What hinders climate adaptation? Approaching barriers in municipal land use planning through participant observation

Climate change poses many risks and affects humans’ daily life in particular at local and regional level. Thus, spatial planning is a key instrument for adapting man’s environment to projected changes. It relies consequently on the competence of local governments to plan urban landscapes in a climate-adapted manner. However, despite the efforts undertaken, there are still significant barriers to appropriate implementation of climate adaptation measures in practice. This research documents barriers that occurred during a real planning process. The researchers worked within a German planning department over 1.5 years as climate adaptation managers to incorporate climate adaptation concerns into the planning of a new urban district and adjacent green area. Applying a participant observation approach, we focused on the reasons why planners would not or could not implement certain measures and what systemic conditions weaken climate adaptation in the planning process relative to other concerns. The study identifies three system-immanent reasons underlying the individual barriers: Organizational-structural, procedural and legal reasons. Within each of the three groups, we describe how individual barriers are interrelated or build on each other. The findings provide a deeper insight into the problem’s planners face in everyday planning. The weak position of climate adaptation in the weighting of planning objectives and the integration in optimized planning processes appeared as the main constraints. We expect these problems to be encountered in other cities with similar planning regulation and administrative structures.