The Flexible City

All over Europe, cities struggle with an accumulation of environmental crises like global warming, the depletion of natural recourses, pollution and the extinction of species. If we want to keep our cities liveable, we have to make them circular and climate adaptive.

Making our planning methods, production processes and building economies circular in order to remove the causes of the environmental crises, is a tough assignment. Turning our cities into climate-adaptive environments, ready to cope with the negative consequences of these crises, is not easy either. Despite strict agreements like those limiting global warming (Paris 2015) or protecting biodiversity (Montreal 2022), the pace of change in our cities is too slow. Apparently, their planning system has to be reformed. This book presents a toolbox with which circularity and climate adaptation can be implemented successfully. Based on existing local qualities, the proactivity of users and a step-by-step approach, a method is presented in this book that is tailored to the European situation, with its democratic tradition, the ways heritage is acknowledged, and how it moves along with the unpredictability of economic tides. With the help of a network of local reporters, authors Tom Bergevoet and Maarten van Tuijl compare European cities, identify similarities and trends and describe tools and successful examples in detail. This creates an inspiring handbook for anyone contributing to the future of the European city: from civil servants and policymakers to developers, designers, builders and users.