Planning for inclusive flood resilience in Southeast Asia:A critical perspective on policy translation, institutional capacity building and transformation

Cities in Southeast Asia are regularly impacted by increasing flood risks and the consequences of climate change. In these urbanized regions, the social and economic impacts of flooding are often unfairly distributed, with low-income communities being most affected by flood- and climate-related risks. Despite the urgency due to the economic and societal impacts of flood disaster in the region, little investment is made regarding proactive and long-term solutions for urban flood risk management. Many cities still rely on technical measures, such as flood protection infrastructure. The overall research aim of this thesis is to explore and understand institutional transformation for inclusive flood resilience planning in urbanized regions in Southeast Asia, and how international resilience programs can contribute to this transformation. Recognizing the complexity of the flood resilience planning process, the critical perspective developed in this study emphasizes the importance of an inclusive process as well as the role of language and meaning-making in the formulation of resilience strategies, and it stresses the development of enabling institutional capacities and conditions for inclusive flood resilience planning. The issues of ‘social justice’ issue and ‘inclusivity’ in flood resilience planning should be anticipated by the city’s resilience policy makers and experts to prevent a deepening of unequal flood vulnerabilities among local communities. This study invites future research to explore the various possibilities of using flood resilience planning as a vehicle to stimulate planning for cities that are fair and inclusive

Institutional conditions for inclusive, flood resilient urban deltas: A comparative institutional analysis of two international resilience programs in Southeast Asia

Policy makers in Southeast Asian flood-vulnerable regions are confronted with various institutional challenges when planning for inclusive flood resilience. This paper focuses on the role of international resilience programs and investigates how these programs can enable institutional transformation. The key question is which institutional conditions promote the development and implementation of inclusive flood resilience strategies by international resilience programs. The Mekong Delta Plan in Vietnam (MDP) and the Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia (WaL) program in Semarang, Indonesia, are selected as the cases for a comparative analysis. To structure the comparative analysis of these programs, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is adopted and operationalized for the institutional analysis of inclusive flood resilience planning. The findings illustrate that whereas the MDP was able to involve decision makers from the national government and international financial institutions for mobilizing funding and technical support, the strength of the WaL program was its enabling environment for the cocreation of context-specific flood resilience proposals. Overall, this study concludes that the institutional conditions that enable project financing and the implementation of long-term and integrated flood resilience solutions are determined by engagement with national governments and by ownership of the solutions at both the national and local levels

Boundary spanning in design-led strategic spatial planning:lessons from post-Sandy rebuilding efforts

In complex area transformations, strategic planning tends to include a collaborative approach that invites a wide range of stakeholders. But because the perspectives and interests are diverse, partly conflicting, and dynamic, a unifying plan of action will not emerge without good process design and proper facilitation for dialogue. Designers are increasingly considered as helpful for pursuing a shared vision of a complex challenge, as they are expected to unify across organizational and cultural boundaries. We interviewed 11 professionals who worked on the Rebuild by Design programme (restoring hurricane Sandy damage in and around New York) for more than five years. The interviews reveal how these designers supported reaching across boundaries as well as the conditions that are vital for designers to achieve their intended added value in a collaborative strategic planning process.</p

Building Local Institutional Capacities for Urban Flood Adaptation:Lessons from the Water as Leverage Program in Semarang, Indonesia

Cities in Southeast Asia face various institutional barriers to cope with climate and water-related challenges. Several international programs for urban flood resilience therefore stress the importance of local institutional capacity building in initiating and delivering flood adaptation solutions. However, research to provide insights and recommendations into whether and how such international resilience programs could enable the building of local institutional capacities remains scarce. To bridge this gap, this paper presents an analytical framework to study institutional capacity building by international resilience programs, focusing on intellectual, social and political capital. The central case is the development and implementation of the Water as Leverage (WaL) program in Semarang, Indonesia. Our main results show that this program was able to stimulate the integration of knowledge, building of local coalitions and creation of adaptation narratives, which contributed to developing six strategic climate resilience proposals. This paper reflects on institutional strengths and weaknesses, and concludes that although the WaL program introduced an innovative approach for collaboration between international experts, urban designers and local stakeholders, sustaining momentum for the reflexive learning process, involving city-based NGOs and establishing formal links with decision makers were key challenges that hindered the development of institutional capacities to implement the developed proposals

Boundary spanning in design-led strategic spatial planning:lessons from post-Sandy rebuilding efforts

In complex area transformations, strategic planning tends to include a collaborative approach that invites a wide range of stakeholders. But because the perspectives and interests are diverse, partly conflicting, and dynamic, a unifying plan of action will not emerge without good process design and proper facilitation for dialogue. Designers are increasingly considered as helpful for pursuing a shared vision of a complex challenge, as they are expected to unify across organizational and cultural boundaries. We interviewed 11 professionals who worked on the Rebuild by Design programme (restoring hurricane Sandy damage in and around New York) for more than five years. The interviews reveal how these designers supported reaching across boundaries as well as the conditions that are vital for designers to achieve their intended added value in a collaborative strategic planning process.</p

‘Water as Leverage’:Design-Led Planning for Urban Climate Resilience

To prepare for the impacts of climate change, many Asian cities aim to become climate resilient. This calls for innovative, integrative, inclusive, and transformative planning approaches. Although design is advocated as a means to develop such approaches, it remains unclear what a design-led planning approach actually entails. This paper explores the design-led planning approach of the ‘Water as Leverage’ (WaL) programme, and investigates how it unfolded in Semarang, Indonesia. We found that WaL was able to develop promising proposals by employing the potential of design. However, future design-led planning initiatives can benefit from more receptivity to local situations and initiatives.</p