Mapping natural geography across landscapes, this networking session questioned the dominant binaries of the rural and urban within plan and policy. While this structuration is widely and distinctively used as enquiry points and analytical frames to varyingly provision the people and places within these binaries, in effect, urban and rural are intrinsically linked. Even as the impacts of globalization, structural transformations of the economy and the recent climate change and attendant vulnerabilities manifest across these binaries, more than ever before the conventional divide between the agrarian rural and the industrial and services urban is blurring. Thus, in addressing questions around urbanisation and climate induced vulnerability and resilience, the rural-urban binary becomes a limiting factor.

This session through expert presentations and free flowing discussions aimed to position the city-region (irrespective of the urban and the rural) and attendant restoration as the canvas for systemic adaptation at all scales. Premised on the established urban-rural linkages, the discussions also explored how decentralised modes of thinking and acting can fuel action (and by extension policy feedback) in enhancing the resilience across at city region and the sub-city scale. In doing so, the session explored ways and methods of acknowledging and foregrounding traditional knowledge and the every-day lived experiences as critical entry points to achieving locally led adaptation strategies.