“Narrative images” as a learning approach: (transformative) adaptation scenarios for dealing with urban water risks in Hamburg, Germany

In recent years, weather-related extreme events have shown the limits of technical approaches to urban water challenges and highlighted the urgent need to rethink the relationship between cities and water and to see water as a partner in shaping transformative, climate-safe and just urban futures. However, existing scientific studies depicting future trajectories of urban water management have struggled to make the intertwined social and ecological dynamics of (transformative) urban adaptation tangible and accessible. This study focuses on the potential of visual communication of scenarios to stimulate both learning among scientists (during the process of creating the scenarios) and social learning (as a next step using the developed “narrative images”) to motivate diverse societal actors to engage with the complexity of sustainable urban water management. Art can overcome barriers of scientific and technical concepts and touch peoples' inner motivation for preserving and sustainably transforming our cities in a way that written texts cannot. In addition, art-based research can be seen as a form of research on social-ecological relations and it thereby can help people engaging with the complexity of urban system processes.

As sustainability challenges transcend disciplines, this study draws methodically on an interdisciplinary scenario approach. By actively involving scientists from various natural, engineering and social science disciplines in an art-based research approach, we seek to rethink interdisciplinarity in order to develop pluralistic and co-existing perspectives. With this in mind, we aim to opening up the process of envisioning the future and explicitly not “reducing the future to climate”.

In this study, we seek to explore the tension between possible and desirable futures using a qualitative scenario-building approach. Three adaptation scenarios were developed in a participatory process and professionally visualized as “narrative images” using the city of Hamburg as a case study. The scenarios take place in 2050 depicting a gradient ranging from coping to incremental adaptation to transformative adaptation for managing the water-adaptation nexus: “Water defensive city,” “Water resilient city,” and “Water aware city.” The study presents an innovative art-based scenario approach as a way of engaging with social-ecological futures. In this way, the “narrative images” create a tangible and shared entry point to the complexity of socio-ecological relations and serve as an integrated boundary object bringing together the different mental models of the participating disciplines. By stimulating learning within our interdisciplinary team, the art-research-linking approach appears to be a suitable example of how to stimulate discussions to move from the conceptual debate on transformative adaptation versus non-transformative strategies (i.e., coping and incremental adaptation) to an empirical and practical level. In addition, the “narrative images” aim to motivate diverse local societal actors engaging with the complexity of (sustainable) urban adaptation and water management, serving as a starting point for imagining socially constructed futures.