Local Plan and Climate Change. The Urban Project as an innovative procedure for the implementation, regulation and governance of transformation processes in coastal urban systems

The effects of climate change have urgently necessitated an update of urban planning tools, with particular attention to the instruments designed to govern the transformation processes of coastal urban systems. These territories, intrinsically fragile, are increasingly exposed to phenomena such as sea level rise, flooding and storm surges, making it necessary to adopt integrated approaches that combine risk management and macro strategies of urban resilience, such as adaptation, defence and relocation. The contribution explores the role of the Urban Project as a procedure of controlled flexibility for the adaptive transformation of coastal areas, paying particular attention on the transition from the strategic-structural dimension to the implementation and regulatory dimension of planning at the local scale. Through the analysis of the case study of Local Plan No. 463 of Århusgadekvarteret in Nordhavn in the city of Copenhagen, the research highlights operational and regulatory references, as well as potential areas of innovation of the Urban Project as a procedural procedure linked to urban planning, thus offering a critical reading of the role that this tool could play in the resilient transformation of Italian coastal urban systems.