2.3.3 MAP 3: Temporal-Projective Map for future strategies in Vejle
Any struggle for multispecies justice – justice for the humans and nonhumans that inhabit cities together - emerges from the juxtaposition of these divergent maps and their combination with compelling narratives about multispecies pasts, presents, and futures.
Ursula Heise, Mapping Urban Nature and Multispecies Storyworlds in Design with Nature Now
(Heise, 2019, p.92).
Figure 47. Map 3 is a temporal, projective mapping centred around the present time of this research, from the year 2019 to 2022, represented in a big yellow node for the city of Vejle. The map ranges from the initial conception of Vejle in 1256 to the present day (2020+-), mirroring this period all the way to 2756. Each century is marked on the vertical plane (i.e. 19th, 20th, 21st century and so on), while the timeline is presented on the horizontal plane. There are three major future scenarios: short, medium to long term, based on the IPCC and Vejle Municipality’s Storm surge Strategy report’s deadline (i.e. 2025, 2030, 2050, 2070).
How to do Urban Seascaping in Vejle with seaweed
The third Kumu map (MAP3) is a reconfiguration of the learnings from the two first maps. This map seeks to construct new perspectives and projections of the urban seascape in Vejle. The design of this map is not only addressing what used to be (past) or what currently exists but also a basis for possible courses of action and making them communicable. According to Langner (2019 and Seggern (2008), the performative character of mapping is a process of understanding the learnings of the past and the present to project the future to construct new meanings that can ultimately lead to action. Thus, the map offers a proposition of how Urban Seascaping might manifest itself in Vejle’s future scenarios.
The intention of this map is to understand the relationship between various nodes from the multi-scalar and S-O-T-A maps from a temporal perspective. For instance, there is a relationship between the start of land reclamation of Vejle’s harbourfront/waterfront into Vejle Fjord since the 1800s and the future challenges of protecting these land-reclaimed areas (i.e. Fjordbyen) from future storm surges and sea-level rise due to climate change. This type of consequential long-term perspective has been addressed by Wiberg et al. (2022), as illustrated in Figure 48, who argue that the decisions made to develop many Danish coastal towns in low-lying swampy marshland or/and at the bottom of the river valley as early as the 11th– 14th century still have an impact to this day. Although the current urban development models since the initial conception of these coastal market towns have changed significantly (i.e. from the 11-14th century to the 21st century), contemporary coastal towns/cities are dealing with outdated and inflexible infrastructure and buildings (i.e. canals, roads, sewage etc.), issues with ownership, field boundaries and the enormous task of protecting a sizeable city against the consequences of developing in areas vulnerable to water (Wiberg et al., 2022). Thus, the desired outcome of this map is to make visible how the decisions we make today have consequences in the distant future, much in the same way that we are still dealing with the decisions made several hundred years ago. Therefore, Wiberg et al. (2022) highlight that the usual future timespan of 50 years[116] might not be sufficient to plan adequately to deal with the consequences of climate change and issues with water.
Figure 48. This timeline illustrates the long history of Danish coastal cities. For example, Aarhus was part of coastal market towns from the 1050s to the 1300s. Historic decisions on infrastructure and issues surrounding urban development still influence contemporary realities of coastal cities - even though the city has undergone a significant urban transformation. The timeline illustrates that the decisions made several hundred years ago impact the present; thus, there is a potential that present decisions could have consequences farther into the future than we predict (Wiberg et al., 2022). Image credit: Katrina Wiberg (Wiberg et al., 2022).
Therefore, the methodologically speaking consequential timeline perspective by Wiberg et al. (2022) has been adopted for this temporal-projective map for Vejle for Part IV of the research in aiding future coastal adaptation strategies and waterfront development models for Vejle. First, I mapped the significant past events that have compromised or reinforced the city of Vejle’s current situation with future scenarios of water issues (i.e. SLR/SS) and the ecological health of the fjord. Second, I mapped the future timeline (post 2020+-) with the two IPCC deadlines of 2030 (half global emissions) and 2050 (net carbon zero), along with Vejle Municipality’s Storm surge strategy’s[117] proposed short-term (2025), medium-term (2050) and long-term (2070) plans (Vejle Municipality, 2020c). Finally, the last additions to the map are the three main projective explorations of coastal adaptation strategies for Vejle Municipality.
The analytical contents from the temporal-projective map are covered in Part IV to present alternative coastal adaptation strategies based on Urban Seascaping propositions in the context of Vejle (see section 4.2).
Figure 49. Close-up view of the main structure of the temporal-projective map centred around the present period of 2020+- (in yellow), with the left-side nodes as past events (in green) and the right-side nodes (in red) as future scenarios, deadlines and projections.
The connections between the nodes are indicated by a solid line representing causal relationships from the past and a dashed line representing speculative causal relationships in the future. The connections (solid and dashed lines) also hold information (by clicking on the lines) that shows the details of the causal impact of past decisions on the present and the future. Moreover, The nodes can automatically be isolated with varying degrees of connection by hovering over the nodes or changing the degree of “focus” on the right-hand menu (circled in red in Figure 50).
Figure 50. An example of a time node (2009-2018 – see red arrow) has been isolated to show only its connecting nodes by hovering the mouse over it (or by clicking on the focus button on the top right-hand corner in red). Therefore, this screenshot only shows all the connected time nodes to 2009-2018, such as the influence and connection to the nodes: “1842-1899”, “1970s”, and “1980s” in the past. A dashed line represents future connections, such as to 2050, 2070 and 2100, which indicates the impact of the current waterfront development on the future predicament of protecting Vejle from a future rise in sea level and frequent storm surges. These time nodes address urban development patterns in relation to that period’s legal, socio-cultural and economic factors.
Image credit: Nils Rosenvold (n.d., n.d.).
[116] Vejle municipalities’ coastal protection strategies are planned with SS and SLR predictions for 2025 (short term) and 2050 (medium term), with little strategy for 2070 (long term) (Vejle Municipality, 2020c) (refer to section 4.1.1).
[117] Vejle City Council decided in 2016 to prepare a storm surge strategy, which designates a direction for how Vejle should protect itself in the future. On 9 December 2020, Vejle's storm surge strategy was adopted by Vejle Municipality. The adoption follows a public consultation period from February to September 2020 (Vejle Municipality, 2020c).