Adaptive urban settlements

Urban settlements globally and in New Zealand will experience significant and increasingly unpredictable change over the next decades due to the combined impacts of forces such as climate change, significant demographic shifts, and global resource depletion including oil and food.

Local and central government need approaches to enable them to evaluate and address the impacts of large scale change on urban settlements.

This research will determine why some cities and communities are better able to adapt to disruptive events and persistent change than others. We will identify characteristics of adaptive and resilient settlements, and actions that cities and communities can take to increase their ability to adapt to future change.