RED & BLUE: Real Estate Development & Building in Low Urban Environments

Real estate and infrastructure are central to the creation of wealth, economic activity, and societal stability. Yet much of the highest value property in the world is exposed to growing climate risks like rising seas, intensified rainfall, and drought, especially in highly urbanized delta regions. The effects of climate risk on the economic and social value of real estate and infrastructure are not well understood by investors, policymakers, planners, and engineers, however. How their risk management strategies affect one another is even more unclear. Pioneering investors, planners, engineers, and scientists are beginning to chart the climate challenges ahead and devise interventions, but their approaches remain isolated, raising the risk of fragmented and inequitable outcomes. Independent academic research with emphatic two-way professional and scientific engagement is urgently needed, not only to co-define these interrelated climate risks and management responses in the built environment, but also to co-develop integrated and inclusive climate governance strategies that enhance real-world delta resilience. By bringing together crucial disciplinary and practical approaches to climate risk, the RED&BLUE consortium proposes to do just that. We aim to develop, test, and promote climate governance strategies in the urbanized delta of The Netherlands and beyond. RED&BLUE combines urban use cases in Greater Amsterdam and Greater Rotterdam, insight from forward-looking real estate investors, engineers, planners, and policymakers, leadership from internationally-recognized scientists, and a novel stakeholder engagement strategy. We advance understanding at seven co-defined Research Focal Points, representing crucial levers for meaningful transformation in the Dutch Context, and test methods and approaches for a new transdisciplinary field: integrated real estate and infrastructure climate risk governance. In so doing, RED&BLUE will improve society’s capacity to face common climate challenges in our built environment.