Shifting climate, reshaping urban landscapes: Designing for drought in the Campine landscape

As global warming persists, regions with moderate climatic conditions will be confronted with exacerbating seasonal variations, including aggravating dry periods. This upcoming drought challenge receives, however, little attention from policymakers. Likewise, Flemish planners and designers focus on floods, not droughts. This research concentrates on design strategies that deal with a lack of water in highly urbanized territories such as Flanders. The article analyses the results of a design workshop on (future)
drought issues in the Campine region: ‘Shifting Climate, Reshaping Urban Landscapes’. Four distinct strategies are delineated: ‘remodelling the valleys’, ‘retrofitting urbanization’, ‘aqueducts 2.0’, and ‘autonomous, local water networks’. The article discusses the premise of each strategy and its approach to the local landscape and urban tissue. Moreover, it highlights key issues to drought design in highly urbanized territories.