Editorial Urban and Regional responses to Climate Emergency

Da Silva Oliveira, Eduardo Henrique [UCL] Julie Tiao Miao Michael Taster

ities and urban regions are now regularly recognized within international processes on issues such as social inequality, economic marginalization, and climate change. Urbanisation and regional development processes can have negative effects on the environment, such as the urban heat island effect, increased runoff due to soil sealing, or covering soils with concrete and increased production of carbon dioxide. Landscape conservation strategies, such as green-infrastructure management and restoration of urban forest, amongst others, may mitigate the effects of urbanization aiding in easing the effects of climate change. Massive gains, in terms of reducing harmful gases, can be made by changing how we plan, build, manage, and power our cities and urban regions. Regardless of whether we address climate change, energy transition, secure employment, affordable housing, mobility, immigration or demographic change – a holistic, inter- and trans-disciplinary approach is required to meet the challenges of securing a sustainable urban and regional development. In Issue 6, we were aiming to bring together current approaches at the urban regional level in counteracting the negative effects of climate change. We have been overwhelmed by the responses to our original call for contributions on to environmental governance in today’s urbanized territories. The novelty of this issue is that the Regional Insights section includes a special section featuring four projects of the Interreg VB North Sea Region Programme 2014 – 2020.