Selling the Sponge City: Copenhagen’s Strategy for Cloudburst Management
(2025) SGEM08 20251Department of Human Geography
- Abstract
- This research analyzes the climate adaptation strategy of Copenhagen, focusing on cloudburst (rain-based) flooding and the use of infrastructure to mitigate damage. This strategy is analyzed through document analysis and structured interviews, using a theoretical framework of political ecology and urban green assemblages. This framework focuses analysis on the role of actors (human and non-human) and the power they hold in the production of spatial transformations. These spatial transformations are understood through the lens of assemblage, wherein urban climate adaptation is a series of discrete projects and not one mega-project playing out across the city as a whole. This lens allows for an analysis of actors across scale, and how these... (More)
- This research analyzes the climate adaptation strategy of Copenhagen, focusing on cloudburst (rain-based) flooding and the use of infrastructure to mitigate damage. This strategy is analyzed through document analysis and structured interviews, using a theoretical framework of political ecology and urban green assemblages. This framework focuses analysis on the role of actors (human and non-human) and the power they hold in the production of spatial transformations. These spatial transformations are understood through the lens of assemblage, wherein urban climate adaptation is a series of discrete projects and not one mega-project playing out across the city as a whole. This lens allows for an analysis of actors across scale, and how these scales converge in planning and in construction. Ultimately, this thesis showcases how the City of Copenhagen entangles together these infrastructure investments with economic, recreational, and aesthetic benefits to citizens, providing political legitimacy for cloudburst management. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9193475
- author
- Blunt, Liam Fitzgerald LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SGEM08 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Climate adaptation, flood mitigation, urban geography, assemblages, co-production
- language
- English
- id
- 9193475
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-09 10:28:25
- date last changed
- 2025-06-09 10:28:25
@misc{9193475,
abstract = {{This research analyzes the climate adaptation strategy of Copenhagen, focusing on cloudburst (rain-based) flooding and the use of infrastructure to mitigate damage. This strategy is analyzed through document analysis and structured interviews, using a theoretical framework of political ecology and urban green assemblages. This framework focuses analysis on the role of actors (human and non-human) and the power they hold in the production of spatial transformations. These spatial transformations are understood through the lens of assemblage, wherein urban climate adaptation is a series of discrete projects and not one mega-project playing out across the city as a whole. This lens allows for an analysis of actors across scale, and how these scales converge in planning and in construction. Ultimately, this thesis showcases how the City of Copenhagen entangles together these infrastructure investments with economic, recreational, and aesthetic benefits to citizens, providing political legitimacy for cloudburst management.}},
author = {{Blunt, Liam Fitzgerald}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Selling the Sponge City: Copenhagen’s Strategy for Cloudburst Management}},
year = {{2025}},
}