DESCRIPTION :

All over history, cities have been adapting to new conditions by integrating physical as well as socioeconomic and cultural conventions into ‘urban renewal’. Hygiene, social rehabilitation combined with mass production for instance drove much of the urban renewal during the early industrial age. Earlier, massive fires drove a transition to a compartmentalization of blocks and neighborhoods as well as a transition to brick constructions instead of wood. Brown and Wong (2009) identified urban transitions as an evolutionary process in urban water services. The potential of explicitly integrating climate change adaptation into urban renewal cycles was emphasized by Zevenbergen (2008 and 2010). However, an operational method for this approach is still lacking. This also implies that the identified potentials of OA in the literature remain merely theoretical.