Bologna la rossa e fetale, Francesco Guccini used to sing, but also the resilient. The capital of Emilia-Romagna is indeed considered the most resilient city in Italy and was the first in the country to equip itself with the tools to tackle the vital challenge of climate change. From Bologna, cradle of the partisan resistance, comes resistance to what is today considered the greatest threat to our species.

The BlueAp project

The sustainable turning point for the Emilian city came in 2012, with the launch of the BlueAp project (Bologna local urban environment adaptation plan for a resilient city). The project was born with the aim of studying and testing concrete measures to be implemented at a local level, to make the city less vulnerable to weather events that were once extreme but whose frequency is increasing due to global warming, such as floods, heatwaves and droughts.

Bologna is ready for the challenge

BlueAp, a Life+ project funded by the European Commission, aims not only to withstand the impact of climate change, but to transform it from a risk into an opportunity. Initially, the municipality and the project partners — Kyoto Club, Arpae Emilia Romagna and environmental consultancy firm Ambiente Italia — drew up a study of the state of the Bologna area, called the Local Climate Profile, to identify the main vulnerabilities of the territory and define a long-term strategy for addressing possible future climate developments.

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How Bologna became resilient

Launched on 1 October 2012 and concluded on 30 October 2015, the BlueAp project identified a series of objectives to be achieved by 2025, describing "the actions necessary to achieve them, distinguishing those attributable exclusively to the municipality from those in which other parties are called upon to intervene," as the document states. In particular, three critical areas were identified: drought and water scarcity, urban heatwaves and unconventional weather events, and hydrogeological risk.

Tackling water waste

To counter water scarcity, Bologna has focused on reducing water extraction, limiting losses in the distribution network, cutting consumption, using alternative water resources and recovering rainwater.

Green spaces against the heat

The logical decision to try to limit the rise in temperatures in the urban area during the summer season involves increasing green surfaces. The urban heat island phenomenon already affects the city during the summer months, and this trend will intensify, increasing the vulnerability of the most sensitive sections of the population. To this end, the project provides for the planting of 5,000 trees, the creation of five hectares of urban gardens, and adaptation works on ten public buildings and four public spaces in the city centre to reduce their environmental impact.

Limiting land consumption to counter hydrogeological risk

The final major threat is that posed by the risk of floods and landslides; according to forecasts, climate change will increase the vulnerability of hilly areas and urban hydraulic systems. To counter this danger, the aim is to reduce the expansion of sealed surfaces and improve drainage systems.

Bologna leads the way

Bologna was the pilot city and represents only the first piece of the puzzle; one of the project's objectives was indeed to draw up a set of guidelines for defining similar climate change adaptation plans, which could be adopted by all Italian cities of a comparable size.

Bologna's response to flooding

Three years after the conclusion of the BlueAp project, a document was published last April entitled Linee guida sull'adozione di tecniche di drenaggio urbano sostenibile per una città più resiliente ai cambiamenti climatici, which addresses one of the three areas highlighted by the plan — that relating to "extreme events and hydrogeological risk." To improve the hydrological response of the Emilian capital, the plan set out five objectives: minimising the growth of sealed surfaces, serving 1 per cent of the territory occupied by public sealed surfaces with sustainable urban drainage systems, reducing the pollution load conveyed by combined sewer overflows, and making infrastructure and cultural heritage particularly exposed to risk more "resilient," or adequately protected against landslide and flooding risk. To achieve these objectives, the document, drawn up by the municipality of Bologna in collaboration with the European Investment Bank (EIB), outlines various strategies and, for each strategy, a series of actions. Among the planned measures are the adaptation of car parks to make them permeable, the upgrading of the hydrographic network, the reduction of rainwater inflow into the sewer system and the updating of the Civil Protection Plan.

The evolution of urban drainage

In particular, the new document — useful for the many Italian cities grappling with damage caused by heavy rainfall — advocates a new approach to urban drainage. In the past, the issue was tackled solely from a hydraulic standpoint, with an approach defined as "hard engineering" that simply drained and collected water from impermeable surfaces and channelled it away from urbanised areas. Soft engineering, by contrast, takes a holistic approach and aims to manage urban water while delivering additional benefits in terms of water quality, increased biodiversity and greater use of public spaces. As well as containing erosion, promoting climate regulation and expanding recreational areas, soft engineering techniques applied to urban drainage make it possible to reduce, as the document states, "the pollutant loads arising from runoff water, avoiding the mere transfer of pollutants produced by paved urban areas to watercourses, as occurs with a hard engineering approach." Bologna, like other pioneering European cities before it, is leaving behind the outdated paradigm of human control over nature and embracing a more modern yet simultaneously ancient one, grounded in knowledge of and respect for natural phenomena.