Historic cities around the world are under increasing pressure from climate change. Extreme heat and flooding disproportionately affect densely populated urban areas and socially vulnerable groups. How can cities adapt to climate change while respecting existing urban structures and local communities?
This question lies at the heart of the international research project PAST-FORWARD, which recently received funding of over €1 million through the NWO–NSFC–Merian Fund. Researchers from Erasmus School of Law play a key role within the consortium, particularly in the areas of governance, regulation and inclusive decision-making.
Climate adaptation requires more than technical solutions
Within the project, Leonie Reins, Professor of Public Law and Sustainability at Erasmus School of Law, focuses on the role of regulation and policy frameworks in climate adaptation in historic cities. According to Reins, climate measures are still too often approached primarily as technical or design challenges. “Within PAST-FORWARD, we examine how regulation can be designed to be more adaptive and future-proof, so that it supports climate resilience while at the same time protecting cultural heritage and social inclusion,” says Reins.
This tension is visible in many historic cities, where climate measures can have unintended consequences for heritage and local communities. Governance and policy coordination also play a central role within PAST-FORWARD. Martin de Jong, Professor and Scientific Director of the Erasmus Initiative Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity, emphasises that the challenge is rarely a lack of knowledge. “One of the biggest challenges in climate adaptation is not a lack of knowledge, but the difficulty of translating that knowledge into coherent policy and concrete action. This project offers a unique opportunity to connect design, data and governance, making climate adaptation in historic urban areas genuinely workable,” says De Jong.
PAST-FORWARD therefore focuses on a central question: how can knowledge about climate adaptation be effectively translated into policy and practice? By linking design, data and legal reflection, and by working closely with policymakers, designers and local communities, the project develops strategies that are both administratively feasible and practically applicable.
Living labs in Europe and China
Led by TU Delft and South China University of Technology, the consortium tests this approach in so-called living labs in Delft, Rotterdam, Xi’an and Guangzhou. Cities that each face climate pressure and urban transformation in distinct ways.
Within these living labs, adaptation strategies are applied and evaluated in real-life settings, with attention to spatial design, stakeholder participation and legal conditions. The living labs make it possible to observe directly how design choices, legal frameworks and governance processes interact, and where bottlenecks arise. By linking living labs in the Netherlands and China, the consortium can compare insights across different governance cultures and urban contexts.
International collaboration and knowledge exchange
The Merian Fund supports long-term collaboration between Dutch researchers and partners in countries such as China, Indonesia and India. Through the Cities Amidst Climate Change call (2024), joint Dutch–Chinese research is funded that, through interdisciplinary collaboration and design-oriented research, contributes to strengthening both the physical and social resilience of cities.
For Erasmus School of Law, the project offers the opportunity to explicitly connect legal expertise with design-based and data-driven climate research. In doing so, PAST-FORWARD contributes to the development of policy that is not only climate-resilient, but also socially and culturally responsible.
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