Environmental Stewardship and Placemaking: Towards Bottom-up Flood-Resilient Urban Design

Vija Viese; Peter Andreas Gotsch

doi:10.32891/jps.v10i2.1880

Cover image: Bologna. Piazza Nettuno. Picture by Elettra Giulia Bastoni (2024).

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Published: Mar 31, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v10i2.1880

Keywords:

resilient urban design flood adaptation environmental stewardship placemaking bottom-up

Vija Viese

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Peter Andreas Gotsch

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Abstract

The role of public space in urban resilience, particularly in disaster risk management, is gaining increasing recognition. Yet, with accelerating climate change and expanding informal settlements in the Majority World, much of city production and climate adaptation is done informally. This signals the need to better understand and operationalise community-level action so that resilience can be implemented respectfully through urban practices without professional designers. Identifying key strategies that have proven effective on the ground aims to move beyond simplistic interpretations of resilience and to advance a broader pursuit of social-ecological resilience thinking.
Grounded in fieldwork in three cities – Tataouine (Tunisia), Nairobi (Kenya), and Kathmandu (Nepal) – this study explores bottom-up flood adaptation initiatives from a social-ecological resilience thinking perspective. Two expressions of such resilience thinking strategies are identified: Environmental Stewardship and Placemaking.
These two strategies demonstrate particular potential in the resilient urban design discourse in three ways. First, through negotiated governance of place, they can build on continuous collective experimentation on the micro scale to advance local resilience. Second, they introduce a strategic dimension in the community-level action that bridges the professional urban design and individual coping mechanism gap. Finally, the strategic social-ecological resilience thinking allows initiatives to grow and develop transformative potential rather than performing only adaptive or coping actions. By identifying these grounded strategies for flood adaptation, the study contributes to a more nuanced and actionable understanding of resilience in informal and under-resourced contexts.

How to Cite

Viese, V. and Gotsch, P. A. (2026) “Environmental Stewardship and Placemaking: Towards Bottom-up Flood-Resilient Urban Design”, The Journal of Public Space, 10(2), pp. 25–46. doi: 10.32891/jps.v10i2.1880.

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2025): Past Present and Future of Public Space

Section

Articles

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Author Biographies

Vija Viese, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Vija Viese is an urban designer and researcher currently pursuing a PhD at NTNU in Norway, focusing on flood resilience. Her work explores environmental care and just flood adaptation within marginalised and under-resourced communities, with case studies in Kenya, Tunisia, and Nepal. This practice-based research aims to produce physical outputs alongside reflective academic writing through participatory action research methodology.
Vija is an urban professional with 8 years of experience blending practical work in urban planning and design, as well as practice-based academic research. She holds a master’s degree in architecture from ENSA Nantes in France and has worked in practice as a project manager in urban development, focusing on sustainability, eco-responsible construction, and disaster risk reduction. She has considerable experience in organising and facilitating community engagement through participation and co-production methods with local communities.

Peter Andreas Gotsch, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Andreas Gotsch is Professor for Sustainable Urban Development in the Global south in the Program Urban Ecological Planning at NTNU’s Department of Architecture and Planning. He has extensive experience in integrating Urban Planning and International Cooperation. Likewise, creating synergies through linking research, teaching and practice is central for his work.
Prof. Gotsch graduated from the RWTH Aachen (Germany) in Architecture and from the Columbia University (New York) in Urban Planning. He completed his PhD at the Karlsruher "Institut für Technologie". Before joining NTNU, Peter worked Professor for planning, design and international urbanism at TU Darmstadt.
His research focuses on comparative urban studies: Core areas here have been sustainable urban development, planned cities in the 21 century, public space, the role of new actors, the political economy of planning, cities and migration, and post-disaster reconstruction. The inversigation of innovative methods of participatory planning and engagement has been vital in his work. Major milestones of his research career have been the research projects U-CARE – Urban Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa (VW Foundation, Germany) and SHAKTI – Sustainable Holistic Approach and Know-How Tailored to India (BMBF, Germany).
Prof. Gotsch authored many publications, policy reports and project evaluations and he was a regular key-note speaker, guest lecturer and host of multiple conferences and events related to planning and urbanization in the global South such as Habitat III. Furtheremore, he regularly served as a senior urban expert and advisor to UN-Habitat, the World Bank, GIZ and Misereor/KZE and to multiple local and national governments. Since many years he is a co-editor of the Trialog-Journal and a member scientific board of the Network Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South (N-AERUS). Most recently he serves as a scienfific advisor and panel member at the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development FORMAS.

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