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Sorsogon City is a rapidly urbanising coastal area in the Philippines. Its location, combined with a rapidly changing and growing urban fabric, leaves it vulnerable to both incremental climate change and associated extreme weather events. In this paper, UN-HABITAT data are used to draw out the climate change vulnerabilities and policy responses in Sorsogon City. Vulnerability “hotspots” highlight the spatial intersection of socio-economic justice concerns, particularly in terms of vulnerability to increased cyclone activity. We discuss vulnerabilities of Sorsogon City and its citizens to climate change and measures undertaken through various social, environmental and technical systems and interventions to increase resilience. The paper also attempts to unpick the relationship between the neat, concise reported city and the complexities of urban life using the Sorsogon experiment to consider the limitations of such approaches to governing climate change. We group these under four headings: social simplification in the absence of data; over-governance (and under-representation); quick wins versus strategic investment; and stretching the ecological and vulnerability footprints of the city. The experience of Sorsogon City is then extended to reflect on issues of governance and planning in other Asian coastal cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change processes pose significant challenges to development in cities across West Africa. These processes shape and mediate urban vulnerability across urban areas and hinder wider development efforts across these cities. This paper reviews these emerging perspectives within the context of UN-Habitat's work in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso and Saint-Louis, Senegal. It argues that policy-makers and researchers need to engage with issues of climate change and development at an urban scale and across “ordinary cities” through exploring the range of vulnerabilities inherent in each city. Specifically, the paper illustrates the diversities and similarities of climate change processes that exist across these two medium sized, or ordinary West African cities, the intersections with existing economic profiles and potential impacts and the emerging urban governance responses to these issues. It demonstrates the need to move beyond constructions of an archetypal “West African” city, and illustrates the emerging work by UN-Habitat and local partners in developing localised knowledges about urban vulnerabilities and the multiple and divergent ways in which these issues are beginning to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a special issue ofLocal Environmentthat has arisen through collaboration between academic researchers and the Urban Planning and Design Branch of UN-Habitat, focused on how we can understand and respond to the challenges of urban vulnerability, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. The paper establishes the existing state of the art in the field, and considers critical challenges that are emerging in the research-based literature. In this context, it introduces UN-Habitat's Cities and Climate Change Initiative and reflects on the lessons learnt and challenges ahead, drawing on insights from across the papers in the special issue. In conclusion, it identifies the role of international/transnational co-operation, the relation between adaptation and mitigation, issues of multi-level governance and the ways in which change in urban socio-technical systems might be achieved as critical issues across the science/policy interface where increased dialogue and the co-production of knowledge needs to focus in order to advance this agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this viewpoint I argue for a perspective on climate change in African cities that focuses on challenges and also opportunities for action. Delivering climate change adaptation in cities in the first instance requires addressing immediate infrastructure and service provision needs, because increasing climate change resilience in cities also requires improving the delivery of services to all citizens. However, there is a risk that climate change discourses facilitate the deployment of technocratic, expert-led forms of planning, particularly when climate change is used as an excuse to facilitate the intervention of international planning consultants who most often know little about the local context of planning. This paper advocates instead approaches to climate change action that harness opportunities on the ground to engage with the creative potential that urban citizens already have and to draw attention to the need to develop planning skills from within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As of 2010, more than half of the global population resides in urban areas and relies to some extent on the functions, services and natural capital provided by urban soils. Greater extremes in climate predicted for the coming decades will impact on these urban soil functions to varying degrees. We provide an inventory of urban soil functions based on an extension to the typology of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (i.e. we added a 'carrying function' to those of supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural functions) and review the climate drivers that are likely to have the most significant impacts upon them, using urban soils of England as an exemplar. We identify knowledge gaps, as in areas such as carbon cycling and storage, disease regulation and cultural services. We assess adaptation measures, which may ameliorate these potential, climate-change-related impacts including changes in construction practices, developments in green architecture and development proposals under the planning regime. We discuss the lack of policies relating to urban soils and the problem associated with monitoring their functions, as is often the case, when large quantities of soil are removed and replaced, leading to major transformation of soil properties, which may be unrelated to pedogenic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]