From absolute protection to controlled disaster: New perspectives on flood management in times of climate change

One could say that flood defence is as ancient as human sedentism, when seen as the basic protection of cultivated and inhabited land against inundation. And indeed, living with flood risk is still the common condition of most European cities, from Alpine valleys to coastal deltas. However, how we conceive of disaster and the means to protect ourselves have evolved radically, through centuries of extensive reclamation and channelling that have made floods less likely to happen, but have also made them more abstract and potentially more devastating. Following centuries of deluge angst and blinding technicism, current adaptation projects bring about a new perspective that reintegrates flooding into spatial perception and territorial design, but also give rise to new myths that challenge the ethics of landscape architects.