Proceedings of CITTA 10th Annual Conference on Planning Research: Planning for Climate Change: Political Climate and Policy Changes

I’m particularly pleased and honoured to write these introductory lines to this book of proceedings.

Firstly, because it is a wonderful way to celebrate the 10th annual conference organized by our research centre – CITTA. Ten years ago, when we started this journey and organized the first CITTA Conference, I still remember to make the point in the
closing speech that more difficult than organizing a first international conference would be to keep its regular organization over the years with the same enthusiasm, rigour and quality standards of the first one. Clearly, this challenge has been successfully
met thanks to the collaboration, talent and dedication of all the senior and junior researchers that, over the years, have been contributing to the development and consolidation of our research centre.

Secondly, because the theme of the conference - Planning for Climate Change – has long been central to several research projects carried out at CITTA. The subtitle – Political climate for policy changes – is an obvious reference to the recent fallacies and denials brought about by the Trump administration to the wider political debate. This new rhetoric is dangerously weakening international long term initiatives that could, if not reverse current trends at least slow down and contain the widespread climatic changes that are occurring on the earth’s surface, hitting in particular the poorer and more vulnerable sectors of our societies, specially in the so-called global South.

Thirdly, because for the first time, the organization of the conference was based on an internal call open to all the staff of the research centre, which resulted in the selection of the proposal prepared by Ruben Fernandes and Luísa Batista. To these
two CITTA researchers I shall address my deepest thanks and congratulations for the overall success of the conference, which accounted with an excellent choice of keynote speakers, including the Portuguese Ministry for the Environment João Pedro
Matos Fernandes, Prof. Filipe Duarte Santos (U Lisbon) and Dr. Vanesa Castan Broto (UC London) and with a most effective and professional organization of the event.

In addition, the conference ended with an original round table gathering representatives from five Portuguese Local Authorities – Amarante, Guimarães, Ílhavo, Porto and Viana do Castelo – that, in a vividly and documented way, presented their rich and diversified experiences of implementing adaptation and mitigation strategies at local level to tackle the challenge of climate change.

In the following pages, the reader is going to find a selection of twelve full papers which can be considered a fair sample of the forty oral presentations at the conference CITTA 10th Annual Conference on Planning Research which were initially organised into four thematic tracks, as follows: Climate Change and Territorial Efficiency; Climate Change and Multilevel governance; Climate Change and Transportation Planning; and, finally, Climate Change and Urban Infrastructure.

In comparison to some previous books of proceedings of the CITTA’s annual conferences this one is surely much less bulky but, from a research point of view, its contents are no less relevant and the average overall quality still kept at a very high
level as the presence of some prominent authors clearly denotes. Enjoy the reading!