Adaptation to climate change: Does spatial planning help? Swarm planning does!

Abstract

Planning for the longer term is not yet common in spatial planning practice and as climate change appears as a long-term problem, the adaptation of society to climate change is not really facilitated by current spatial planning, used as it is to fix the future, think in closed terms about the future and designing blueprint plans for the future. In the so-called hotspot climate proof Groningen, the content of climate proofing a region is investigated and this resulted in the development of a new planning paradigm which enables planning for the longer term: swarm planning. In this paradigm the region is seen as an adaptive complex system, which can be planned according the rules of complexity. It is more effective to intervene spatially at a strategic location and let the process evolve from that moment on instead of blueprinting a future, which will be different than expected. The case of Groningen and the swarm planning principles illustrate that the regional spatial and climate proofing quality can be improved. © 2009 WIT Press.