Urban Infrastructures Under Climate Pressure – Exploring Benefits of Transformation Concepts for Long-Term Change

Abstract

More than two-thirds of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050, emphasizing the need for climate protection and adaptation strategies to ensure long-term resilience. Despite their importance in public services, urban infrastructures – social, technical, and blue-green – often lack an integrated, interdisciplinary governance approach. This research aims to explore the characteristics of urban infrastructures concerning municipal governance for climate protection and adaptation, emphasizing their complexity, interconnectivity, and varying needs across their lifespan. Initially, a literature review was carried out to identify multiple areas of adjustment in municipal governance throughout the lifespan of an urban infrastructure including vision, planning and implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation. This review was complemented by a workshop with scientific experts on diverse urban infrastructures to include their perceptions and concerns. The areas of adjustment identified are the availability of resources, evolving requirements, changing expectations, a multiplicity of responsibilities, path dependencies, conflicting objectives, the ensuring of justice as well as care and maintenance. Since no single theory fully addresses these challenges, this study assesses three theoretical approaches – the Long-term Governance Framework, Multi-level Perspective, and Change Management – for their contributions to municipal governance in climate protection and adaptation of urban infrastructures. The findings show that elements from each theory can address specific governance challenges, supporting the development of comprehensive decision-making frameworks for sustainable, climate-resilient urban development.

Keywords: Long-term, Governance, multi-level perspective, Change Management, Climate Protection, adaptation