Across Europe, coasts are drastically being changed to adapt to relative sea level rise, which will influence coastal landscapes and heritage in many ways. In this paper, we introduce a methodological starting point for analysing the ways in which landscape architects and spatial planners engage with coastal landscapes and coastal heritage in the context of current climate adaptation projects. We test these methodologies by applying them to the Marconi dike strengthening project in Delfzijl, the Netherlands. This city’s dike fortification is an interesting case, as it offers many opportunities for re-designing heritage. The city borders the Wadden Sea area, a tidal mudflat area protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its natural and geological heritage values. The area also consists of a rich cultural landscape, which is overlooked in the public image and in local policy. We conclude that landscape architects and planners should strengthen not only the dike, but also the interpretation of the past that dominates policy and political debates in the area. We also find that the existing heritage production model of Ashworth and Tunbridge can provide some useful structure for understanding and contextualizing spatial planning for climate change as a way of doing heritage.

Our everyday encounters with green open spaces, with landscapes, include spaces right where we live. This is particularly true for the large proportion of the European population that lives in post-World War II mass housing complexes, given that most of these estates-often subsidised by welfare state initiatives-were planned and constructed as built volumes situated in open green areas. These housing complexes may furthermore be connected spatially or by pathways to large-scale park systems as a result of the extensive public planning and design that occurred in European welfare states in the decades following World War II. Despite the scale and omnipresence of these everyday landscapes for living, they have hitherto remained largely understudied beyond rather bold and generalising narratives. Yet, they form the focal point for this special issue of Landscape Research, which presents 'welfare landscapes' as a new research field and provides new knowledge, primarily from Denmark and Sweden but complemented by contributions from the Netherlands and Romania.Housing played a prominent role in the European post-World War II rebuilding phase, in which many states sought to reorient their societies after the devastation and turmoil of the war, aiming at ensuring the 'good life' for all citizens (Blanchon, 2011;Swenarton et al., 2015;Wagenaar, 2004). By means of fuelling industrialisation and providing welfare services and goods, the recovery was structured as an intertwined process of increasing production and consumption. In this context, housing was central to the distribution of welfare and thus gave material form to various ideas of welfare. These ideas had developed over the first half of the twentieth century and reached their peak after the war. Sustained by the USA's Marshall Plan, a large-scale restructuring of the built fabric in Northern Europe turned predominantly rural economies into thriving industrialised nations spearheaded by urban centres. This urbanisation was built upon a cluster of values, encompassing housing for all, the healthy city, the just and democratic city, strong communities, equal and easy access to nature, and the raising of children in a good environment. In other words, it was incidental that planners decided to locate mass housing estates in green environments and to mould these landscapes with huge lawns, places for play, and places for recreation. The term 'welfare landscapes' emerged out of the 'Reconfiguring Welfare Landscapes' research project in 2015, designating the shared open spaces of post-World War II housing estates (University of Copenhagen, n.d.). That project emphasised the significance of the open spaces being highly constitutive of post-war urbanisation and as major cultural, social, and political artefacts of the mid-twentieth century. And it has contributed to the emerging research field focusing on welfare and the built environment (Avermaete & Van Heuvel, 2011; Mattsson & Wallenstein, 2010;Swenarton et al., 2015) emphasising the significant role of their open spac...

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Rikke Stenbro is a Danish art historian based in Oslo. As a heritage researcher and urbanist her work is both theory and praxis focused on the way in which architectural interventions address the temporal texture of urban sites and situations. For the last few years she has been increasingly interested in the built fabric of the recent past and in addressing architectural preservation from a large-scale perspective. Suburban and urban landscapes, mass housing, infrastructural systems and the coexistence and interrelatedness between them are thus central points of interest in her research and in the various planning and development projects she has been involved in as a consultant. While writing this article Stenbro held a position as senior researcher at NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research) she has since then taken up a position as senior advisor within urbanism and cultural heritage at Rambøll, Norway. rikke.stenbro@ramboll.no Svava Riesto is a Norwegian art historian based in Copenhagen. Her research is concerned with how different values and cultural ideas influence the way that the city is understood -and how it is changed. She s is interested in a broad range of practices where people change the urban landscape, such as design, planning, heritage management, legislation and vernacular practices. Svava Riesto's work encompasses both examination of existing discourses/practices and proposals for alternative readings/prospects. Her current research examines how large-scale modern housing areas are understood and transformed in contemporary preservation-and urban renewal projects. Svava Riesto is postdoc research fellow at the Dept. of Landscape architecture and planning, the University of Copenhagen. For the last 10 years she has also been advising private and public partners in projects about urban design, urban renewal and urban transformation.