Integrating climate services into urban planning practices: a social practice perspective from Loddon Garden Village

Extended abstract 5-056-26

This poster presentation explores how climate services can be embedded across the planning, design, and everyday use of Loddon Garden Village, a large-scale new settlement in the UK, through the lens of social practice theory. Social practice theory emphasises that practices are shaped by the interaction of material infrastructures, social norms, institutional arrangements, and knowledge, making it a useful framework for examining how climate information is produced, interpreted, and acted upon in urban development.

From this perspective, climate services are not standalone tools but elements embedded within broader practices. Their effectiveness depends on how they integrate with existing routines, infrastructures, and institutional contexts. Climate services function as components of practice, becoming meaningful only when combined with other elements such as tools, skills, and local knowledge. They are also mediated through infrastructures that shape access and interpretation, while being shared across multiple users and purposes. In addition, climate services operate within interconnected bundles of practices, requiring alignment with institutional processes, temporal rhythms, and social norms.

The research investigates five interconnected dimensions. First, it examines how climate and environmental data—such as flood risk, temperature rise, drought, and extreme weather projections—can inform early planning decisions and infrastructure design, ensuring that housing, transport networks, and public spaces are resilient to future climate risks. Second, it analyses the decision-making practices of planners and developers, drawing on planning documentation to assess how climate services are currently used in land-use decisions, infrastructure planning, and risk mitigation, and to identify barriers to their effective integration. Finaly, the study considers the social and cultural context of climate services within the emerging community. Through the planning consultation meetings, it explores how residents engage with climate information in everyday practices such as energy use, water consumption, mobility, and gardening, and how social networks and community institutions can support the uptake of climate services.

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