This research project explores the spatial implications of climate change and sea level rise on the Dutch Delta’s productive landscapes, focusing on the integration of spatial design and water management within a risk framework. It highlights the importance of transitioning from adaptive planning to planned adaptation as crucial for addressing the unpredictability of climate change impacts, advocating for a shift from reactive to proactive strategies in delta management.

The approach involves a paradigm shift from adaptive planning to planned adaptation based on accommodation. This underscores the necessity of flexible, integrated planning that can evolve over time. The research emphasises the potential of naturebased solutions to create synergies between productive and protective systems, thereby enhancing ecological, social, and economic resilience in response to climate change and rising sea levels.

Rather than focusing on the traditional approach where national climate adaptation plans inform local transformation, the research analyses the impact of sea-level rise on the productive landscape at the national scale. Using interviews, it formulates design principles or shifts from adaptive planning to planed adaptation and integration of productive and protective systems. It then zooms in on a paradigmatic area—the Haarlem-Spaarnwoude-Amsterdam Sloterdijk region—to map the critical local conditions. Sectional profiles are drawn along a specific path to assess various spatial conditions, which require localised adaptation strategies. These conditions were analysed and detailed for design projections in a catalogue of sectional transformations. These transformations were applied to the synthetic plan, exploring the synergies between productive and protective systems within localised adaptation strategies, based on accommodation (meebewegen) principles.