Climate resilient cities. Introducing two complementary projects’ approaches to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change

The risks related to climate change for urban settlements are referred, among others, to extreme weather phenomena as pluvial flooding and heat weaves. In the urban context, certain areas suffer more than others when an extreme climate event happens, having negative effects on the built environment and human health. Thus, exploring solutions to mitigate negative impacts of climate change is an urgent need for urban planners, architects and decision makers. This paper is aiming to introduce possible approaches and tools to identify adaptive solutions to reduce climate change risks, and also to increase the preparedness of decision makers to cope with these challenges. To do so, this paper, at first, introduces the problem, looking at it through the developing paradigm of Ecosystem Services and Blue and Green Infrastructures positively impacting on urban systems and human health; then it stresses the potentialities of the methodology of Urban Living Labs as innovative environments for learning, where to produce and share knowledge about the topic and developing related solutions. Then, it introduces two complementary projects’ approaches belonging to the ongoing research program of the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples Federico II, in Italy, to cope with climate change issues. Finally, together with the identification of the strengths of the two experiences, this paper discusses to what extent the Urban Living Lab approach could be implemented in the further developments of the two projects, opening in this way to new possible perspectives of research.