ABSTRACT
Two strategies have been considered in order to reduce and control the risks induced by climate change: mitigation and adaptation. The second one refers to the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects and seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. Today’s cities are first concerned by adaptation as they are faced with numerous climate-related threats, most visibly the increase of extreme weather events such as floods, storms and heat waves. In France, local urban development plans are worthy of interest as tools for rehearsing and implementing climate change adaptation. Indeed, they are both local urban planning documents and sources of law, and their elaboration involves a large number of institutions and actors both from the local government and the society. The chapter looks at the plan drafted by the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg (France), which came into force on January 2017, and offers a good example of the way the local authorities can integrate the issue of adaptation to climate change into their urban planning and governance policies.
