Future Perspectives: Key Principles for a Climate Sensitive Urban Development

This chapter, based on the lessons learned from both the theoretical debate and the numerous initiatives that all over the world have been undertaken to counterbalance climate change, lists some principles that are crucial to reframe current approaches to climate issues as well as to overcome barriers and criticalities arising from policies and actions so far carried out both at large and local scale. These key principles will better guide planners and decision makers in the following: promoting cross-sectoral strategies and measures to counterbalance climate change; enhancing the capacity to take into account synergies and trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures; sustaining a long-term perspective in the face of climate issues; favoring the mutual capacitation and contamination among different actors and stakeholders as well as among institutional and community-led climate strategies/initiatives; as well as, in building up effective climate-sensitive urban development processes.