Building Climate-Resilient Communities Through Water-Sensitive Public Space Design and Activation: Public Parks Program in Bucaramanga, Colombia

The impacts of climate change in urban areas have become one of the main challenges for city planning in recent years (UNEP-DTU, 2020). These changes affect the environmental ecosystems of the urban areas and their peripheral zones (urban–rural borders), and ultimately also have a profound impact on the quality of life of urban dwellers (UN-Habitat, 2018). Informal settlements in urban areas are bearing the brunt of these effects, as they are usually located in high-risk areas of the city, where the land is cheaper or is not adequate to locate housing or other activities (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2011). Many times, these areas are also located in environmental borders of the city, where the ecosystem services required to sustain urban life are being affected by the degradation of native forest areas containing important water systems for the urban water cycle (Brodnick et al., 2018). developing world (Duque-Franco et al., 2020). The public space index per inhabitant is usually one of the lowest in urban areas, as the informal and unregulated growth does not plan for parks, squares, or open public spaces, causing a severe deficit of areas where the community could interact and perform recreation or sports activities in open spaces (WHO, 2017). Precisely because of this deficit in public space, it is even more important to increase the potential for the few public spaces existing in
those areas to become not only places for recreation or community gathering, but instead to becomemultifunctional public spaces that could support the environmental recovery of the urban ecosystems, especially related to urban water cycles (Wong et al., 2016). Green Infrastructure is one themain strategies to address this challenge, as it facilitates the reduction of the environmental impacts of urbanization and human activities through a large toolset and fit-for-purpose designs (Prescott et al., 2020).