IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

As climate disruption accelerates, and the need for urban adaptation is fore-fronted, the question of which future we are adapting to, and who gets to decide, grows increasingly urgent. This paper explores climate resilience through the lens of public space, drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s production of space thesis to argue that space is not a neutral container but a socially produced becoming, shaped by power, participation, and everyday life. Public spaces are therefore where futures are negotiated, contested, and imagined; they are not merely sites of adaptation, but instruments of it. By linking this spatial understanding with principles of environmental democracy, the paper foregrounds the role, and moral imperative, of communities in shaping responses to ecological uncertainty. It draws on Deep Adaptation to shift the focus from technical fixes and fortified places to the transformation of relationships, values, and collective capacities: adaptation as if people mattered, beyond the physical. Through principles rooted in permaculture and degrowth, the paper illustrates how grassroots public spatial practices cultivate resilience not through control and defence, but through care, regeneration, and shared stewardship. Ultimately, the paper reflects on the possibility of reframing climate adaptation as a democratic and transformative process, centered on public space as a commons of care for both people and planet in which people co-create of the futures they inhabit. This lens offers an alternative to dystopian climate-changed futures, where, through co-creation of resilient spaces, places and peoples, we maintain the possibility to thrive.