KO-TRANSFORM - Novel Pathways to Achieving Agreement in the Transformation of Urban Spaces for Water Management and Climate Adaptation

With climate change progressing, communities around the world are facing serious challenges related to changing weather patterns and an increase in days with record high temperatures. In an effort to mitigate the effects of a changing climate and to combat the heat, cities, and communities are increasingly turning to Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructure (BGB-I) and Urban Green Spaces (UGS) as sustainable, multi-functional solutions. Benefits of these interventions include improved micro-climates through evapotranspiration (ET) and shade provision, improved biodiversity, contributions to stormwater management through retention and infiltration, improved air quality as well as enhanced well-being of urban dwellers. Current experiences with BGB-I and UGS implementation in cities suggest that their long-term success and acceptance rely on the active involvement of citizens, the end-users, throughout all stages of the decision-making and implementation process. The limited space in urban areas is often subject to conflicting interests and ideas of different stakeholder groups, and due to their relative novelty, BGB-I and UGS may be met with skepticism. The implementation of BGB-I and UGS in Austrian municipalities is still somewhat limited to a select set of singular applications, and in many of these cases, the level of acceptance rom the public has been modest. This project seeks to find new pathways to achieving consensus in the transformation of urban spaces, helping communities to improve involvement and decision-making processes for climate adaptation. By employing participatory approaches in a case study community, the aim is to elicit the perceptions and narratives of different stakeholder groups around BGB-I and UGS, gain practical insights into better consensus finding for transforming urban spaces and involve, engage and empower citizens in local climate adaptation efforts. The method of Quantitative Story Telling (QST) will be employed, followed by a group MCDA exercise in two successive workshops.