Abstract:
Planning practices primarily focus on arrangement of urban spaces to realise potentialities and development priorities. Planning practitioners also have the challenge of responding to uncertain urban futures. In this context, planning systems need to explore innovative ways to deal with uncertain urban future pathways. This study proposes considering vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities as the key priorities for determining opportunities to achieve sustainable urban development. The concept of urban resilience in spatial research has focused more on the development of a spatial dimension incorporating attempts to become ‘more sustainable’ and ‘dealing with change’ (Muller, 2011). Another dimension that incorporates and extends these concepts is increasing levels of resilience. Urban systems must be designed and operated in ways that accommodate sudden and unexpected changes (Eraydin & Taşan-Kok, 2013), also to cope with long-term crises that can induce changes in unpredictable ways. Transition to Water Sensitive Cities can provide avenues to achieve these opportunities enhancing adaptation to growing uncertainties in urban systems, in particular to climate change. Colombo city in Sri Lanka is now experiencing multiple negative impacts due to increasing climate change such as increasing temperature, change of rainfall pattern and drought. Considering these on-going concerns, in this study, it is argued that planning systems should framed to prepare for uncertain futures, since planning outcomes must now focus on building capacity to adapt and benefit from change. Therefore, this study intends to propose an alternative approach to dealing with urban vulnerabilities due to climate change. Implementation of resilience planning practices in partnership with transitioning to Water Sensitive Cities will optimise adaptation opportunities to minimise climate change vulnerabilities in urban systems.