To build resilient and climate-neutral cities, it is required to modify current territorial planning processes to make them more sustainable and virtuous. However, the implementation of new strategies and innovative governance models faces multiple obstacles, economic restrictions, and technical gaps. In particular, local governments often find it difficult to build structured transition processes. This article investigates how it is possible to respond effectively to the need of urban contexts to adapt to climate impacts, analyzing the case of the Climate Transition Strategy (CTS) “La Brianza Cambia Clima”, the first in Italy of this kind. Through the technical framework and the methodology described, the CTS can activate inter-municipal transformative actions through the mainstreaming of planning tools, the construction of a medium-long-term vision, and the identification of concrete and widespread actions to be implemented in the territory. This coordinated and shared strategic approach allows one to give stability, coherence, and continuity to adaptation processes involving different stakeholders and sectors of the Public Administration. Finally, it favors the implementation of multidisciplinary policies for territorial resilience on a large scale.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that poses local risks to sectors across society and the economy. All these growing risks have led the Municipality of San Donà di Piave—located within the Metropolitan City of Venice (CMVe)—to strengthen, over the years, its commitment to the adaptation to climate change in its plans and policies. Nature-based solutions can offer a perfect example of sustainable solutions to cope with climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges. In this context, thanks to the support of the LIFE Master Adapt project, San Donà di Piave, applying its methodologies and creating new territorial information, was able to insert, within its Action Plan for Sustainable Energy and Climate (SECAP), important and structural Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) for the entire municipal area. This experience demonstrates how this process of mainstreaming adaptation actions and NBSs is possible at all levels of government of the territory. It also highlights the virtuosity of replicability in other contexts of the CMVe and the transition from theoretical concepts to concrete actions (NBSs) for adaptation into existing plans. This process happened with a climate-proof modification of the existing planning attitude, whether mandatory or voluntary.

This paper focuses on recognising the underlying component of climate risk adaptation and management that is present at the local planning level. Starting from a comparative analysis of four Italian cities in the Central Veneto Area, the aim is to understand how plans and regulations have already directed their efforts toward adaptation and climate risk reduction over the years, without explicitly labelling these measures as such. This process is carried out by co-ordinating the technicians of local administrations in the recognition and classification of already active measures that can be brought within the framework of combating the effects of climate change. The analysis of the identified measures shows that there is already considerable attention to flooding-related and heat-related issues in the local planning corpus. Understanding this dimension of local planning allows access to a set of adaptation intervention models that are already integrated into the planning system and support incorporating adaptation practices in a more co-ordinated way at various planning levels.