ABSTRACT
Factoring rapid changes to climate systems into metropolitan policies, such as the consequences of warming oceans, will be largely unknowable. So how can metropolitan planners and decision makers design policy in an increasingly unpredictable global ecosystem?
This chapter argues that, in developing landscape led policy approaches to metropolitan planning and management, decision makers will need to critically engage in two overarching agendas. The first is that resilience thinking should drive policy approaches to achieving new manifestations of the sustainable metropolis and in doing so adopt an adaptive governance framework to provide a navigable approach to positive transformation of the metropolis. The second is that government and civil society must go beyond the current mitigation goal of a zero-carbon global economy and progress towards net positive development such that metropolitan regions become carbon sinks, absorbers of waste materials and energy, and sites for biological intensity. The future challenges will be to engage all levels of government and civil society in the project of progressing towards a truly sustainable, net positive society.
