The risks associated with the impacts of climate change are already visible and the urban environment is gradually facing ever-increasing temperatures, more frequent heatwave episodes, and sudden heavy rainfall causing local flooding. These phenomena affect every citizen and as the climate changes, they will become more intense and frequent.

Every city is a complex adaptive system of subsystems. To effectively adapt cities to climate change, it is crucial that every subsystem of the city related to the built environment participates in an open ecosystem of innovation around this topic. In such an ecosystem, adaptation pathways and local solutions can be co-designed and co-created in Living Labs by stakeholders.

The success of urban adaptation relies on strengthening our adaptive capacity to climate change in order to avoid as much as possible its impacts on our society and economy. Enhancing adaptive capacity is a multi-dimensional concept and includes both intangible (e.g. education and training) and tangible (e.g. building adaptations) interventions.