerabilities affects decision-making and implementation in urban governance networks, specifically looking at some of the reasons behind high levels of risk tolerance and the lack of decision-making initiatives in putting adaptation and/or preventive measures in place. New forms of metropolitan governance have constructed spatial knowledge about water-related vulnerabilities using inclusive scenario-building processes. These unpack complexities, uncertainties and spatial inequalities in water governance, making them visible by mapping and spatial representations as strategic instrument for social and policy learning. This article analyzes two case studies, which either already are or can become disasters (scenario-building). The first, concerns the long-term plausible scenario of water scarcity and droughts analyzing population growth rates, water distribution and consumption through the Chance2Sustain research project and presenting spatial representations. The maps were used to define possible spatial intervention priorities to deal with future water vulnerabilities in Lima. The second, refers to short term extreme weather events that already manifest as mudslides and floods and El Niño in Chosica, eastern Lima. We investigate the first at the metropolitan city scale level and the second at the scale of vulnerable communities. The cases illustrate iterative spatial knowledge construction, in which processes of risk prioritization, normalization and tolerance occur, and the resulting [in-]action by a variety of actors so far. The methodology used collective and iterative mapping processes, using technical, organizational and geographical knowledge from a variety of governance, experts and practitioner networks in Lima. The main outcome is the social learning derived from bringing together different kinds of knowledge and integrating several dimensions through spatial representations. This has raised awareness, increased capacities for dealing with uncertainty and contributed to the approved metropolitan Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, but not implemented by the Lima Municipality yet. The main conclusions are two: 1) spatial planning is a quite political process (c.f. Flyvbjerg 1998), in which knowledge is contested or even when acknowledged, does not necessarily steer decision-making processes, either by local communities, authorities and private institutions. And 2) existing models linking knowledge construction to risk framing, risk tolerance and how these influence decision-making processes and actions to prevent disaster may ignore the issues of risk tolerance, through normalization and prioritization at their peril. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]