ABSTRACT
Many reports (such as the Stern Review of 2006 (Stern, 2007), and the EU Green Paper on ‘Adapting to Climate Change in Europe’ (Commission of the European Communities (CEC), 2007)) point to the important role of spatial planning in adapting to climate change. Spatial planning is one area of public policy intervention with an explicit focus on future horizons, and it has critically important outcomes in terms of activities, the built form and the natural environment. The built environment has a design life of perhaps up to 100 years, and the overall settlement pattern and urban form has even greater longevity. Nevertheless, even though the science and use of scenarios in climate change projections might suggest the need for a long-term view, UK planners and planning authorities have, until recently, been inhibited in taking a long-term perspective or in engaging with futures thinking. This chapter offers some reflections on the reasons for that, exploring some of the ethical and conceptual issues around futures thinking and futures-oriented action. The issue of climate change, however, is prompting new interest in the use of scenarios and futures thinking, and the chapter examines examples of regional spatial planning for adaptation in the Netherlands and the UK. It draws conclusions about the ways in which the understanding and experience of climate change is changing planning.
