Coasts, Rivers and Cities

For more than 70 years Witteveen+Bos has been developing new urban spaces and infrastructure, restoring natural spaces and building flood plains. Today, however, environmental conditions have changed and boundaries have gradually been reached. A different approach is needed to cope with population growth and climate change, within today's limitations. In our opinion, population growth and climate change should be seen as social, ecological and economic opportunities to adapt the environment to changing circumstances and to make our environment resilient to future disasters.

Clearly, adaptation and resilience will have a significant spatial impact on our environment and innovative and integrated solutions, smart financing instruments, appropriate legal frameworks and strong social debate need to be developed in cross-border collaborations with public and private partners to build a sustainable and resilient environment.

Witteveen+Bos Belgium focuses on and specialises in adaptation and resilient design. We contribute to sustainable spatial development by implementing the knowledge of adaptation and resilient design of water systems, ecosystems and public space in complex and integrated design processesworking together with other experts and designers. We focus on expertise in hydrology, ecology, meteorology, public space, and especially the interaction between these expertises, because we believe that redesigning water systems, ecosystems and public spaces is the key to adaptation and can catalyze resilient and sustainable spatial development in changing meteorological conditions.

We work on integral design processes based on the conviction that smarter and better solutions can be developed in the design of water systems, ecosystems and public space when other disciplines are involved in the process. In our collaboration with other experts we want to be complementary and in collaboration with designers we want to create synergy by implementing our knowledge of adaptation and resilient design of water systems, ecosystems and public space.