Spain, 29 October 2024. Torrential rain hit the provinces of Valencia, Cuenca, Albacete, and Murcia in the west of the country, causing several rivers to burst their banks. Torrents of mud swept through the towns, taking almost 229 lives, according to the latest official estimates.

According to Agencia Estatal de Meteorología, some towns – such as Chiva, 30 kilometres west of Valencia – have seen the equivalent of a year’s rainfall in just a few hours. We can put the blame on climate change. We can also avoid this tragic fate, using anticipatory mechanisms and emergency tools, as Pepa Moran, a landscape architect and professor from Valencia, and architects Marta Peris and José Toral from Spanish office Peris+Toral Arquitectes, remind us.

Pepa Moran, Marta Peris, José Toral

It is hard to imagine that our planning could have foreseen an event of the magnitude that affected the southern metropolitan area of Valencia. The spatial and temporal scale of this flood surpasses what is conceivable, remembered by the memory of its inhabitants, and even documented in reference texts, like those by the botanist Antonio José Cavanilles from 1795.

This flood corresponds to an estimated return period between 1,000 and 2,000 years[the average length of time over which, statistically, an event of the same intensity recurs. The term is used to describe natural hazards, such as flooding. It is a concept regularly used in urban planning. Ed.], far exceeding the 500-year event typically considered in plans and regulations as the most devastating scenario for risk planning and protection infrastructure. We are facing a flood of extraordinary magnitude over a young territory, with less than a century of development, which already has more than 75,000 constructions affected. Although the territory has not yet begun to recover, it already incorporates this event into its memory, forging a new culture of risk.

Views of La Rambla del Poyo in the city of Chiva, hat runs through the province of Valencia in Spain. Left: photograph taken in August 2013; right: photograph taken on 6 November 2024, after the floods.

Risk is perceived when it is prefigured, and it is prefigured through communication and representation. Our task in the project and landscape planning is precisely to prefigure environmental risks to anticipate and reduce their impacts. The perception and interpretation of floods are both sociocultural – as Bachelard points out—and disruptive. The trauma not only impacts the daily lives of those affected but also influences political and scientific stances. We face the need to rethink how we plan the landscape, adapting to what Zygmunt Bauman called ‘liquid modernity.’ It is no longer possible to completely avoid risk; we are in a new scenario, intensified by climate change, where extreme climate events occur more frequently and with greater intensity.

We are talking not only about the use of planning as a strategic mitigation tool, but also about its integration as a crucial element within the risk culture. To achieve this, it is crucial to establish anticipatory mechanisms, such as protocols and warning systems, that enable the sharing of expert knowledge about risks, as well as involving communities in decision making processes.

Considering this scenario, planning and landscape design needs to integrate the evaluation of risk: hazard magnitude, exposure, and vulnerability of the territory, as well as focusing the strategy in reducing their impacts. These strategies would work in two temporalities, the emergency and the prevention: equipping emergency situations with adequate infrastructures: self-protection mechanisms, such as shelters and safety confinement spaces. In the prevention phases: infrastructures such as dams and flood storage basins, and soil permeabilization to increase resilience – infrastructures that contribute to not only prevention, but also to a higher degree of safety during emergency events.

We must work through constant dialogue and a deep understanding of the interdependence between human and natural systems. Cocreation processes could enhance the capacities of landscape to integrate disturbances, sharing and creating knowledge and preparedness with local communities, as a process of risk democratization. Only in this way can we aspire to a safer and more prepared society to face the challenges that climate change will continue to present.